4 Ways to Make a Dimensional Quilt

Joan Shay recently finished up a year's worth of designs for Quilt Trends magazine, all using her Appli-bond technique to create dimensional features, and of course, our fabrics. We're excited to share all four with you here on the blog, along with Joan's thoughts about her designs!

 Cape Cod Memories

The Idea

We used to live on Cape Cod, an area known for these flowers. To me, summer is hydrangeas. It's been a bit of a family flower—our daughter even carried in them in her wedding. Creating three-dimensional hydrangeas is what started my whole style of quilting, actually. There was no question the summer project would have hydrangeas in it. The geese on the borders represent seagulls on the Cape, and the scallop shells and starfish in the corners signify the Cape as well. They are embellished with hand stitching: stem stitches and French knots.

The Technique

I wanted to put the flowers on a straw wreath, so I drew the wreath shape on a piece of water-soluble stabilizer, layered my scraps, and added another piece of stabilizer on top. After zigzag stitching all over the wreath, I washed the stabilizer away. I made clusters of pink, blue and purple flowers on the wreath, using my Appli-Bond technique.

The Fabric

Budding Beauties [by Ro Gregg] is a hydrangea collection—perfect for this quilt. I used the bigger, bolder print for the Flying Geese and smaller flower for the inner border. Purple and lime green are what people are gravitating to right now, so the colors worked well. I really like the color combination of this quilt. I actually made this quilt when I was away on a retreat with my guild, and everyone wanted it!

See the Budding Beauties fabric collection here.

See the Focus collection here.

See the Marblehead prints here.

Find the kit here.

Find the summer 2013 issue of Quilt Trends here.

Spring Fever

The Idea

This quilt isn't intended to be realistic like my others; rather, it's an abstract flower. I saw the border print [from Wildflowers] and worked backwards on this design. I really wanted the quilt to have the vibrant colors of spring. When I found that print, everything came into focus from there.

The Technique

The flowers are just an abstract bloom, but very dimensional. In the corners, I just love doing miniature fans/Dresden plates. Instead of using the traditional quarter circle at the base, I placed one of the abstract flowers there. My favorite part of this quilt is the butterfly. My class on creating a dimensional monarch butterfly is one of the most popular ones I teach. You actually make the butterfly fabric, building it piece by piece.

The Fabric

I used two different green tones from Focus for the background. The darker green sections are longer than the lighter greens, so it's not a typical four-patch. The colors in the flowers, butterfly, and bee help tie the border print in.

See the Wildflowers collection here.

See the Focus collection here.

See the Marblehead prints here.

Find the kit here.

Find the spring 2013 issue of Quilt Trends here.

Winter's Eve

The Idea

I wanted to do an owl, and it all started there. Because it was a winter quilt, I decided to make the background a night sky with a big moon and snow capped tree. The challenging part was that I wanted to do a pieced background that would show the shadows from the moon on the sky.

  

The Technique

I built the dimensional owl first—that's the advantage of my Appli-bond technique—you can have the owl in your hand totally made, built on a foundation of bonded fabric, and place it anywhere you want. I was really pleased with the owl—especially the eyes. They're like Mona Lisa; they follow you were you go.

The Fabric

My style depends on shading more than anything, so I can't use solid prints. Because my quilts are more pictorial, I always try to make my quilts realistic looking. To me, getting the right fabrics is half the battle.

Marbleheads work perfectly for everything I do; this quilt also uses tonals from Focus. Using the lighter and darker blues together was the fun part of doing the quilt.

See the Focus collection here.

See the Marblehead prints here.

Find the kit here.

Find the winter 2013 issue of Quilt Trends here.

Harvest Home 

The quilt that started this four-season series! See our original blog post on Harvest Home here.

Taste of spring, photo style!

As yet another snowstorm is making its way across the U.S. (apparently Mother Nature didn't get the memo that March is supposed to begin leading into nicer weather!), we'd like to offer a tantalizing taste of spring.

We've taken photos of crocuses, tulips, and bleeding hearts and matched them up with swatches of some of our favorite Fabri-Quilt prints. Below each image, we've listed the selected fabrics.

1. Budding Beauties

2. Marblehead

3. Autumn Awakenings

4. Marblehead

5. A Star is Born

1. State Flowers II

2. Dancing Cranes

3. Woodblock

4. Marblehead Global Brights

5. Farmer John's Garden

1. Budding Beauties 

2. Marblehead Global Brights 

3. Silhouettes

4. Asian Garden

5. Marblehead Global Brights

How'd we do? Do you like our choices? 

Have you ever tried something like this? It's a great exercise because you work solely based on color and often mix and match collections that you wouldn't have considered putting together. 

Want to play along? Pick your own photo and match up coordinating Fabri-Quilt prints from our website. Email us your photo and selected fabric prints (you can right click and save the digital swatches from our website on a PC, or simply drag them into a folder on a Mac), and we'll share some of our favorites here on the blog. 

If we share your picture, you might win a fat quarter bundle! 

