Every once in a while, I love to give myself a good challenge. Freestanding Lace was the first one, and learning all about Welsh Quilting is the second one. I have been working on the Welsh Quilting for a few months – finding books, research, checking out archives and studying the wholecloth wool quilts that are still around – only pictures of course, although wouldn’t it be great to see one in person? In the old tradition, the Welsh Quilts were one piece of fabric and everything was stitched by hand. I am really not going to do anything by hand – I am always happy when my machine can do it for me, right? I started off with the quilting designs, block by block and getting them to match up and look fantastic. Then I used some different fabric that will give the quilt a whole new look – it’s a stretchy fabric called scuba – it holds its shape and allows for a ton of texture with the quilting stitches.

Aside from the thread colors, I wanted to add more color. I found a few more books that were geared towards pieced Welsh Quilts – different than the wholecloth quilts. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I stepped out of my comfort zone and designed a pieced quilt that kept to the style of Welsh quilting and then added the quilting motifs on top of that. Whew, it took a bit to come together. Center medallion, color blocks, the right designs for the quilting, and put together in the right way. It was a lot to figure out for one quilt block, let alone making them all fit in together!

I kept with tradition as much as possible and made Welsh Quilting more modern and instead of hand piecing and hand stitching the designs, I have it all in one package – an in the hoop quilt block which includes piecing and the quilting too.

I am proud to present to you my most favorite and beautiful Welsh Pieced Quilt – called the Welsh Heart Pieced quilt – because of the hearts in the design and how much I LOVE the results.

I hope you will step outside of your comfort zone and try this wall hanging. It may look complicated, but it really is not that hard to stitch out. There are step by step instructions to show you every step of the way, and we will be doing videos on each block to help you get stitching.

I hope to see some Welsh Quilts stitched out – bring back an almost lost tradition into modern times and have fun stitching and putting the quilt together. Give the wall hanging as a gift – you will get WOW from everyone that sees it.