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Quilt Market Wrap-Up

I went to Quilt Market in Kansas City over the weekend and thought I’d share a few photos. Here were some of the highlights for me:

Melody Miller‘s booth was a hit (pictured above and below). She had all kinds of cool retro things in her booth, along with an awesome upholstered couch, vintage phones, record player and two ladies painted on fabric on the sides of her booth. I felt it captured her style perfectly and her new collection featuring vinyl records will sell like crazy, I’m sure. And her new book Ruby Star Wrapping, co-authored with Allison Tannery, is now available for pre-order. You should get it before her screaming legions of fans buy them all to build their fan clubhouse.

And of course all the Free Spirit designer booths were lovely, but my favorites were from Denyse Schmidt (above) and Tula Pink (below).

Everything in the Cloud 9 Fabrics booth was amazing (pictured above). I’m particularly excited about the next Ed Emberley collection (yes, more!). And there was even more organic goodness at Birch Fabrics (below), who have some really nice new collections coming out soon. Monaluna also has some great things on the horizon.

Echino. Love every bit of it.

And this is my favorite Heather Ross collection so far. Put a mouse in clothes and you’ve got me. These little drawings are so incredibly sweet.

Carrie of Such Designs had some adorable new patterns, including this quilt. I think you’ll be seeing a lot more from Carrie!

And Carolyn Friedlander‘s work (pictured above), was new to me and so impressive. She sells these interesting quilt patterns, but it’s the intricate detail in her top quilting that I found most amazing. Must take incredible patience.

And I was unfamiliar with Kelly Lee-Creel, who has a new fabric collection with Andover. The collection includes panels for making soft toys, like the ones above. Her booth was really cute and filled with oglers.

Green Bee Patterns is a pattern company new to market. Run by a mother-daughter team from Nashville, they sell quilt and clothing patterns. Their skill for fabric choice and mixing is what made their booth really stand out.

Here’s my favorite fabric of the market — these bunnies from Yuwa. Yuwa really had the most interesting things I saw at market, simply because they were different. So refreshing to see something unique.

Oh, and Liberty. Liberty Art Fabrics on quilting weight cotton. How can you not love that? More images here. There were many other nice things to see that I don’t have time to mention here, but I took some photos for Kim at True Up, so you’ll get more sneak peeks of fabric collections soon to be released.

And now for some opinion. For those of you who read blogs but have never been to quilt market, you may picture aisles of brightly colored modern fabric. Not the case. There are rows and rows of brown fabrics in country and traditional styles. So, everyone has their own style and as I tell my children all the time: taste is subjective. But the quilting world hasn’t changed as much as you might think.

A few trends that I saw this time around were: lots of cut and sew panels, cheater prints, and still more trendy chevrons. I didn’t really see much in the way of color trends, other than gray becoming more of a staple, some pastel trends, and bright colors on white moving from modern to mainstream. I think we’ll see a return to navy, yellow and red coming soon. Please?

Now, I’ll tell you what I would like to see more of at Quilt Market.

More collection mixing. I think it’s helpful for the consumer to get ideas about how to mix fabrics and to realize that you don’t have to get stuck within one collection.

Fewer collections. I think the manufacturers are not helping the fabric shops with this 6-month collection cycle which forces the stores to buy all new fabrics every six months. And personally, as a consumer, I’m getting tired of the cycle. Maybe designers could each have a set of basics that changes colors with each collection, but the basic patterns give the collections some continuity? And don’t you just love a basic that comes in twenty colors? I do. I realize that some companies do this and I’m hoping to see more companies challenge the traditional sales model.

Fewer trends. I’d love to see more fabric companies get back to the basics with ginghams and dots. When I’m investing in a quilt that I want to pass along to my children, I hate to think it might look dated in just a few years. I don’t think we should confuse modern with trendy.

More organic from the big companies. So, there’s no market for it? Then there’s a need for consumer education.

But to leave on a positive note, there were so many talented designers at Quilt Market! And it’s an incredibly supportive community.

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Quilting Books

There are so many new quilting books these days! Here are a few good ones that I’ve picked up recently, in no particular order.

Here’s the Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters by Katy Jones, Brioni Greenberg, Tacha Bruecher, and John Q. Adams, published by Lark Crafts. Written by the creators of Fat Quarterly e-magazine, this new book has 60 blocks and a dozen quilt and project patterns.

The chapters are organized by shape – brilliant! (Also the way I’m organizing the chapters in my new book 1, 2, 3 Quilt.) You’ll learn cutting tips and techniques throughout the book and with the large number of projects, there’s really something for everyone from the beginning quilter to those with more experience. I loved seeing all the different projects from these talented designers, but unlike some compilation books, the projects have a continuity in style, with the same fabrics and colors used within each chapter. I especially love the polygon chapter that shows designs in various shades of blue. The color and fabric choices are great throughout the book and I think it’s clear that the writers all worked together very well. There’s a section on quilting basics and patterns (some need to be enlarged). Overall, this is a great book with so much content.

