Printology: Virtual Trunk Show

You've had the opportunity to soak in the fabulous prints from Modern Quilt Studio's Printology collection this week, and now we have some quilty goodness to share! Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle centered issue #13 of their magazine, Modern Quilts Illustrated, around Printology, and we're showing you those quilts today. 

Click here to order this issue.

You'll find four quilts in the issue, and a fifth quilt is available as a free quilt pattern on our website. Enjoy Bill and Weeks' virtual trunk show of their Printology quilts! 

Queen of Diamonds

36” x 48”

Weeks: We wanted a quilt with a bit of depth. We liked the idea of having the diamond pattern, but also having those horizontal bands behind it. The gray checkerboard fabric is critical to making those bands appear.

Bill: The range of value in the line comes to play here. You can’t achieve those transparency effects without it.

Dress Up

55” x 80”

Click here for the Dress Up kit.

Weeks: I wanted a quilt that really showed off all the prints, and I also wanted to find a fun role for the little red checkerboard. It’s the tiny ½” square at the end of alternating rows and the center of the opposite rows.

Bill: Weeks freehanded the quilting on Dress Up. It has such wonderful texture that plays so well with the drawings in the fabrics themselves.

Click here to order Modern Quilts Illustrated #13, featuring four of Bill and Weeks' Printology quilt patterns. 

Billiards

49” x 85”

Click here for the Billiards kit.

Weeks: We both adore this quilt. It’s my favorite since On the Dot. It shows the little checkerboard prints can be used in big chunks even though they’re a small scale pattern.

Bill: Without a doubt, this is my favorite in the magazine. I pulled out a design I made a decade ago; Weeks made two changes to it and came together. We finished it with a French pillowcase binding technique (so you don’t see the binding on the front).

Framed

53” x 87”

Click here for the Framed kit.

Bill: I love sewing strips together. We combined Printology with Benartex’s Shadow Blush collection (which reads as solids). It’s a matter of just sewing yardage and using it in large chunks. The angles in it are really dynamic—you have giant mitered corners from two different strip sets, so there’s no matching of seams—it’s really forgiving. What I love about a quilt like this is that no two will ever be the same.

Weeks: You get a scrappy look within the fabric line. Plus the sewing of all those seams will help you learn how to control fabric under the foot, which is everything in quilting to me.

Bill and Weeks also designed a free quilt pattern for Printology. 

Click here to download the free pattern.

Follow the Leader

54” x 78”

Click here for the Follow the Leader kit.

Weeks: This is such a versatile quilt to show off medium to large scale prints. The little black and white checkerboard quilt looks awesome between the blocks—exactly the way we envisioned it, as a fun accent that contrasts wonderfully with the rest of the line.

Make sure to see all three projects featuring Printology this week!
Tuesday: Heather  @ Quilt-achusetts; @quiltachusetts
Wednesday: Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts
Thursday: Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal; @twiggyandopal

More Printology: 

Click here to see the entire Printology collection. 

Click here to visit Modern Quilt Studio's website. 

Click here to read the interview with Bill and Weeks about Printology.

Stop by next week to see one more quilt designed by Bill and Weeks featured in our new issue of Modern by the Yard!

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Printology Hop: Day 3

What would you make with Modern Quilt Studio's Printology collection? We sent fabric to three designers, and we're excited to share what they've made with you this week.

Today Jayne from Twiggy and Opal is sharing her "Reviving Retro" quilt: 

"When I first saw Printology, my immediate reaction was fun, funky and retro!  After taking a closer look, it is all that and much more.  While I was drawn to the retro vibe, it also has some great modern designs with a bit of a flair.  I was inspired to create a quilt that highlighted the graphic nature of the prints and the retro vibe that I felt when I first saw it." 

Visit Jayne's blog to learn more and enter for a chance to win a fat quarter bundle of Printology fabrics.

Make sure to see all three projects featuring Printology this week!
Tuesday: Heather  @ Quilt-achusetts; @quiltachusetts
Wednesday: Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts
Thursday: Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal; @twiggyandopal

More Printology: 

Click here to see the entire Printology collection. 

Click here to visit Modern Quilt Studio's website and see the newest issue of Modern Quilts Illustrated, featuring quilts made from Printology (we'll be sharing those quilts here on Friday!).

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Printology Hop: Day 2

What would you make with Modern Quilt Studio's Printology collection? We sent fabric to three designers, and we're excited to share what they've made with you this week.

Today Alison from Little Bunny Quilts is sharing her Faceted quilt:

"This project is a third iteration of an idea my sister had to make big block quilts out of itty bitty half square triangles! All of the little HSTs make the blocks sparkle, hence the name "Faceted"! My favorite print in this fabric line are the gridwork and sketch prints -- these work great within this collection as contrast to the larger scale block and floral prints, but these would also be perfect to mix and match with other collections! I love the shades of purple and green in this line! I added in a white and grey print for my background to let the fabrics of this line sing!"

Visit Alison's blog to learn more and enter for a chance to win a fat quarter bundle of Printology fabrics.

Make sure to see all three projects featuring Printology this week!
Tuesday: Heather  @ Quilt-achusetts; @quiltachusetts
Wednesday: Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts
Thursday: Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal; @twiggyandopal

More Printology: 

Click here to see the entire Printology collection. 

Click here to visit Modern Quilt Studio's website and see the newest issue of Modern Quilts Illustrated, featuring quilts made from Printology (we'll be sharing those quilts here on Friday!).

Love It? Share It!

