More Photo Inspiration

Have you sent us a photo yet? Tuesday is the deadline! You can either send a photo and we'll match fabric swatches to it, or choose your own swatches and send us your pairings. Either way, we'll choose several to show off on the blog. Read more here.

Here are two gorgeous photos we've received, complete with coordinating swatches. Enjoy!

From Erin:

1. Tribal Council

2. Dancing Cranes

3. Celebrate the Season

4. Calypso Frogs

5. Marblehead

From Jennifer:

1. Dancing Cranes

2. Tribal Council

3. Marblehead

4. Marblehead

5. Woodblock

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!

Dreaming of Dancing Cranes

If you've visited our blog before, no doubt you've seen Ro Gregg's rich and elegant Dancing Cranes fabric line. But unless you have a copy of the winter 2013 issue of QuiltTrends, chances are you've never seen a Dancing Cranes quilt like this. 

"Dancing Cranes" quilt designed by Ro Gregg and pieced by Dawn Connery, 

featured in QuiltTrends winter 2013

Fabric designers often say that they like to see what others are inspired to create from their fabric lines. We think it's equally interesting to see how a fabric designer uses her own work. Ro sat down recently to talk about her queen-size bed quilt design.

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

Ro: I wanted to do something with an Asian fusion look—east meets west, Oriental style mixing with traditional, yet sophisticated. I really wanted to showcase the panel because it looks deceptively complex, but actually it's not. Then I wanted simple borders to go around the panels. After that I wanted to showcase one of the allover prints—the crane—the namesake of the quilt. I came up with a few ideas for patchwork for the outer border so Dawn could highlight the center.

Q. Why did you decide to use three panels?

Ro: In engineering the 3 panels across, I felt that it really gave a beautiful showcase to the quilt. It also allowed me to make a queen-size quilt

Q. What else do you like about the ensemble?

Ro: I used the Chinese ribbons print for coordinating pillowcases. The print really shines on these.

Q. Why did you decide to use the fan blocks? 

Ro: The crane is a symbol in Chinese for eternal youth, happiness, longevity. I wanted another symbol in the quilt and chose the fan. It's a very traditional Chinese symbol that dates back hundreds of years ago in Chinese culture. These blocks also highlighted the colors in the panel.

Q. What do you like best about this quilt?

Ro: I like how the three panels are showcased in the center. 

Q. What do you like about your fabric line? 

Ro: I'm such a bird lover—I always love cranes. We have them down the shore and they fly up to an island across from our house. They are such a beautiful symbol. I love this panel because it can also be cut. The cranes can be cut apart vertically in half, like Patricia Lackey did on this jacket (pictured). It looks like there are two cranes flying, but it's all made from one panel.

Click here to buy a kit for this project.

Click here to find Quilt Trends winter 2013. 

Perfect Harmony (on the wall!)

Asian prints have a sophisticated elegance to them, and Ro Gregg's Dancing Cranes collection fits this description perfectly, highlighted with metallic gold accents. Designers Sue Harvey and Sandy Boobar of Pine Tree Country Quilts framed the collection's panel with a unique design of pieced blocks that integrate seamlessly--as Sue says, "we definitely do not do just plain borders around a panel!"

"Perfect Harmony" featured in the Feb-March issue of Quilt magazine

Q.  What attracted you to the fabric line?

Sue: We have always loved the lush florals of Oriental-style fabrics. And the panel in this collection is really beautiful.

Q. How did you decide what type of piecing to put around the panel?

Sue: We wanted the panel to become part of the piecing. Fortunately one of the fabrics in the collection is the same as the background of the panel so by using this fabric in the piecing directly around the panel, the straight edges of the panel disappear. By using rectangular blocks, we could accommodate the “twice as long as wide” problem of the panel while still adding distinctly angular lines to offset all the flowing lines of the panel and the outer border fabric.

Q. What do you like about working with Asian-inspired designs?

Sue: The rich colors of the fabrics, and that they almost always include black. We tend to use black to set off color or the design in many of our quilts. It’s the one basic fabric that we keep in stock (actually bolts of it in stock) at all times!

Q. What do you like best about this quilt?

Sue: When all was said and done....its size! We think it really does show off the fabric in a good way. The scale of the prints is fairly small and the motifs in the panel are quite delicate. The challenge of making a small quilt was a good thing. We had only enough room to add a little piecing so the prints of the fabric were not overwhelmed. It’s funny ... the designs we do with limits are often the ones that we end up liking the best!

See the entire Dancing Cranes collection here.
Order the kit for this project and learn more about Pine Tree Country Quilts here.
To find the February/March issue of Quilt, click here.