Oh my – how time does fly! Unbelievably, it’s the middle of March and we promised with our last blog post in January that we would talk more…our apologies but the good news is we have been super busy designing and quilting, designing and quilting, and designing and quilting and so on….the only problem with all this ‘designing and quilting’ is that it’s been “super secret quilting” so we haven’t been able to share any of it with you until now….
One of the first quilts we designed and made for Free Spirit Fabric was our ‘Roundabout’ Quilt using Nel Whatmore’s beautiful and cottage chic fabric collection called 
“Rosealea“. This was a fun quilt to create but I must admit when a quilt sample was requested to be created for of all venues – the Houston Quilt Market! (gasp) – I was a little intimidated to say the least. Here’s the completed quilt hanging in the Free Spirit Fabric Quilt Gallery which was a special booth exhibit at last year’s Houston Quilt Market – indeed a proud moment for Carl and I.
Designed solely by Carl, this quilt is almost entirely paper pieced, which allows for the perfect sharp points and intricate secondary designs to come forth – sometimes I wonder if he designs these complicated looking things just to test me! Lol! Paper piecing is a love of mine so I welcomed the task!
In creating this quilt, I discovered a few tips and tricks along the way. First, the ever useful glue stick came in very handy. I ran a light bead of glue stick along the first fabric so that I could place the black and white dots evenly and perfectly 
vertical over the the first paper pieced section without the dots shifting as I sewed – skewed dots would look awful and I did not want that look!
I also used my very handy ‘Add a Quarter’ ruler to trim off any excess fabric leaving just that perfect scant 1/4″ seam allowance. If you don’t have one of these ‘Add a Quarter’ rulers yet, run – don’t walk – to your neighborhood quilt shop and pick one up – they are super useful for all paper piecing and just a great handy notion to have in your sewing kit!
There were three different units that needed to be created to form just one quadrant of each block…so 4 quadrants make just 1 block and there were 5 blocks in all….60 units total needed to be completed and all in a matter of a week or so as our turnaround was very tight.
To match the points of each unit, that old trick of pinning straight through the top point of the intersection and right through the matching top point of the intersection really did the trick and made piecing the units together a breeze. 
And of course, the every helpful rubber mallet was most useful in pounding flat (yes you heard me, pounding flat!) the center of each block where there were many seams converging – hey, a quilter got to do what a quilter got to do, right?!
We added a black top and bottom border to frame out the quilt and make the completed version measure the perfect 45″ x 60″ size that was requested for the Free Spirit Quilt Gallery.
Once completed, the top was sent to Teresa at Quilting is my Bliss for some magical and very beautiful free motion machine quilting. She did a gorgeous job adding just the right amount of quilting here and there without overpowering the design.
So once completed, off to Free Spirit Fabrics it went and took its place in the gallery for Houston Quilt Market! A fun project indeed.
If you like our Roundabout pattern and want to make one of your own, you can download the free pattern by clicking here.
Stay tuned for more posts on out other designs that have started popping up!
Until your next colour fix~Linda & Carl
Anyway, back to Houston….We had a single booth space just a few spots away from one of our favorite fabric companies, 
Like our previous booth at Houston (which I blogged about in 
which meant we could take the entirety of the booth – piping, rugs, decor, displays and tables all in the car and all ready for set up in a day without having to leave the convention center. It was great! and a big relief to know that we had everything we needed packed and ready to go when we got there. The car was a bit cramped though and due to the 10 foot pipe extending from the front window shield to the back, I was resigned to the back seat for the ride-check out the photo to the right for my view for 16 hours there and back again! It was spacious but still in the back.
Carl also designed this nifty display table which was the talk of market…the table was a glass topped-metal bookcase purchased from Ikea -he added a 
cheap metal curtain rod with metal tie backs (bought at Walmart) and created a hanging rod on the front, perfect for displaying a quilt – what a genius!. Then our friend 
An additional thrill was to have one have one of our commissioned designs featured in the Free Spirit Fabrics Quilt Gallery. This was such an honor as this was a special exhibit set up by Free Spirit Fabrics to showcase new fabric collections with accompanying quilts (which will be offered as free patterns when the fabric collection is released.)
We were asked to design and make a quilt for Nel Whatmore’s new collection “Rosealea. “Rosealea” is a beautiful fabric collection chocked full of vintage cottage roses reminiscent of 
English countrysides. To the left is our design titled “Roundabout”. Carl designed this in the software program called, Electric Quilt 7 – I paper pieced it and 
Colourwerx 