Behind the Scenes: Around the World

One of the quilts we showed you in our Quilt Market booth was Shannon Brinkley's Around the World quilt, made from our Prairie Cloth Solids collection. The design, from Shannon's new book, Scrappy Bits Applique, uses her fabric collage technique.

Meet Shannon.

I am a teacher turned quilter and designer. I really fell in love with quilting back in college when I visited the Houston Quilt Festival, and I fell in love with raw edge applique in particular. 

I design modern quilting patterns using my super fun and quick raw-edge applique techniques that I’ve developed and written about in my book Scrappy Bits Applique. Having my background in education, I adore teaching, and am lucky enough to get to teach my applique techniques all over the country. I nest in the lovely Austin, Texas with my wonderful husband and son. I spend my time sewing, quilting, knitting, reading, writing, cooking, yoga-ing, teaching, and enjoying time with my favorite people. 

Meet Shannon's technique.

I started playing and exploring with fabric and out of that came my technique, and I’ve been refining it over the past several years. I’ve always loved collaging in different mediums, so collaging with fabric was the perfect extension. I love the instant gratification that you get from collaging with fabric. There’s some tactile gratification you get from manipulating the fabric and fusing it, like a painter slapping paint on a canvas.

Shannon's Around the World quilt:

The Around the World quilt—The pattern is in my book, and I picked out various hues from the Prairie Cloth Solids and used my scrappy applique technique to make the map quilt. This quilt was the first time that I used all solids in a collaged quilt. I love how it turned out--the colors are all so vibrant and fun!

Read more about Shannon's Around the World quilt, including how she chose what colors went where, on her blog. We'll be sharing more about Shannon and her upcoming fabric collection soon!

See the colors available in our Prairie Cloth Solids collection here.
Find out more about Shannon's book here.