Australia! Published

How did I miss this?!?!    Some time ago I answered a call Fat Quarterly Magazine put out to make a paper pieced pat­tern using Walk­About by Beth Stud­ley.    I was super excited about being able to try out a block I’d designed pre­vi­ously in a paper pieced format so put my hand up straight away and then, some­how I missed Fat Quarterly releas­ing the Paper Pieced edi­tion where it appeared.    Crazy!   So here it is now, bet­ter late than nev­er, Aus­tralia! the quilt.

The col­our palette isn’t some­thing I would nor­mally choose but the indi­gen­ous inspired prints are pretty fab­ulous for a map of Aus­tralia right?   My favour­ite print is the little foot­prints in orange, they really are quite sweet.

I asked Jane Dav­id­son (aka Quilt­Jane) to quilt Aus­tralia! for me.   Jane did the most amaz­ing job of quilt­ing it, her work is abso­lutely beau­ti­ful and I’m so grate­ful for the time and thought that she put into cus­tom quilt­ing this for me.    Her gor­geous work made this little quilt come to life and then some!   When it first came home we’d all just stand around and stare at it in awe, and we still do.

This little crab Jane quilted into the design always makes me smile.

The Aus­tralia! quilt paper pieced pat­tern is avail­able from Fat Quarterly by click­ing here.   The fin­ished quilt meas­ures 46.5″ square so is great for a wall hanging or even as a little throw rug.

And just for you guys a little insider tip.  You can use the paper piecing tem­plates from Fat Quarterly without enlar­ging them to make a smal­ler sized pan­el Aus­tralia!   My friend Cat & I used the smal­ler ver­sion to make the tote bags we took to Quilt­Con.     Cat’s is truly gor­geous and I just love it.   She is the mas­ter of fussy cut­ting and her Aus­tralia! block looks so so great.  Actu­ally it’s my favourite!

Mine’s a little more sed­ate bor­ing, I blame it on the fact that I needed to make two in a really short space of time so grabbed a charm pack of solids I had in my stash to make them both.  Cat & Vee’s Pris­cella pan­el  was on the oppos­ite side of both bags and the shirts, also designed by Cat & Vee, were Quilt­Con appar­el for us Aussies.

I will be much more organ­ised next time I sub­mit a quilt to a magazine, I hope you like it even though its a bit late being shown here.   If you make some­thing using the Aus­tralia! pat­tern please tag me on social media or send an email through, I would abso­lutely love to see it.

Until next time,