A Box Full of Color

What happens when a designer has a full palette of our Naturescapes fabrics to play with?

You get this!

Wendy Sheppard designed this beauty, called "Stained Glass," and it's featured in the spring 2013 issue of Simple Quilts magazine.

We asked Wendy to tell us more about her design (and share a few more photos!): 

How did you come up with the design idea?  

I was going for something simple with a boxed in look.  I thought that framed four-patches fit the bill nicely.

What do you like best about the design?  

The colors for sure - I like to look at scrappy quilts that draw the eye to their various parts because of the colors.

How did you choose the background color?

White, cream or gray are my usual go-to background colors.  For this particular quilt, I didn't want the stark white contrast, and didn't feel like I wanted gray either.  So, the cream was my safe choice that provided a bit of contrast, but not too loudly.

What attracted you to the fabrics?

I liked the look of textures in those fabrics, and Benartex sent me the ENTIRE range of fat quarters to play with.  It was pure bliss. 

What do you like best about the fabrics?  

The fabrics sewed up nicely.  I liked the tighter fabric weave which made the fabrics fray less easily.

How did you decide to machine quilt this and why?  

I wanted to create a secondary look to the quilt using quilting.  Instead of reinforcing the 4-patch block look, I decided to quilt a variation of the orange peel motif with feathers so that at first glance, the quilt looks much more complicated than just a variation of a 4-patch quilt.

Read Wendy's post about her quilt (and see some additional beautiful pictures!) here.
Want to make your own? Find the kit for this quilt here.
Find Simple Quilts magazine here.