Daydreamin': Day Lily

While we're at Quilt Market, we're showing off another new fabric line, Day Lily. Big, bold florals in warm golds, mossy greens, and perfect purples, plus some really cool coordinating small prints.

 Watch for this free quilt pattern soon on our website, giving Day Lily a modern twist.

Market Sneak Peek

We're in Portland, Oregon, getting ready for Quilt Market this weekend! We'll have some photos to share from the show next week, but for now, we wanted to show you some of what will be going in our booth.
We're decorating the booth with a bright new fabric line we really love, Mystic Forest. Full of elephants, monkeys and bears, this children's line has three great colorways--a bit off the beaten path of traditional pink or blue. 

 It also includes printed growth charts, and many of the fabrics come in flannel and laminate as well.

Our talented art department brought some of the monkeys, bears and elephants to life for the booth, both on painted wood and as stuffed animals. 

Cute, aren't they?!

A Floral Star

What's the best way to make a focal fabric stand out? 

Surround it by a great cast of coordinates. 

Lucy Fazely and Barb MacDonald did just that in their "Eastern Journey" wall hanging, featured in The Quilter magazine. Lucy chose her favorite print from the Asian Garden collection, the packed floral, and built larger and larger stars out from it. 

The result? An eye-catching wall hanging or table topper!

"Eastern Journey"  by Lucy Fazely and Barb McDonald;
featured in The Quilter magazine June-July 2013 issue.

Q. What attracted you to the Asian Garden line? 
Lucy: The rich colors with gold overlays. I love floral fabrics and the packed floral and lilac blooms are absolutely gorgeous.

Q. How did you choose which prints to use? 
Lucy: I started with those florals as the central focus and then selected the fabrics I felt best brought out those rich color in the florals. Even though the other fabrics in the line are beautiful, I felt many of them were too busy to put into this quilt because I wanted the florals to be the star.

Q. Why the medallion style star design? 
Lucy: I wanted to stay true to the Asian theme. Stars and medallion motifs are often found in Asian art, which made the medallion star a natural choice.

Q. What do you like best about the quilt? 
Lucy: The way the bright florals are enhanced by the purple, gold, black, green and red tonal fabrics.

Q. What do you see the quilt being used for? 
Lucy: It was designed as a table topper, but would also be nice on a wall. In the right fabrics, it could be made as a baby quilt. (Note: Watch for a post on our new baby collection, Mystic Forest, coming soon!)

Q. Anything else interesting to share about the quilt? 
Lucy: This is an easy-to-make quilt. I designed it with quick corner triangles to make it a quick project. It’s also a great project to make in different colorways for each season.

See the entire Asian Garden collection here. 
Find the kit for this project here. 
Find The Quilter magazine here.

Playing with Marblehead

Jessica Toye, a member of the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild who blogs over at Two Hens Cluckin', designed three quilts using the Marblehead Global Brights collection. The quilts will hang in our booth at Quilt Market next week, but in the meantime we're sharing them here because we think that they're fantastic and they'll provide inspiration for the Marblehead Challenge.

Q: What attracted you to the Marblehead Global Brights fabric?

Jessica: I love the way the Global Brights read as almost solids. I'm a fan of the modern quilting movement and there are TONS of solids used there. The Global Brights are such fun, happy colors that really played well together and really just spoke to me. 

Q. How did you come up with the designs?

Jessica: I wanted to create a few quilts showing various sized pieces of the fabrics. Dresser Drawers shows the biggest chunks of each fabric. Library Stacks is designed to create a quilt with a little more movement. Several of these fabrics have a flowy feel to them and I wanted to explode that idea into a quilt design. Sunset Boulevard was designed to resemble a rainbow or spectrum. 

Q. Which quilt do you like best, and why?

Jessica: Sunset Boulevard is my favorite of the three. I feel it has the best balance in composition. It is the cleanest and most dynamic design of the three. It was also the most fun to make. 

Q. What surprised you about these quilts?

Jessica: The quilting! The thread I used on all three quilts is the same color. (Superior Threads: So Fine! #50 - #421 - Marigold) It's really interesting to do so many quilts from the same materials and see the huge difference in the final outcome.

Q. Tell us a bit about the machine quilting on each quilt.

Jessica: Library Stacks is a simple meandering stitch. The piecing portion of this quilt had so much going on that a simple all over design was necessary to finish it off. 

When I was deciding how to quilt Sunset Boulevard, I was watching Angela Walter's Craftsy class, Machine Quilting Negative Space. Angela uses a tile design in her class that I really wanted to try. I thought it gave the spectrum piecing a fractured look. Almost like the rainbow of the piecing was being shattered into various pieces. Within the tiles, I used Angela's swirl design to contrast the sharp angles of the tiles and linear feel of the piecing. 

