My Quilts at Market!

What's the next best thing to going to Quilt Market?
Sending quilts there! 

I'm lucky enough to have six quilts in booths at Quilt Market this year. I'm hoping that some of my quilty friends at the show can take photos of them hanging, but here's a preview:

Paintbrush Studio Fabrics (booth 641)
Otter Playtime
This is a free quilt pattern for the bright and fun Otter Romp collection. Designing a quilt with 320 half-square triangles in it is a alot faster than making it! Seriously, though, I love how the prints work together in this fun quilt, and the otters are adorable. The print that looks solid(ish) in the photo is a constellation print--so cool! Diane Oakes quilted and bound this one before sending it off for the show. She found a great balance between letting the busy pattern be in charge but still allowing the quilting to play a role. More close-ups to come when I get it back. 

A (pre-quilted) close-up

You can download the free quilt pattern and see all the Otter Romp fabrics here.


The Suitcase Quilt
This is another free quilt pattern--this time for the Dear Friends collection. The prints show handwritten letters, airmail stripes, stamps and passports, and were just calling to be made into a quilt full of suitcases! I had fun choosing the Painter's Palette Solids colors to use with the prints. Diane Oakes also quilted this one--don't you love the beads in the suitcase straps?! Keep watching for details--The Suitcase Quilt will be featured in a quiltalong at some point in the near future.

You can download the free quilt pattern and see all the Dear Friends fabrics here.


Honey Bees
The honey bee block was a natural fit for a fabric collection called Bee Kind! I love the hexagon prints and the text prints in this quilt, as well as the bee-colored palette. I did not make this quilt (a girl can only sew so many quilts before Market), but someone else did and the image here is the digital version, and but the actual quilt will be hanging in the booth. It's also a free pattern.

You can download the free Honey Bees quilt pattern and see all the Bee Kind fabrics here.


Small Plates
What to do with veggie prints? I kept coming back to the idea of tapas and small plates, so I used circles in various sizes to showcase all these bright and fresh vegetables in the Market Medley collection. It makes you want to eat a salad, doesn't it? It also makes me wish I had a green thumb. I also did not make this quilt, but someone else did, so while you see the digital image here, the actual quilt will be hanging in the booth. It's also a free pattern. 

You can download the free Small Plates quilt pattern and see all the Market Medley fabrics here.


Windham Fabrics (booth 622)
Ebb & Flow
I designed this quilt back in April and have been (im)patiently waiting for the fabric to arrive ever since. The collection is called Gemstone by Whistler Studios and it was such fun to design with. When the fabric arrived, I was happy to see that I liked the quilt just as much in fabric as I did digitally (which isn't always the case). It's currently my favorite quilt! I machine quilted this one myself--wavy horizontal lines add texture and that's about all, as the fabric and the quilt pattern do the rest!

You can see all of the Gemstone fabrics here. The pattern will be available for purchase from me shortly.



Michael Miller Fabrics (booth 822)
Jewel
This paper pieced quilt is made up of one simple quarter block with only three seams. It's all about repetition and fabric placement. The fabrics are called Strata and come in three different colorways. I really like the fabric--especially the stripe-iest dark purple one. I only have a photo of this one before quilting, but Linda Leathersich did a fantastic job on it. Jewel will ultimately be a free quilt pattern available on Michael Miller's website. 

That was A LOT of sewing in a short period of time.

My "Home Is Where You Make It" quilt

I'm excited to finally share this quilt with you! I was asked to come up with a quilt with a story line for Paintbrush Studio to hang in their booth at Market. They are sponsors of the Row by Row Experience, and they wanted a quilt that used their 10-color palette (from the Leather collection, which has great texture but is cotton, not actual leather!). 

Here's what I came up with:

I am super proud of it, especially because, ahem, applique is not my thing. There were times when making this quilt was painful, and I wished that I'd added less detail to it. So.many.little.pieces! But I do love how it turned out!

I printed out each row full size and in reverse at Office Max and then trace the shapes onto fusible web. I numbered each piece as I traced it so I could refer back to the original design to figure out what it was and where it went (harder than I though it would be!)

If you're wondering how long this took, here's a short little story to give you some idea. I took all the raw materials for this project to a day-long guild retreat. Optimistically, I also took two other projects. After 10 hours, I had three rows completed. I never touched the other projects. :) So the short answer is, quite a while, and longer than I thought! 

I had two friends who helped significantly on this quilt. Linda Smoker took my rough pencil sketches (that weren't even to scale--really just concepts!) and transformed them into digital designs for each row. She did a fabulous job! Then Diane Oakes machine quilted the quilt (in about 4 days' time!). I handed it to her with free reign, and I love what she did. So much detail, so much texture! And...as she quilted it, she stitched around the edges of every single fused piece (since I didn't.) Bless her! She used nine different thread colors in the quilt. Thanks, ladies! 

Here are additional close-ups of the quilt so you can see the details and the quilting. You can read more about the quilt here. 

Row 1: a happy little neighborhood.

Row 2: Winter arrives!

Row 3: The camper heads south to the beach. Over tall hills and along winding roads.

Row 4: Setting up camp near the beach. Notice the items that came along from home: the gnome, the flowers, the birdhouse, the quilt on the clothesline.

Row 5: Enjoying the beach!

The quilt is named "Home Is Where You Make It" because that idea is so true--home is where you are, no matter where you are. 

I used my sample camper as a label on the back. 

I love looking at the quilting lines on the back!

And one more texture shot--looking down the quilt.

And here is the quilt hanging in the Paintbrush Studio booth at Quilt Market. 

Pretty fun to say I've had a quilt there! 

Read more about my quilt here.
See the Leather fabrics here and see Paintbrush Studio's Row by Row palette here. 
Learn more about the Row by Row Experience here. 

Fabric Friday

...again, coming to you on Saturday. If it weren't for the lovely "f" alliteration, I would change the day of the week for doing this! Just kidding, but I pushed this to Saturday this week because Friday was my post for the Blogger's Quilt Festival and I felt that deserved its own day.

Since I'm at Quilt Market, I can show some truly new fabrics. In fact, I just might spread this out over a couple days as I see more fun prints.
For starters, here are some pictures of "Modern Quilts" by Cynthia Frenette for Robert Kaufman Fabrics. I love that it is modern looking "cheater cloth." I call it that, but I definitely don't mean it in a negative manner. I think it is so cool! I've already started thinking of projects to make with it, especially that wedding-ring-looking print. Check out the display in their booth:

And some close-ups:

Don't you want some now too?