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Welcome to Stop, Thief BOM 2024

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” 

– William Morris.

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Stop Thief quilt design
Finished quilt size: Throw or wallhanging, 68inch square (170cm square)

BOM OVER 6 MONTHS. Pay upfront now before subscriptions close May 31.

Best Value

Stop Thief BOM 2024 Upfront Subscription

$105

105

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Australian Dollars (this year we are in AUD as new website only accepts this. This is approx 65USD)

Valid for 5 years

If you are having any problems with the button above, use this one:

What is included this year?

  • EXTENSIVE VIDEO TUTORIALS WILL BE GIVEN FOR HAND APPLIQUÉ AND ENGLISH PAPER PIECING

  • PDF PATTERNS all hosted on a website you can access anywhere in the world. 

  • FULL EXPLANATION OF TECHNIQUES including needle turn appliqué, English Paper Piecing, making perfect circles, making bias tape with a Hera marker, traditional machine piecing and hand quilting instruction

  • PRIVATE BOM FACEBOOK PAGE TO INTERACT WITH OTHER MEMBERS 

  • MONTHLY COLOUR INSPIRATION, TECHNIQUE TUITION AND HELP FROM SARAH

  • MAKE THE QUILT IN YOUR OWN COLORWAY (see kit below) … OR - 

  • OPTIONAL FABRIC KIT!!! -  we’re so excited to tell you that for this BOM there will be a kit of the beautiful Liberty of London fabrics that Sarah has used for her quilt available for purchase. The kit contains the background, which is a Liberty solid in soft pink, a large linen gingham check for the other background (you can see where is the gingham is used in the other sketch below), all the fabric for the applique and piecing, and the binding fabric, precut and pressed on the bias and ready for you to use.

  • This quilt is a combination of needle turn appliqué and machine piecing with a small amount of English Paper Piecing. The applique templates provided are suitable for either hand or machine appliqué, but instruction will only be given for hand applique

Stop Thief fabric kit

Background

Hi Stitchers! October is always the month when my Block of the Month subscriptions open for the following year. It’s a scary moment for me every time. The problem with what I do is that it isn’t quantifiable - there's no formula for it, book about it or way for me to farm it out to someone else. What makes my business a success isn’t the customer service, or the website, or the time it takes for a package to arrive or the  way things are photographed - although those things are obviously also important after the fact. But none of those things are needed without The Thing that starts it all off. The Thing that makes my business bubble begins in my brain, and there’s nowhere else it can come from. So, if I scribble and play and sketch, and sketch again, and come up with a drawing for the BOM and I love it, but no one else does? Then that’s my year of work blown. It’s daunting peeps, let me tell you, and I tremble every time I push a brand new baby BOM out into the world. 

 

This year I haven’t worked in quite as small a bubble as I usually do, and that has been lovely! My wonderful friend Robyn www.thestrawberrythief.com.au is the Liberty Fabric distributor for Australia, and she approached me mid last year asking if we could do something together. Well I love Liberty, and I love Robyn, so that seemed like a no brainer.

 

If you’re a quilter and you live in Australia, and even if you don’t, you will have heard of The Strawberry Thief. A beautiful shop and webshop located in Perth, which is all the way over the other side of Aus from me - pretty much the distance difference between New York and LA. The Strawberry Thief is Robyn’s retail business, and it’s attached to her warehouse for the Liberty distribution, which as you can imagine is a wonderful and amazing place to go and rummage. When Robyn asked me to play BOMs with her, I put my thinking cap on and decided I wanted the quilt to have a flavour of Art Nouveau about it, to bring in William Morris and his famous Liberty design The Strawberry Thief and have a nod to Robbie’s business. I also pulled out one of my favourite books, The Grammar of Ornament, which is about the designs of Owen Jones, an architect who was a huge influence on Morris and many other designers of the times. His book has been called the Bible of Design. Theres a fab little video about him here.

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All that set me to thinking about tiles and stained glass and windows and classic Nouveau shapes like lozenges and circles and twisty vines, and it also set me to thinking about The Strawberry Thief itself and about Robyn’s logo….

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StrawberryThief Shop

And this is where I’ve ended up! The quilt is called Stop, Thief! It’s a lovely little mix of applique and machine piecing, and a tiny little bit of English Paper piecing too in those corner star blocks. 

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The centre of the quilt is BIG - the square is around 40”, so that birdie stealing your needle is large and beautiful and pretty easy to applique. The lozenge windows have a curly pot plant growing on the windowsill below the stained glass radiants, and the starry glass corners are anchors for strawberry plants, with flowers and little tiny strawberry buds coming along.

 

The exciting news is that Robyn will be selling kits for the quilt, which contains all your Liberty faves like Capel in every colour of the rainbow, Betsy and Wiltshire. The background is a very pale pink Liberty solid, and the gingham (the design below shows the sections the gingham is used in) is one of Robyn’s own pure linen fabrics. The checks are a large 1”, so although that centre might look like it needs something in the corners, the “something” is the checked fabric that will frame the birdie in the centre and provide texture and movement. 

 

Here’s a pic showing you where the gingham would fall - its in the centre, and then again in the outer border, in the pieced blocks and behind the circles.

stop thif quilt design

You can read all about William Morris here https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/introducing-william-morris 

and the original Strawberry Thief design here https://thestrawberrythief.com.au/the-story-of-the-strawberry-thief/

I hope that you love my thieving birdie in the window as much as I do and that you’ll join me for 6 months of stitching him!

Timetable

Welcome Notes available now

 - Includes information on BOM and FAQs
 - Upon signup you will have access on the BOM content page here

Notions on sale now
- Optional acrylic template set and notions to help make the quilt – for sale at www.sarahfielke.com 
 

Fabric Kit on sale now

- Optional fabric kit containing all the Liberty of London fabrics for quilt top and binding, exactly as Sarah’s quilt, available NOW at www.thestrawberrythief.com.au Please note that there are a LIMITED NUMBER of kits available. The BOM pattern each month will discuss the fabrics used and how to cut them to make sure there’s enough of everything. There will be a fabric key with the Material Requirements on December 1. The kit is delivered in ONE SHIPMENT, not month by month.

 

Colour Planner available now
- A large scale, printable black and white drawing to help you colour design your quilt

Material Requirements - 1 December 2023
- Includes complete fabric requirements for the quilt design, fabric inspirations and colour ideas.

Notion Orders Shipped - from 1 December 2023
- Orders are shipped in order by time and date placed. 

Stop, Thief! Patterns and Videos Release Timetable
- Patterns and videos released onto website starting from Jan 15, 2024

  • Month 1 – Jan 15

  • Month 2 – Feb 15

  • Month 3 – Mar 15

  • Month 4 – Apr 15

  • Month 5 – May 15

  • Month 6 – Jun 15

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BOM 2023 Quilt Competition​

- Opportunity for you to send in pics of your finished quilt tops from any Sarah Fielke BOM 2016 - 2023  to go into our competition to win fun prizes

- Details for entry will be sent via email in early February 2024.

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