La Piscine

I'd try to write a whole post en francais but I know my limitations!  My quilt is finished, christened, and photographed in a rare burst of September sunshine.  Et voila:




The inspiration is the Swimming Pool quilt from Jane Brocket's book, The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking, with slightly smaller squares in the centre to make the best use of my fabric which included a whole heap of 10"x10" squares from Cotton Patch sample packs.

The centre 'pool' has free motion quilting to give a rippled texture and look,

and for the border I quilted straight lines about 1.5" apart to give the feeling of a tiled edge to the pool, although if anyone has tiles like these around their pool I'm deeply jealous (and not just because it means they have a pool!).  The border fabric is a Free Spirit print designed by Valori Wells called Chandelier which just happens to be in my favourite blues and perfect for the colours of the quilt. 

To do the lines easily I filched H's roll of masking tape from his studio and taped up against each line of stitching:

and then used that as my guide to sew along it with a walking foot.

Easy as pie and the masking tape comes off the fabric nice and cleanly and I got (for me) pretty straight lines.

For the backing and binding I used the same fabric, Kaffe Fasset's Persimmon Blue print - I like to think it's what you see if you were floating on your lilo, sipping a mojito in my fictitious pool, staring up through the trees to a deep blue sky.  Clearly I envisage my pool as being somewhere nice and hot, and it would be an unforgivable blast of realism to recall that this pool is in fact in an autumnal Warwickshire.


Happily, I am not alone in my wanderings into the realms of fantasy, because as soon as my back was turned and I popped inside to put the lens cap safe, I found a few friends had dived into the enticing depths of my pretty blue water:

Miss Violet was the first to don her frilly bathing dress and take the plunge,

And her charms soon ensured that she was joined by a gentleman friend.

Somehow I suspect from her expression that Violet is more focused on her length times than the optimistically 'accidental' encounter with her fellow swimmer - he looks far too hopeful to be instantly successful in winning her over.

Meanwhile the local family of ducks have gathered to cool off and to do what they can to alleviate what appears to be a nasty case of love-pox in littlest duck.

And in all of this, the portable bar chugs around, topping up the drinks!

Carie's Pool, opening in the south of France soon!

And why France you ask? well it all comes down to a little matter of these two blocks, and a few more like them:

Cut from fat quarters bought for me by H in Paris on our first wedding anniversary, and put to perfect use in this quilt big enough to wrap both of us and a baby bear.

Speaking of which:

Desperate times call for desperate measures.