Anna's Japanese Quilt Blocks and Taupes sampler quilt

Anna Kirk sent me some photos of the fabulous sampler quilt she is making from blocks in 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' and 'Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks'. Isn't it just stunning?

Anna writes -

I have been a quilter for many years and made all kinds of fun quilts. However, I never made one for mine and my husband's own bed because our bed is king size. I always thought it would be a daunting task to make one that huge until now. Instead of a quilt made from hard work this one was a labor of true love. Even though it took me over 6 months just to complete the top, I have enjoyed every moment and making every square.


Attached are a couple of photos so you can see how beautiful mine turned out. Next are a couple of pillows and a pillow cover. I plan to have it professionally quilted.


I used cotton and Japanese fabrics along with silks. Threads were cotton and silk (mostly silk). Embroidery thread was DMC, metallics and Cotton Perle., I plan to use a few buttons for centers of a few of the floral squares and Swarovski crystal beads on the 2 snowflake squares once the top has been quilted.


I want to enter this in a few local quilt shows and hope it will win a couple of ribbons.

Thank you for writing your books!


Aren't the sashiko details great on the flags?

I think this must be one of the biggest sampler quilts I've ever seen made with my blocks and it was obviously quite a task to get all those blocks done. But the end result is worth it. There's no less than 64 blocks in the quilt alone. I hope the longarming is up to the standard of Anna's patchwork and applique. This is a quilt that really needs bespoke longarming to compliment the beauty of the patchwork. The colours are lovely too, with those golden yellows and russet reds keeping the blocks lively. When I see reader quilts like this, I want to have the time to revisit the blocks in both those books and make myself a quilt or two in an alternative colourway (I'd like to do a green and brown sampler quilt featuring blocks from those books, perhaps with touches of other colours - with olives, chartreuse and limes among those greens).

If it doesn't win some ribbons or rosettes at quilt shows, I'd be surprised! I hope Anna can send me a photo of it hanging at a show, and maybe some extra block photos, as I'd love to see the effect of it hanging square so I could see the blocks at the top end of the quilt just as well as those at the bottom.