Printology Hop: Day 1

What would you make with Modern Quilt Studio's Printology collection? We sent fabric to three designers, and we're excited to share what they've made with you this week.

Today Heather from Quilt-achusetts is sharing her Reflecting Pools quilt:

"After previewing the Printology fabric line I was instantly reminded of geometric gardens and that mix of the classical with the modern. My quilt Reflecting Pools tries to capture these impressions using the Printology prints to create movement and structure."

Love that texture! 

Visit Heather's blog to learn more and enter for a chance to win a fat quarter bundle of Printology fabrics.

Make sure to see all three projects featuring Printology this week!
Tuesday: Heather  @ Quilt-achusetts; @quiltachusetts
Wednesday: Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts
Thursday: Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal; @twiggyandopal

More Printology: 

Click here to see the entire Printology collection. 

Click here to visit Modern Quilt Studio's website and see the newest issue of Modern Quilts Illustrated, featuring quilts made from Printology (we'll be sharing those quilts here on Friday!).

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Introducing Printology by Modern Quilt Studio

We're really excited to share Printology, a new Contempo collection from Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr of Modern Quilt Studio. These prints are so appealing, and as you read what Weeks and Bill have to say about them, you'll be inspired to find many different ways to use them. 

We'll be focusing on Printology all week on the blog, with three projects to share and then a virtual trunk show on Friday. Enjoy!

Where did you find the inspiration for Printology?

Weeks: We were in Japan last year and walking through the Gion district of Kyoto, where the geisha culture resides. I’ve always had a fascination with the maiko san (apprentice geishas). They have white paint on their faces, complicated hairdos, and layers of kimonos in a way that’s sweet, charming and bubbly, all at once. They typically wear 3-4 kimonos, and you can see a sliver of each. They’re all different prints—they have this fearlessness in mixing prints, which is so different than Western fashion, with a main print and accessories that coordinate. I really wanted to do this concept as a fabric line. It’s not a Japanese line at all. It’s about mixing, drawn from an Asian concept.

Bill: For us, one of the main goals of the line was to create a mix of prints that would also welcome what people already had in their stash, to encourage people to fearlessly mix.

What do you see as a selling point to this collection?

Weeks: The quilts we made from the line look really different from each other. If you start with a blue and yellow focal print, you’ll make a blue and yellow quilt. There are so many choices in Printology. We could do a peach quilt, a blue and green quilt, a gray quilt, etc. By not having one fabric that’s dominant, you have more flexibility to making different types of quilts.

How did you design the prints?

Bill: We work from sketches and then digitize them. Everything is hand drawn to start. In the collection, you’ll see different illustration styles—some of the shapes, like the Scallops, have outlines (called trapping lines), and some like the Blocks print are just color on color. We wanted prints in a range of scales, some with trapping lines and some without, some with colors filled in and some that weren’t.

Scallops

Blocks

Can you tell us about the prints in the collection?

Bill : To me, one of the roles of the Flowers fabric was to create depth and layering. It’s also a nice in-between scale, with tiny details like the flower stamens.

                 

               

Weeks: The maiko san often have a red print or a red and white check print that is a liner under their obi. Red is a celebratory color in Asia. These tiny checks are hand drawn; they have a slight irregularity to them. We rarely use white because it’s so high contrast, but we wanted the checkerboards to be an accent fabric, so we included it here. It’s a contrasting element within the line. The scale is adorable, and it is a great binding print.

Bill: The Wave print is about curvature and fluidity, and it has softer colorations.

Bill: We had 24 hours to come up with one more print, and it was Gridwork. It has a hand-drawn looseness to it, and incredibly versatility from tiny bits of color.

Do you have favorite prints within the collection?

Weeks: I really love the block prints. It is the first one we designed. I love that the lines don’t go around the colors, but through them.

Bill: I’m really fond of the sketch print. I took a drawing from Weeks’ sketch book, digitized it, and put it into a giant repeat. I need to find enough hours in the day to sew myself a shirt out it. Hard to put my finger on what it is, but I love the quality of a hand-drawn line. I’d love to have this print in every single color.

Click here to see the entire Printology collection. 

Click here to visit Modern Quilt Studio's website and see the newest issue of Modern Quilts Illustrated, featuring quilts made from Printology (we'll be sharing those quilts here on Friday!).

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Lemon Twist

Don't adjust your screen! You should be seeing yellow. We liked Cherry Twist so much that we recreated it in another colorway: yellow, black and white. 

It's Lemon Twist! 

The Lemon Twist free quilt pattern is "Lemon  Fizz" designed by Tailormade by Design. Make it in the black and white colorway (with tiny pops of yellow) or the yellow and black colorway. 

Click here to download the free pattern.

Click here to see the entire Lemon Twist collection.

Click here to find the free quilt pattern. 

Click here to see the red, black and white Cherry Twist collection.

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Plus Playtime QAL

If you love a good Quilt Along, we've got a recommendation for you! Sandra Walker of mmm! quilts is hosting the Plus Playtime QAL, featuring the quilt she made for Issue #7 of Modern by the Yard. 

"Plus Playtime" by Sandra Walker featuring the Dot Crazy collection

Sandra is making Plus Playtime using Paula Nadelstern's Wonderlust fabrics--rich, vibrant colors!
Here's a sneak peek at her first block (see more on her blog): 

Click here to follow along on the QAL. Sandra has lined up several prizes, including a fat quarter bundle of Wonderlust. 

Happy sewing! 

Click here to download Issue #7 of Modern by the Yard.

Click here to see the entire Wonderlust collection. 

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