Send your photos to fabriquiltblog (at) gmail.com by Tuesday, March 12th for a chance to win. 

One more thing...you can also simply email us a photo and we'll choose a couple that are sent in and match fabrics for you. You won't be eligible to win by just sending a photo, but if you'd like to see how your favorite picture matches up with our fabric, send away!

Green: The New Neutral

With February fast approaching, it seems like the perfect time for another glimpse of spring, like Garden Beauty, featuring Ro Gregg's Budding Beauties collection.

"Garden Beauty" by Sue Harvey & Sandy Boobar of Pine Tree Country Quilts,
featured in the February/March 2013 issue of The Quilter magazine.

Fussy-cut hydrangeas nestle into beds of green...so fresh and so springy! Below, Sue shares her take on a new "neutral" and explains the impact of fussy-cutting the hydrangeas. 

Q. What appealed to you about the Budding Beauties line?

Sue: Hydrangeas are gorgeous all by themselves. We also liked the use of the more contemporary geometric tonals and white prints mixed with such a traditional floral in the same collection.

Q. Talk about your decision to fussy-cut the hydrangeas.

Sue: The motifs are large but spaced on the fabric with quite a bit of cream background. We knew if we didn’t fussy cut the hydrangeas many of the block centers would have just bits and pieces of the flowers around the edges and would not have the same impact in the design.

Q. Tell us about the design.

Sue: We almost always try to create secondary designs in a pieced quilt. Probably shouldn’t say this, but this arrangement is what we think of as our no-sweat design! It’s such a hassle to match angled seams from block to block and have all those inside corners come out right. By adding the narrow sashing, the need for absolute accuracy is gone without destroying the secondary design. And the sashing actually adds to the secondary design by giving the medium green/lavender “blocks” an interesting center. This block design could easily be tackled by a beginner with just a little experience.

Q. The hydrangeas in the fabric are primarily shades of blue and purple. What prompted you to use so much green in the quilt?

Sue: To us, green is a neutral to be used like white, black or cream. It sets off the other colors in a quilt and also gives your eyes a resting place. If we had used more purple in place of the green, the quilt would have been overwhelmingly purple. If we had used pink instead of the green, it would have taken on a “circusy” look of too many colors. It’s funny though. When we look at this quilt, we don’t think of green as the main color. To us, purple is the main color. Sort of like looking at a garden of flowers ... you don’t look at it and say, “Wow, look at all those beautiful green leaves.” You say, “Wow, look at all those beautiful yellow, pink, purple, and red flowers.” The leaves are just part of the background. Oh, of course it helps that green is our favorite color!

Q. What do you like best about this quilt?

Sue: Hey, it’s winter here in Maine. We like the green, the purple, the blue, the pink, the idea of flowers growing...everything other than white!

Click here to buy a kit for this project.

Click here to learn more about Sue & Sandy and their work.

Click here to find The Quilter magazine February/March 2013.

How a booth at Quilt Market comes together...

We are back with a post-Quilt Market report! (You can read about getting ready for Quilt Market here.)

The booth is our opportunity to show off our new fabric lines and offer inspiration as to what those fabrics can become: quilts, aprons, placemats, wall hangings, etc...

Let's start the tour! 

Here are two overall shots of the booth, toward the end of set up. (After everyone's booths have been set up, the exhibit hall crews come back and carpet the aisles.)

This section showcases Peggy Sue, Dancing Cranes, Folk Heart, and Pretty in Pink.

This section showcases Cook's Helper, Marblehead, Budding Beauties and Sorrento.

Backing up to set-up, our assigned area started out looking like this:

And ended up like this:

Pretty impressive transformation in a day, isn't it? We have a great team.

Now, onto some close-ups!

The Budding Beauties sample quilt and pouf in the background, a table with a Garden Whimsy placemat in the foreground. All of the chair covers you see in these photos are made from Marblehead prints.

A couple quilts that you're recognize: Marblehead Northern Woods and Joan Shay's Harvest Home, using Marblehead.

Cook's Helper, a Judy Hansen collection that we'll be sharing with you later this week, and a little Garden Whimsy.

A wall hanging and jacket made from Dancing Cranes, as well as the Peggy Sue At the Hop quilt off to the left.

Sara Trail's Folk Heart, shown in an apron, quilt and bag.

Do you remember the Hopi Opportunity quilt? We brought it to Market to hang in the booth, where it received many compliments. You can still buy raffle tickets to win it--click here for contact information. Off to the right, the free pattern quilt for Pretty in Pink.

A unique tote bag by Cathy Miles, made from Marblehead Global Brights.

Who needs fresh flowers when you can have gorgeous blooms by Kim Denault made from Marblehead prints that will last all year long?!

 A close-up of the Pretty in Pink quilt.

Kitchen items made from the Sorrento collection.

Whew! How's that for inspiration? We were thrilled to be able to show off so many different fabric lines and quilting/sewing ideas in our space. 

p.s. Don't forget that you can find free patterns for the QUILTS shown in these photos on our website!