Sew in Love {with Fabric}: Introducing Amanda Murphy's Meadow Dance collection

Meadow Dance is here!

Amanda Murphy's new floral line is full of flowers, color, and machine quilting possibilities and we know you'll love it. Keep scrolling down to see the fabric and Amanda's quilt designs, and learn more of the story behind the collection.

A look at a few of the fabrics:

How would you describe the style of the motifs in Meadow Dance?
They’re more stylized. They’re the essence of flowers, but not literal—there’s definitely a human hand involved. The leaves don’t look like leaves, for example, and flowers aren’t necessarily shaded like mine are. I’ve said before that I like the push between modern and traditional prints—I think it’s a large part of art—the push and pull between realism and stylization.

Can you describe your color palette?

Grays are so hot right now, so I wanted to use them to play off the flowers. A darker gray to make the colors pop, but flowers that would also work with white. The new colors are the darker gray, oranges, and purples—colors I don’t normally use. Then there’s color continuity from my previous lines with the blues, aquas, reds, and greens. I spend a lot of time trading colors in and out in a design. I like the colors in a print to have a certain amount of push and pull—green in the red print, orange in the gray/green/aqua print. Those pops of color create interest in quilts.

How does your machine quilting play into your fabric design?
If you look at the swirls and scrolls in the Garden Path print, those are the shapes you use when you’re quilting. Garden Path is actually my favorite print—it looks totally different in the different colors. The red looks like a blender with pops of color.

This collection also includes a panel, which was created as a practice piece for ruler work. Ruler work for machine quilting is super hot right now. The panel works with two different rulers from Westalee—a border set and a feather focus set. You can use either one of those to quilt the panel using the guide. The panel also works really well with the Bernina Q-matic.

The crochet lace print is really wonderful.

I had actually drawn that a while back for another collection and realized it would work well here. It’s a great applique background—it has so much quilting potential too. I think it works well because of the contrast with the other prints. It’s very dominant, yet the boldness works with the rest of the prints.

Tell us about the bug print.

It functions like a dot print. I was playing with a round shape. Because it’s more geometric and the other prints are more scattered, it stands out. Some of the dots are ladybugs. You don’t necessarily focus on the bugs—they’re just design elements.

What about your blenders?

They’re all designs you can easily quilt on. You can move around on those swirls and spirals and do an allover quilt pattern that looks good. I also try to always include a geometric pattern that you can use to crosshatch on.

What about the little flowers?

This print has a 70s feel. It really holds up next to some of the dominant colors in the line. What’s interesting about that print is that if you hold the gray background little floral up to a gray tonal versus a contrasting color, it looks totally different. It functions like a bridge to other prints in unexpected ways.

Can you tell us about your Meadow Dance patterns?

“Meadow Paths” – This is the free quilt pattern available on the website. You can choose any blenders you like and it still works. They all coordinate with the border print, and I really wanted to use that border print here because it has so much contrast and drama to it.

Click here to download the free quilt pattern.

“Meadow Blooms” – I made this quilt with both dark gray and white backgrounds. There’s such high drama from the blocks. What’s interesting is the way the floral is functioning. It’s cut into pieces, but it really unifies the quilt. This is actually a very traditional quilt pattern, and it has great negative space to quilt in.

“Meadow Song” – This is a modern take on a Dresden quilt. It’s a pretty simple one block quilt, and pretty scrappy. It’s great for feathers—modern feathers work even better than traditional on this. I also made this quilt with a blue background, and the blue cools off the hotter colors in the collection.

“Meadowsweet” – This is a traditional applique quilt. It’s basically the flowers in the prints of the fabric line blown up. I used buttons for the flower centers.

“Meadow Minis” – This was designed for quilt as you go—you can easily quilt it on your domestic machine. I give you block instructions on one page and tell you how I quilted it on the other page. Each block is like a little project.