Modern Quilts by Mandy Munroe

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some quilts from this year’s Newark Quilt Show, so today I’ve got some brightly coloured modern designs to share. The quilts here are all made by Mandy Munroe for a variety of modern quilting magazines over the past twelve years or so, and it was great to see them all together. Mandy says this is just a small selection of her quilts, and I’d love to see them all, but for now I’m happy just seeing, and sharing, these - I hope you enjoy them too.

, MANDY MUNROE

The show notes also said that it took Mandy a while to get used to designing quilts six months ahead of publication, so making winter quilts in summer and vice versa, but with access to top-secret fabric prints pre-release must have been thrilling, even if they couldn’t be shared widely, just yet.

I love the colours in the next two square based quilts, but I’m under no illusion to the amount of work in either of these. The Happy Squares quilt below brings ‘doodles in [Mandy’s] notebook were brought to life’ against the colourful squared backgrounds. I’m not sure my doodles could be a quilt, or even if they’d ever be this structured!

HAPPY SQUARES, MANDY MUNROE

CHEQUERBOARD, MANDY MUNROE

And what’s better than a chequerboard - well a chequerboard within a chequerboard of course! This quilt was made from scraps, and the smaller chequerboards meant that using every small scrap was possible.

BUCKLE UP, MANDY MUNROE

Mandy notes that for the Buckle Up quilt above she’d had the bold repeat pattern in her notebook for a while, and with this fabric she ‘went large!’ - I like it, and I like how the shapes make your eyes keep moving over the design.

This next one appeals for the colours, and is an experimentation of different colour combinations pieced into square blocks, and I can see what Mandy means when she says the finished quilt looks like a summer garden with umbrellas (from above).

AL FRESCO SAMPLER, MANDY MUNROE

The brief for this quilt was colours of the Kasbah, and the design is based on a motif that Mandy saw everywhere in Marrakesh. It’s great isn’t it, and I love how the bright colours pop against the neutral background.

KASBAH STAR, MANDY MUNROE

Now this one is very clever, and uses a bundle of Dear Stella Intermix basics which clearly I now need to check out! The bold prints were used on the triangles and the paler prints used to create streaks across the sky - I’m definitely a little bit in love with this one.

INTERSTELLA, MANDY MUNROE

What also struck me though was not every quilt needed to be quite so detailed. These next two take repeating shapes and are no less impactful for it. The one below was for a ‘Monochromatic with a pop’ issue and Mandy kept the design minimalistic and graphic.

MONOCHROMATIC, MANDY MUNROE

STACK, MANDY MUNROE

The quilt above according to the show notes was ‘possibly inspired by containers loading at the docks’ - and now I can’t unsee that, it just goes to show that inspiration is everywhere if we take time to notice it.

WINDOWS AT KEW, MANDY MUNROE

This final quilt was inspired by the brickwork surrounding the windows at Kew Palace, and is based on a photo that Mandy took and then simplified. And if you let your imagination wander it’s perfectly possible to imagine the flowers reflected on the glass.

They’re all brilliant quilts, and I’d be hard pressed to choose a single favourite from them, but what about you - is there one that speaks, or sings to you?

Flowers everywhere you look at Barnsdale Gardens

* I was invited to a press visit at Barnsdale Gardens earlier in the summer, so my posts from that visit will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

In the first post in this series I admired the veg plots at Barnsdale, and when I say plots I mean multiples. It’s the same for the flower gardens, though there are many, many more so compressing what I saw into a single post has been a challenge, to say the least!

Though it has been glorious to look back at my photos of the summer flowers, yes peonies and roses galore - what’s not to like?

Both of these were in the Summer Cottage Garden (No 28) along with this low level box edged path - and while it’s not a flower, it’s too good to exclude.

These next photos are taken in the Gentleman’s Cottage Garden (No 4) and the first shows the benefits of having somewhere to sit in all weathers. We learnt this in our previous garden as you don’t always want to drag out the garden furniture, in that garden the raised sleeper beds provided the ideal place to perch with a cuppa.

The central point of the garden was this buried stack of terracotta pots - another effective idea which could easily be replicated in our own gardens.

As you’d expect the Cutting Garden (No 12) was full of flowers, but these tall flowering stems with the almost onion like seed heads were my favourite from this garden. The free flowing love in a mist reminded me that I have some seeds from my FIL’s garden which I should probably plant, though it turned out that the heatwaves this year scuppered my seed sowing efforts. I’d started with lettuce, which were a bit hit and miss so decided to pause any greater plans for this year, which turned out to be a wise decision.

I snapped this delicate looking rose in the Versailles Summer border (No 16) while the peony is from the Country Paradise Summer Garden (No 36), which also has the sign to beware of the hidden pond, which I wrote about after my first visit to the gardens.

It was no surprise to me that I fell in love with the layout and contents of the Plantsman’s Garden (No 27) and it was a good reminder to put this acanthus on my plant wish list.

And look, I’ve managed to sneak in another topiary into this post - oops! But what a shape!

The greenhouses throughout the gardens are fantastic, and what’s better is that you can mostly get right inside them, and this one looked dreamy from inside and even more so from the outside with these roses clambering up posts nearby.

In the Rose Garden (No 17) I had much sympathy with the drooping peonies, and loved them mixed with the deep coloured roses, that’s another design feature to remember for my own garden!

I also loved the textures in the photo below, which is in the Geoff Hamilton Winter Border (No 10) and a reminder that we need to plant our gardens for the whole year, not just spring, or summer when the flowers are the brightest.

I’m leaving you with this single astrantia, while the petals may well have fallen off there’s still so much detail. I have one of these plants, currently in a pot, and I’m hoping that when it gets into the ground it will do its best to self seed wherever it can - a girl can hope, right?

* With thanks to Barnsdale Gardens for inviting me to the gardens, and to Nick Hamilton for leading a tour through a selection of the gardens available. It’s a great space and I’m pretty sure I’ll be back to visit again.

The Mill Ruins

* I was invited to this year’s Gardeners’ World Live preview and provided with a pair of tickets for the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

In a strange quirk of fate I’m back today talking about mills. Yesterday it was sculptural woven tapestries inspired by a textile mill in West Yorkshire, and today it’s a garden inspired by the remnants of Lancashire’s historic mills. I’d like to say I planned it this way, but I didn’t - though I wish I had!

This garden on the APL Avenue was the first garden we saw at this year’s show, and it was a very good place to start. The garden, designed by 3DG explores a quiet moment where industry gives way to nature.

As I previously said it’s inspired by the remnants of Lancashire’s historic mills, reclaimed brick, Corten steel and weathered oak echo the fragments left behind as the landscapes regenerate.

The Corten steel arch is definitely the eye catching entrance a show garden could hope for, but this garden is so much more than that. The path winds around layered planting and a shallow reflective pool, plus spotting those yellow red hot pokers in my first garden of the show is always going to be a win for me.

The rain chain introduced sound, and was a subtle nod to the water than once powered the mills.

The majority of planting in this garden is native to the UK, and selected for its biodiversity and to soften the architectural forms. And while we might not all have these architectural elements in our gardens, unless we’ve added them of course, we can take inspiration from the planting.

The Mill Ruins is a garden about renewal, where structure fades, and nature quietly takes back control - and I love that for it, and I love this garden. I knew when I saw this garden that it was going to be a good show, and it certainly was.

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for once again inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was another great show! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to this year’s show throughout the year - I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.