Other people chose to feature green fabrics in their work and I was one of those, as it’s my favourite colour and I enjoy working with greens. For my project I created a foundation pieced background of ‘crazy’ blocks which I printed out from EQ6. I then used invisible machine appliqué to add a jungle plant, spilling out into the borders. In the latter stages I was racing against the clock to get the challenge finished by the end of the month but I just managed.

Quilting with variegated and solid coloured cotton threads completes the design. Initially I started to quilt a trailing leaf design in the borders but then had to unpick what I’d done as I felt that it didn’t look right and drew too much attention away from the main design.

I bought some rather nice cat print fabric from the local fabric shop in town to use as the main feature fabric and then raided my fabric stash for the rest. The print fabric has lots of different cats in brown, black and grey on a light brown background so it was easy to find coordinating materials from amongst my stash of fabrics that I use for landscape quilts and geckos.

The quilt and pillow top is constructed from 8 inch ‘crazy’ foundation log cabin blocks which I printed out from Electric Quilt. The central patch is quite large so I was able to cut a square featuring a cat for the center of each block. I then applied strips of fabric around the central block to complete the square. I have included detailed instructions of how I made the foundation pieced log cabin blocks and completed the quillow on my web site  AnneMaundrellDesigns.com in a new section entitled ‘Tips and Tutorials’. In time I hope to expand this section and include  lessons covering more different techniques and processes.

Brown is really one of my least favourite colours, but since I have been making art quilts I have accumulated a large collection of lovely batiks and blenders in all sorts of lovely shades and tints. I have grown to like using these colours a lot more and I was happy with the way the blocks turned out. I used a pale buttery yellow for the sashing to set off the blocks and this also brightened up the quilt a bit.

I used more of the cat print fabric for the outer border, being careful to remember to make sure everything was the right way up and the cats weren’t standing on their heads. The pillow top was made in the same way except that round the outside I used small strips of fabric sewn together in random order to make up the border with a square in each corner.

For the quilting I quilted in the ditch around the first row of the log cabin and around the outside edges of each quilt and the borders. The first time I made this quilt I didn’t do any more quilting but this time I wanted to practice my free motion quilting so quilted all around the blocks using a loop design and variegated cotton thread.

If you’re curious to see how the quilt turns into a pillow and becomes a quillow, chack out my web site for more photos: Anne Maundrell Designs

foundation pieced background

 I used as many different fabrics as I could to convey the impression of the colours of the forest floor and the foliage, with darker greens in the area where the undergrowth meets the ground. Normally I wouldn’t add the borders at this stage but when I add the details I want dome of them to spill over into the borders.

Detail of foundation piecing

The next stage is to add the trees and I used several different commercial striped batik fabrics for this.

fabrics for trees

Using various different fabrics for the trees gives greater depth to the design.

trees added

In the picture above I have started adding the trees. I have also applied some small snippets of fabric along the line where the green blocks meet the brown in order to blend the area where the two meet and avoid having too distinctive a line.

Let sleeping cats lie

The danger of leaving fabrics out on my table!

detail of foundation pieced background

The picture shows the foundation pieced background with some foliage and trees added. The trees in the background are fused in place and then the trees in the foreground have the edges turned under to raise them slightly and are stitched in place with invisible blind stitch. For the foliage and small jungle floor plants I have fussy cut shapes from a batik print, fused them in place and then stitched round the edges with invisible thread.

rain forest background