Quilt Market Wrap-Up

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Here’s a quick Quilt Market wrap-up with photos. If you are familiar with the fabric world, you know that Quilt Market is a wholesale market for shops around the world to select fabric and supplies.

Here are some photos of my booth with Kokka. I made patchwork and quilted samples from 1, 2, 3 Quilt and Kokka made some amazing bags and pillows. This was my first time meeting the people from Kokka in person and they were incredibly gracious and accommodating. I also met many of you that I’ve only known online and it was so great to finally put a twitter handle with a real face!

You can see in the photos below a Geranium Dress and Ruby Dress designed by Rae Hoekstra (made by her talented assistant Jessica) and a Staple Dress designed and made by April Rhodes. I made some fluffy fabric ball flowers (fabric circles poked into a styrofoam ball, inspired by my friend Erin). I had the embroidery that I made for the cover of 1, 2, 3 Quilt on display, butterfly buttons, Dresden flowers, embroidery hoops and paper butterflies, along with bags and cute little snap pouches made by Kokka.

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Here were some highlights from the show. Of course I loved the other Japanese fabrics (top below) in the Kokka booth, including the Fujiyoshi Brothers (print with the panda) and Echino (other two photos below).

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Then there were many other amazing booths. Below are a few (clockwise from top left): Monaluna organic fabrics, the Botanics collection from Carolyn Friedlander, three of the designers from the new division of RJR, Cotton + Steel, Leah Duncan for Art Gallery Fabrics, and Cloud 9 Fabrics.

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You can see more of my photos over on Instagram, including the bizarre animals of Quilt Market, which I found to be very entertaining when I got bored of sitting in my booth at the back of the convention floor. If you talked with me at Quilt Market, I’m sure I shared my enthusiasm about doing some new things with my next collection! So I left feeling inspired (and tired).

Matching Diagonal Seams

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Photo by Laura Malek from 1, 2, 3 Quilt.

I’m working on making the Native Star Duffel Bag from 1, 2, 3 Quilt and wanted to share a quick technique for matching diagonal seams. This is useful when matching seams cut at a 45 degree angle. Here, I am joining two strips to make the star on this duffel bag. In my book, I talk about various techniques for matching seams with seams pressed open and to the sides. For this project, I recommended using a pin to align the seams, but I wanted to offer more details about how you can do this with precision.

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You can see that there are strips of fabric cut on the diagonal that I need to join with matching points. First,  with one strip wrong side facing up, use a seam gauge to mark the seam 1/4″ from the raw edge of the fabric. Then mark the seams on the right side of the other strip. Place the two strips with right sides facing, and use a straight pin to precisely align your two marked points. Pin together and sew!

Quarter Circle Coasters

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Just made these Quarter Circle Coasters from my new book 1, 2, 3 Quilt. This time I used my Garden collection fabric, which will be shipping to stores in a couple of months! I’m not very good at this secret sewing thing, so I’ll be showing some of the projects I’m making for Quilt Market. The background fabric here is my Triangles fabric from my first collection for Kokka.

This is a simple project, great for beginners or those looking for a quick project. You’ll be practicing sewing along curves and simple piecing. Below is another image of the coasters I made for the book.

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Photo by Laura Malek.