The quilting on Dresser Drawers was done in another of Angela Walter's quilting designs, her wood grain motif. My intent was to stick with the dresser idea and add a bit of motion to the quilt's appearance.

12 Reasons to Look Forward to Autumn

11 autumn-hued prints in our new Fall Tapestry collection

+ 1 free quilt pattern to use with the line!

Why are we sharing a fall-themed line of fabric during the first week of May? We'll answer that with a seemingly unrelated question:
If you're sewing something as a Mother's Day gift or a graduation gift, how close are you to finishing it? 
We all know that despite the best of intentions, life gets in the way and gifts or seasonal projects don't always get completed on time. 
Our solution: share Fall Tapestry, a gorgeous leafy autumn collection, in May. Plenty of time to finish up that table runner or quilt before the actual leaves begin to fall! 

Click here to see the entire line and download the free quilt pattern, designed by Sue Harvey and Sandy Boobar of Pine Tree Country Quilts.

Seeing Red

...but not in the way you think--this is good red, not angry red!

Our new line, Roses Are Red, is pure color merged with great texture.

You need to see some of these fabrics up close to appreciate them, so we're doing just that.

Love this maze-inspired print

A new take on chevrons

Dark and light clamshells

Check out the free pattern for this cool quilt using the Roses Are Red collection, designed by Sue Harvey and Sandy Boobar of Pine Tree country Quilts, on our website.

Speaking of red, have you heard about the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild's collaborative effort to create flags which will be strung into banners and hung in Boston "to bring peace and love from far and wide" after the marathon day tragedy? You can read more about it here. The Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild (the one closest to us, as we're also located in KC) is participating as well, and you can read about their plans here. What a great idea!

Rouge Royale

What's fun about a red, black and white fabric collection? Seeing all the different ways people use this classic color combination. We've seen Ro Gregg's Lady in Red collection showcased in our free pattern, the two-color blogging design ring tutorial, and School Girls in Red, among others.

Today, we have "Rouge Royale," a nine-patch star block set on point that merges traditional with shabby chic. Designed by Tammy Silvers and Julia LaBauve of Outside the Lines Design and machine quilted by Pat Yearwood of Stitch 'n Quilt, this beauty is featured in the current issue of Quilt magazine.

"Rouge Royale" by Tammy Silvers & Julia LaBauve;
featured in Quilt magazine June-July 2013

Q. What attracted you to the Lady in Red fabric collection?

Tammy: I love bright color, and strong contrasts, and this line offers both, combined with a wonderful vintage-feeling floral, which immediately attracted the "shabby chic" side in me.

Q. How did you come up with the design for this quilt?

Tammy: I wanted the wonderful soft florals to take center stage, so I looked for blocks that echoed the traditional feel of the motifs, in a scale that would allow for the fabric patterns to shine. I also like to contrast organic shapes (the florals) with strong linear designs (the blocks). I think this creates a tension that is interesting.

Q. Tell us about the pieced setting and corner triangles. They really enhance the design.

Tammy: Aw, shucks - thanks so much! The blocks for this quilt are quite large (20" square). Without a pieced setting and corner triangle, even the large blocks would have been lost in plain fabric setting and corner triangles. But.....the piecing in those setting squares didn't need to compete with the center blocks. I think that the simple piecing, which echoes the basic lines in the center blocks, sets a nice stage for the main blocks.

Q. How did you decide on the border treatments?

Tammy: I approach borders much like framing a picture - what will enhance the quilt center—the true star of the show—without detracting or dulling the quilt. Traditionally, the outermost border is the largest, but I think providing two narrow black borders (inner and outermost) allow me to use the terrific bright red overall rose print in a wide border, yet tone it down enough to keep it from overwhelming the quilt center.

Q. What is your favorite part of the quilt? 

Tammy: Ummm....difficult to say. Some quilts I create I honestly don't "love" until all the parts come together, and then it's like a terrific song - you can't image the lyrics without the melody. On this one - well, I really like the nine patch star block. But what I think is absolutely the best part is the linear "weave" of the white floral that is created between the blocks. There is something about setting a block on point that can elevate even the most "mundane" (if a quilt block can be called mundane - let's face it, even the humble four patch creates some fabulous quilts!) block to a new level. It's that change in perspective. I definitely love that!

Q. What can you tell us about the machine quilting choices?

Much as I would LOVE to take credit for all aspects of the quilt, I cannot take ANY credit for the quilting. Pat Yearwood does all my quilting and she does an outstanding job of choosing complimentary threads and quilting motifs to compliment my quilts. The only quilting I've mastered is the loopy loop - so thank goodness for Pat and her fabulous portfolio of quilt designs.

Learn more about Tammy here.

See the full Lady in Red collection here.

Find the kit for this quilt here.

Find Quilt magazine here.