Sew in love with Sun-Kissed

If you've seen the cover of the April-May issue of The Quilter magazine, you've seen Michele D'Amore's Sun-Kissed collection in a fresh (and gorgeous!) quilt. This lap-size beauty was designed, stitched and quilted by Julie Lynch, who shares a bit of her design process with us below.

About the Trip Around the World design:

Julie: I tried a traditional Trip Around the World design first, but it didn't have the same appeal as the on-point version you see below. I had a stack of squares from each fabric, and I just played. I'd agonize—and if I didn't like how the colors looked next to each other, I picked up the squares and tried again until it worked. I don't have a design wall, so it's all done on the floor.

About the Sun-Kissed fabrics:

Julie: This quilt was really fun to make. To me, the fabrics had a 60s vibe. I loved the graphic prints. They were fun. The collection has a great mix of light, medium and dark, and size variation. The solids (from the Colors for Quilters line) were perfect because the prints needed a quiet place to rest your eye.

Details matter:

Julie: I purposely oriented the striped squares (3^rd print out from the center) as you see them to create a zigzag illusion. I used the large circular print in two very different ways in the quilt. The cream background version is chopped up into squares in the quilt. But the design needed a bigger statement, so I used the darker brown version I a big border to help hold the quilt together, visually. I really liked the boldness of this border print.

Isn't a Trip Around the World usually square?

Julie: It didn't look right being plain old square to me. I thought it needed to be elongated a bit. I added in the olive-y green and the blue print squares as additional rows on the top and bottom to create a rectangle

Design tip:

Julie: When you have a quilt top laid out, step away from it overnight, and take a photo of it as well. Coming back to it with a fresh eye, as well as seeing it on a camera screen, helps you see your design with a more impartial eye.

Fun fact:

Julie: I don't use a computer. I've been sewing quilts for Benartex for more than 25 years. They send me a collection—it's always a surprise when it arrives and I start playing around, working with what they've sent. If I don't have an idea immediately when I see the fabric, I often just start cutting and playing with the prints on the floor.

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p.s. Have you nominated a fabric collection for our March Madness Fan Favorite bracket yet? Maybe it's Sun-Kissed, featured on The Quilter's cover, or maybe it's a different line. Read more about the bracket here and nominate your favorites in the comment sections here or here, on our Facebook page.