I’ve had the delightful pleasure of playing with one of my favourite designer – Jill Howarth newest collection for Riley Blake Designs – Little Brier Rose, which themes on the all time classic and on of my favourite fairy tale’s – Sleeping Beauty.

When I saw the panel I knew I wanted to do something with it. Despite quilt panel’s being designed to make a quick and easy quilt, I have always felt intimidated by the endless potential of them and feeling like I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Is that just me?? It seems such a shame to just do a cross hatch quilt style or any sort of straight line, I really wanted to highlight all the details.

If I had all the time in the world I would have love to have sat and hand embroidered in all the little details. As it was, time was of the essence and I needed to come up with a more speedier approach.

For the first time ever I used my free motion embroidery foot and went for it. Not in all the places mind, some areas required more accuracy and for that I used a Walking Foot. You can probably tell if you look closely which parts I did which!! 😂

Nevertheless I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was incredibly therapeutic, and a fun form of colouring in! Unfortunately with deadline restrictions looming I wasn’t able to do all of it as I had hoped, however even though it has the binding on now I think I will still carry on, but now at a more relaxed speed.

Initially I was unsure what to do to help make the quilt bigger. That was until I was sorting through some things at my mum’s and came across a foundation piecing by the yard panel for a Prairie Braid pattern, bonus points for being the exact size as my panel. A wonderful opportunity to add some width to the sides and showcase some more of the pretty fabrics from the collection!

If I’m allowed to say I think it looks super effective! Not only that, it was fun! All I needed to do was cut a load of 2.5″ strips. For some of the more directional fabrics I cut the strips on the diagonal. It was the first time I had done a Prairie braid, and I’m definitely going to do it again, it would make a great scrappy project!

I even managed some (rather flukey) pattern matching! Don’t you love it when that happens! 🙌

To squeeze a bit more size out of it, and to “frame” it I added a delicious pink from RBD Confetti Cottons collection. Then of course it HAD to be a stripey binding, and to help pull out all those gorgeous metallic elements in the quilt I used a metallic gold binding!

I did all the embroidery once the quilt was basted, I did consider doing the embroidery on the first 2 layers then adding the backing to hide all the stitching, however the backing fabric would not have had any stability. So with that in mind this has become a decorative quilt for show rather than one where people can look at the back! 😂

Well I hope you enjoyed my first attempts at some free motion stitching. I know I enjoyed it (even if it take me such a crazy long time to reach a reasonable finish for such a small quilt!), despite that I’m looking forward to giving it another try in the future! One adavantage of free motion, it is certainly less of a work out on the arms rather than having to spin the quilt in multi directions!

Briar Rose is shipping to stores now. Check out your local quilt shop, or go online to Riley Blake Designs for stockists. Check out the tag on Instagram – #littlebriarrosefabric where you’ll find a ton of inspiration!