Plum and Moon bag - special limited edition

When I arrived at Maleny Magic Patchwork & Quilts on Monday, Bev showed me a gorgeous version of the Plum and Moon Bag they'd made (I sell the original and other more subdued colours as kits online and at shows). The luscious bright pink seems to match the vibrant colours all around here - isn't it gorgeous? The pink fabric is the perfect kind of weave for sashiko - a little heavier than ordinary cottons with a linen-like feel (I'm pretty sure it is cotton though). I chose a floral coordinate for the lining and persuaded Bev, Jan and Libby to make up a special limited edition kit.

This kit is only available through the shop. We had a few out on sale with us at the lunch on Tuesday and my teaching events, so I'm not sure just how many are left, but there were only about 20 kits made up anyway. If you'd like one, contact the shop asap via the link above and get yours on order. There are very few of these kits and they won't be listed on the website - you'll need to call or e mail about the kits. Once they're gone, they're gone! I won't be able to do a hot pink bag kit like this, because I don't have any fabrics like that in stock (apart from one piece of a similar cotton that I've been saving for myself...) - better make sure I get one too. :-)

UK friends - if you would like one of these, give me a shout (via comment, email or Facebook) and I'll bring one back for you. But please let me know quickly!

Marie's version of the Plum & Moon bag

Marie, one of the students at my recent Denman College course, brought the bag she had made from my "Plum & Moon" kamon bag kit (photo above). This is the burgundy colourway. I was pleased to discover that my digitally recoloured photo of it (below) was a good colour match!


This is the original photo - the yellow ochre bag is the first one I made and my friend Charlotte made the brown

Here's the same photo recoloured to look as close as possible to the dark blue and purple versions - although I usually put shaded pink or red threads in these for the plum blossoms, I do occasionally put in ice blue for a more restrained colourscheme.

Preparations for Exeter

"Shippo" pincushions and "Plum and Moon" Bag are my two most popular kits at the moment. I spent part of today repacking more for the Exeter Spring Quilt Festival next weekend. As the lining print I used for the original batch of the bag isn't available any more, I added dark blue, mid blue and purple colourways to the range for the Edinburgh show. Rather than restitch the bags, I've recoloured the photo to give an approximate "artist's impression" of how the new colourways look - the dark blue and the purple are much darker in real life than in my edited photo. The moon and plum branches are still stitched in cream while the blossoms are stitched in either ice blue, shaded pink or red. So there have been eight different colours available so far! The new colourways are lined with a gorgeous blue, turquoise, lilac and gold print from Kona Bay.

The shippo pincushions were originally a workshop for the Grosvenor quilt shows several years ago. I use the samples to hand out needles in my one hour workshops. I've added a darker shade of blue, burgundy, warm brown and brick red to this kit's fabric selection, keeping to the cream thread for the stitching.