Tag Archives: quilt inspiration

Tri-Cities Quilt Show

quilting, , ,

My mother-in-law invited me along to the Tri-Cities Quilt Show this year.  I’ve been to a quilt show once before, but I wasn’t sewing then nearly as much as I am now.  My appreciation for design, piecing, and quilting is far, FAR higher than it was when I went to the quilt show a few years ago.  

After spending the past year learning more about piecing quilts, reading blogs like Simplify, Sew4Home, Stitched in Color, and Film in the Fridge, my take on quilts and quilting is immensely changed.  My mother-in-law is a long-arm quilter, as well, and so visits to family now usually involve me working on a quilt machine myself.  And with quilters like Angela Walters on the scene, I think piecing and quilting is starting to regain traction among a younger crowd.  
Anyway, before I get all philosophical on differences between generations of quilters, here are some photos of quilts that really caught my eye at the show.

Another mosaic

quilting, sewing

Since people could enter the Emerald mosaic contest twice, I decided to take another gander at putting fabrics together.  I was too late to submit this particular mosaic, but I thought I’d post it on my blog anyway, because I enjoyed having a different approach and drastically different result.

Instead of starting with a solid green, I started with the three greens you see.  I had originally been working on a complete collection of kind of airy green fabrics that had green in them, but were mostly grounded in white or cream.  I wasn’t liking how they were fitting together, so I started over.

This time, though, I started with VisiBone Webmaster’s ColorLab.  It’s a great tool for those doing web design to get an idea of how colors will mesh together.  I chose colors opposite from each other on the color wheel first (green and purple), then another color close to purple, then another close to green.  The result was a green-purple-orange-yellow combination that I really liked!

Above is the resulting set of fabrics I chose in those colors.  My only qualm is the top purple fabric.  It seems too heavy for the rest of the fabrics I included, but I had a surprisingly difficult time finding a good purple!  It seems there are plenty of browns, greens, blues, reds, PINKS, and oranges, but not too many yellows or purples — at least not in the theme of simple patterns that I was looking for.  What do you think?  I’ve really enjoyed working with color combinations and then trying to hunt for fabrics that matched.

Thinking Green

quilting, sewing

One of the sewing blogs I follow, Stitched in Color, is hosting a contest using green as the main color theme. The idea is to go to the Fat Quarter Shop online, peruse through their MANY fabrics, and put together a 9-fabric mosaic using emerald green as the main color.

I decided to try this for a few reasons.  First, I love these types of contests!  Second, I’ve never entered one like this before.  I’ve matched up fabrics at the fabric store on my own, but never have I sat down and played with patterns for so long to come up with 9 different patterns to put together.

I originally started with a main focus fabric for the center of the 9-patch mosaic, and tried to build from that.  Then I found a few shades of the emerald green that I loved and decided to work from there, instead.  I tried finding airy patterns for the other 5 blocks that would still keep a green motif, but I couldn’t find just what I was looking for to help it all blend together.  I slept on it, then came back and tried again.  It’s funny how from day to day, your tastes change.  This time, big florals were catching my eye!  I was struggling to find a set of patterns that matched again when I found the center piece that brought the other florals together.  I have a Word file with a VERY long list of patterns and their URLs that I really enjoyed, but here is my final submission.

To me, this says SPRING!!!!  I loved the greens, and with the polka dot fabric in the center, it helped lighten the floral patterns.  I went with florals that had a white background, because I have fallen in love with white backgrounds on quilts.  It makes them so bright!