A Taste of Fall: Autumn Leaves

Are fall decorations and pumpkin spice lattes calling your name? 
We have a cozy autumn quilt for you! Melanie Greseth and Joanie Holton of Tailormade by Design used Jackie Robinson's Autumn Leaves collection to create "Leaf Scatter," the Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting September/October 2018 cover quilt.

"Leaf Scatter" by Melanie Greseth and Joanie Holton
and machine quilted by Sue Krause;
featured in Love of Quilting September/October 2018

Why did you choose Jackie’s Autumn Leaves collection for this quilt?

Both my sister and I love fall, and this is such a lovely and warm fall line. Plus, Jackie always creates such beautiful stripes that can be used as borders. Her lines have all the elements you need for a quilt—an allover print, blenders, and medium-size prints in different values. It makes it easy to design a quilt!

Tell us about the design.

We wanted it to be simple and approachable, but also highlight the beautiful fabrics. The design itself is pretty traditional—four-patches combined with a larger focal square. The large allover leaf print works beautifully in the focal squares.

Any tips for making this quilt?
It’s not difficult, but you do have to pay attention to direction as you’re sewing your blocks and then when you’re assembling the quilt.

When you cut the focal blocks, I used a ruler close to the block size and cut out a “row” of blocks. Then I moved to a different section and cut out more. I used a little bit more yardage, but that way I didn’t have the exact same squares for each block.

What do you like best about this quilt?

I love the cozy beautiful colors of fall, and the border print is fabulous!

Click here to see the Autumn Leaves collection.
Click here to purchase the kit for this quilt.
Click here to purchase Love of Quilting magazine.

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Gloaming Cover Girl!

Have you seen the July-August 2018 issue of Quilty magazine? Check out that cover girl! The Twilight Beads quilt, designed by Melanie Greseth and Joanie Holton, uses Shelley Cavanna's Gloaming collection. Gorgeous! 

We asked Joanie and Melanie to talk to us about their cover quilt. 

What attracted you to the Gloaming collection?

We loved the color palette. Shelley talks about how the palette came from the gloaming time of day, when these colors show up, and the turquoise, lime and mulberry prints really appealed to us.

How did this design happen?
Melanie really loves flying geese. We challenged ourselves to make a design that is fat quarter friendly, but also contemporary and fun to sew. This quilt is made completely from flying geese.

"Twilight Beads" designed by Melanie Greseth and Joanie Holton;
pieced by Vicki Swanson and quilted by Sheri Zalar;
featured in Quilty magazine July/August 2018

The quilt looks scrappy, but it still has a color pattern. How do you do that?

The layout is scrappy, but we grouped colors to give it a more pleasing feel. The flying geese are sewn together into sets of three, and you can follow our design to get the same look. Scrappy is fun, but sometimes it takes longer than it needs to. By making specific color sets, the quilt assembles quickly.

So the diamonds are made of flying geese as well?

Yes. Depending on how you turn the sets, you get that diamond.

How do the sashing rows enhance the design?

It creates breathing space around each column and at the top and bottom. As a bonus, you don’t have to worry about the points matching up between rows!

What do you like best?

I like how it’s kind of a little surprise to have the squares mixed in there with the flying geese. It’s a fresh, geometric look without being too blocky. Plus, it’s a really approachable quilt to make.

Click here to see the entire Gloaming collection.
Click here to purchase the kit for Twilight Beads.
Click here to purchase the July/August issue of Quilty magazine.

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Spring-spiration!

It's mid April and we're all eager for spring flowers. If Mother Nature isn't cooperating, we can enjoy those flowers in fabric! Today we're featuring two magazine quilts packed with florals. These issues are on sale now, so grab your own copy and start sewing!

Melanie Greseth and Joanie Holton used Kanvas' Floral Impressions collection to create the lovely Romantic Impressions quilt. The name describes this soft rose and ivory quilt perfectly! 

"Romantic Impressions" designed by Melanie Greseth and Joanie Holton;
quilted by Naomi Polzin; featured in Quilter's World Summer 2018

 Joanie talked to us about this quilt: 

What attracted you to the Floral Impressions fabrics?

I think what pulled me in first is the background print of loose petals and flowers. I actually worked backwards on this design—I knew I wanted that in the background because it was so romantic and fresh.

This collection comes in two colorways. How did you choose which to use?

I’m not usually much of a pink person, but the blush and cream combination was such a fresh coloration.

Tell us about the design.

The orange peel is such a nice gradual curve to work with, and I love the effect it creates. I like on-point layouts because it changes the feel of the block. It really creates movement and helps the circles to show up. We added a thin border to help stabilize the bias edges without standing out too much.

What do you like best about this quilt?

I just think it’s pretty. It has such a soft, romantic feel and I always love a good butterfly print. And I really love how the background fabric pulls everything together.

Click here to see the entire Floral Impressions collection.
Click here to find the Summer 2018 issue of Quilter's World.