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I’m sure I’ve mentioned my affinity for Denyse Schmidt. With her simple, modern style with a folk influence, she’s my quilting hero. Her latest book is Modern Quilts Traditional Inspiration: 20 New Designs with Historic Roots, published by STC Craft.

This book is somewhat of a departure from her previous work and seems to represent a return to tradition. The quilts are beautiful and immaculate, combining the simplicity of Amish design with her unmistakably modern style and a more polished look than she’s shown in previous work. The projects are inspiring and the pictures styled with a modern warmth, and seem to have been taken in a quintessential New England farmhouse. Her color choices are impeccable, with most of the quilts made of solids with an occasional patterned fabric for interest and variation. Even if you don’t quilt, this book is beautiful. Be sure to look at more photos from the book here.

The next book I’d like to mention is from the amazingly talented Jacquie Gering of Tallgrass Prairie Studio and Katie Pederson of Sew Katie Did. The book is called Quilting Modern: Techniques and Projects for Improvisational Quilts from Interweave.

As the titles suggests, this book is about freeing your inner creativity to make quilts that are uniquely your own. They provide tips and techniques for getting started and for those of you who are hesitant to dive in the improvisational waters, there are projects complete with supply lists and step-by-step instructions. Twenty-one projects, in fact. The authors have provided you with basic instructions for quilting, so even the novice could pick up this book and get started. They discuss design elements, color, and composition so that you will have the tools you need. And they’ve created some really interesting quilts with some stunning top quilting designs to inspire you. I love when the top quilting of a project works with the composition, rather than fights it, and these really enhance the overall design. Very nice.

 

 

Next up is Alissa Haight Carlton‘s book Modern Minimal: 20 Bold & Graphic Quilts from Stash Books. I think this is one of the first books I’ve seen come out of the U.S. with a truly minimal viewpoint.

The quilts are beautiful and elegant in their simplicity. Alissa has also done a fantastic job with top quilting that works with the overall design of the quilt and one of my favorite things about the book is that she shows you different quilting options. If you’ve followed her Sew, Mama, Sew! Modern Block of the Month series, you’ll know that she often presents variations, reminding us that choice is essential to quilting. And thoughtful choices can make such a difference. Almost every quilt in this book uses solid fabrics exclusively, with just bits of pattern in a few quilts. This, together with her asymmetric designs and use of negative space, captures the essence of the modern quilt movement.

And finally, I wanted to share this warm and inviting new book from Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison, Sunday Morning Quilts: Sort, Store, and Use Every Last Bit of Your Treasured Fabrics. With the bags of scraps I am accumulating lately, this book will come in handy.

The title is apt as these projects have a relaxed, unhurried feel to them. The front section of the book discusses modern quilt design, fabric tips, and ideas for sorting and storing your scraps so you can get organized before you begin. Then there’s a section on construction basics, and next come the projects. There are 16 projects in all, with a storage box pattern followed by quilts. All of the quilts are bright and colorful and feel like a composition made of memory, as scrap quilts often do.  The book is straightforward and is suitable for a beginner or great for giving more experienced quilters some new ideas for those fabric scraps that keep piling up.

Disclaimer: I participate in the Amazon Associates referral program, which gives me a small referral fee for clicks. (Which I use to buy more quilting and sewing books!) Thank you!

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Stacked Quilt Block

It is Monday and I am posting a tutorial. I know I haven’t done a Make it Monday post in quite some time! I made these blocks last week using my new Quilt Blocks collection and thought I’d share quick instructions. So I made a quilt block using Quilt Blocks. How meta. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to make glue using glue. Ha!

Anyway, this makes a 16″ finished block and you can easily use a pre-cut jelly roll since the strips are all 2 1/2″. You can download the .pdf instructions by clicking on the image below. I gave you the cutting measurements, plus some quick illustrations that will get you started. After you’ve made the first square, you just keep going, Log Cabin style.

Click here for a list of shops that are now shipping the Quilt Blocks fabric.

Oh, and here’s how it might look all together, if you made every block the same. The stars print that stands out so well in the image above comes in five colorways and I plan to make a quilt from four of the five colors, making each block the same. So you’ll see that next year!

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Work in Progress

I don’t have much to show these days as everything I’m working on is for my book, but I do love having a neat little stack of fabric cut and ready to sew. I know you quilters can relate to that. These are half-square triangles with string -pieced feedsacks and navy linen.