Jackie Robinson designed this striking wall quilt using the delicious blues and yellows from her Hydrangea Blue collection. Made up of a simple block, the Color Drift quilt flows from blue to yellow with plenty of blooms along the way! 

"Color Drift" designed by Jackie Robinson;
pieced and quilted by Pat Szymanski;
featured in Easy Quilts Spring 2018

Jackie talked to us about her quilt: 
What inspired this quilt design?

It’s a take-off of my Easy Trip Around the World pattern. It uses the same simple block, but I changed the layout and color placement to create this design.

What makes this quilt so easy to sew?

It’s made from strip sets—you make what I call a “fancy nine-patch” which is a 3x3 with a couple of double long units.

You love the blue and yellow combination, don’t you?

I do. This quilt gradates from blue to yellow. There are three main color combinations that make people happy, and this is one of them. The prints that are both blue and yellow help to bridge between the tonal coordinates.

Photo: The Quilting Company

Click here to see the entire Hydrangea Blue collection by Jackie Robinson.
Contact Quilting and Crafts by Mercer to purchase a kit for this quilt. 
Click here to see Jackie's other patterns featuring Hydrangea Blue. 
Click here to purchase the digital quilt pattern. 
Click here to find the Spring 2018 issue of Easy Quilts magazine.

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Feels like Spring: Pinwheels & Rails

We're helping usher in spring with a couple bright and cheerful quilts this week!

First ups is the Pinwheels & Rails quilt designed by Melanie Greseth and Joanie Holton of Tailormade by Design, featured in Quilter's World magazine. They used a curated palette of prints from Nancy Halvorsen's Bree collection to create Pinwheels & Rails, a quilt that absolutely "sings spring." We asked Joanie to talk about the quilt design.

"Pinwheels & Rails" designed by Tailormade by Design
and machine quilted by Naomi Polzin;
featured in the Spring 2018 issue of Quilter's World magazine

How did you choose this more limited palette from Nancy’s collection?

We chose the pastel palette purposefully. Nancy’s pastels aren’t baby pastels—they’re still vibrant, and we wanted to highlight that. For the rail fence blocks, we chose four prints—light to dark—from each of four colors.

Tell us about the two different styles of rail fence rows.

Traditionally, a rail fence design is stacked to create a zig zag effect. We didn’t want that to distract from the pinwheels and applique rows, so we added a neutral lattice to separate some of the blocks.

The pinwheel blocks add playfulness to your design.

We alternated placement of the stronger and lighter colors in the pinwheel blocks to add variety. We also used half blocks on each end. Instead of having everything so symmetrical, the half blocks throw in a little twist. People are afraid of half blocks and they don’t need to be!

  

Photos: Quilter's World

Your flower appliques are adorable!

Thanks! We wanted a simple applique in a few different sizes that had the feel of the fabric line. These petals are accessible for all quilters—easy to do—but also cute.

With so many fun prints to choose from, how did you pick the border fabric?

Choosing that was fun. It was actually a challenge—deciding how we wanted the quilt to feel. We tried blue, and orange, but the green did the best job of framing the quilt center without overpowering the rest of the design.

What do you like best about the quilt?

What I ended up liking best is how it came together. It’s a soft quilt, but it’s not a baby quilt. The colors are saturated. It’s really lovely. It really sings spring.

Click here to see Nancy's entire Bree collection.
Click here to find Quilter's World magazine.

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Love those scrappy brights!

We've got another quilt to chase away those dreary winter days! This fun scrappy quilt by Joanie Holton and Melanie Greseth uses Nancy Halvorsen's Bree collection and was featured in Quilting Quickly magazine. 

"Brianne" designed by Joanie Holton and Melanie Greseth;
featured in the November/December 2017 issue of Quilting Quickly magazine.

We asked Joanie to tell us about the Brianne quilt. 

Do you love Nancy Halvorsen’s Bree collection as much as we do?

Yes! It’s so bright and cheery; it was really fun to play with.

Do you have a favorite print in the collection?

I am most drawn to the two-color fan print. I like the effect it has.

Tell us about this quilt.

We went for a scrappy look with hourglass blocks. With Nancy’s line, there are so many great prints to use, and they all go together. We paired fabrics and made sets of colors. We wanted the hourglasses to play nicely together, and we wanted each block to have one print that was a little heavier to create contrast.

The stripes look great in the hourglass block.

They do! People are often afraid to chop up stripes, but it can make a really cool effect if you just go for it.

How did you choose border fabrics?

We chose not to use a focal print and instead went with a three border treatment. With such a scrappy quilt, it’s easy to pick out almost any color for the border—the quilt center is such a smorgasboard of color! I’m always drawn to greens and blues, and that makes it a little more gender neutral as well. I think the borders bring all the colors together.

What do you like best about this quilt?

It’s a nostalgic quilt that makes me remember my grandma. I love that about it.

Click here to see the entire Bree collection.
Click here to purchase the quilt pattern.
Click here to find November/December 2017 issue of Quilting Quickly magazine.

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