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Week 5 of Moda Blockheads6 with Dew Drops from Chelsi Stratton of Sherri & Chelsi. So many options with this block! I hope these color studies help you see your way to stitching fun!  Red X in the middle? Bowties to the outer corners? Emphasize the star points or the overall X shape? Number 7 becomes a propeller. Number 8 makes a lovely shape with the cat-ear sides on point. The last row splits the color bands diagonally to make woven ribbons of color. I don't know which is my favorite this week but I am pretty partial to numbers 8 and 12.  Black and white and with the lines below. This week, with all the pieces, the lines can really make a difference in making sense of these color studies. As always, if you want to be inspired to try one of these, you may need to cut more pieces or differently than the directions tell you. But there are so many ways to experiment and play with the shapes and colors this week! Thanks Chelsi!  Sewn blocks...Melina has been busy sewing away on these. Thank you Melina! With this block, nesting seams works well for lining up quarter-square-triangles. And with the stitch and flip on three sides of the X for the center, it is important to have the angles lined up well. If you feel the pieces are difficult to keep straight for the stitch and flip, then try a little glue on the part you will be cutting off to hold them steady when sewing those seams.  These were Snuggly Palette!  And with the Dotty Thatched they are for the Popsicle Palette. Thought that little accent pop of green was fun and lively.   Next week is my block and I'll be sharing my idea for how I am doing the setting for this quilt. I'm so excited to show you my plans and color layouts. Till then...happy sewing!
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Let's do a little COLOR PLAY on a past quilt pattern and see what it would look like in another collection or in other color families. This month I am revisiting BAR HOP since it is the quilt we are doing for sewing along together in my facebook group "Robin Pickens Sew Happy Community" in July 2025. I am going to try to sew along with this one too!  I designed Bar Hop to go with my Wild Blossoms collection for Moda Fabrics. The ombre, selvage to selvage width-of-fabric print of wildflowers is featured in long panels within the quilt body. These are layered with little bars of the fabric group, cut from Charm Packs or a Layer Cake. There are two sizes of the quilt, an 87" x 84" Queen size and a 51 1/2" x 50" Lap size.  I've done mockups of other ideas on the lap size since that also includes a border that surrounds the quilt body and it is a nice sized project to do for a sew along. With Wild Blossoms I used Thatched Cream or Navy for my backgrounds. I liked how both of these backgrounds really let all my colors shine. For the border of the quilt, when using the ombre print I flip the print upside down to join end-to-end with the piece next to it. This allows the color ramp to continue smoothly.  I also designed this quilt so you can drop in a lovely focal print that you love instead of the ombre width-of-fabric print. Above I have the Queen Anne's Lace for a border print with 2 Fat Quarters of fabrics alternating in the horizontal interior bands. The blue version uses Blue Bonnet flowers on dark background in the borders and light background in the bands for a very cohesive look. Since SUPERBLOOM is a sister wildflower group to Wild Blossoms, I thought it would be fun to look at some with a Charm Pack of that group in the vertical bars.  The mason jar makeshift vases is a Wild Blossoms print and I liked the delicate illustrative look for the borders combined with the same print for the horizontal bands OR the Superbloom pastel ombre wildflowers print for the bands. Below I use Thatched in Early Dawn light pink for my background with the main floral print of poppies from Superbloom. A charm pack of Superbloom makes all the vertical blocks. I've got the poppies on pink on the top one. The bottom one has the poppies on navy for the border and a combination of pink and navy for the horizontal bands.  And here is Thatched Cinnamon as the background with the poppies on navy. I love how warm and rich this version looks. Just as a side note, I only have a small swatch of the big poppy print in the computer program (I use Adobe Illustrator) so the actual poppy fabric has more variation and color background showing.  How about another collection? This is my WINTERLY line to create seasonal holiday quilts. Christmas Amaryllis lilies create my outer border, either on cream or soft black. The horizontal interior bands use the Triangle Trees print which just happens to use a nice even 2 rows of triangles in the finished size. I've made the small rectangles in red and silver for the top one and in white for the bottom. It is nice to think about those as sparkly white pieces against a dark background. These little elements "dance" around the quilt and can be fun in one color or a scrappy mix of prints.  These two quilts below use the Triangle Trees fully for interior and exterior border. However, in these cases I have made the right and left outer borders the same fabric as the background. Only the top and bottom are shown as accent fabric and this emphasizes the horizontal feel of the bands. The top quilt has Thatched Pine for background and bottom shows Cream. SOME SPECIFICS ON YARDAGE AND CUTTING: If using the triangle tree print or any print that needs fussy cutting or special lining up, I'd suggest getting a little extra fabric so you can adjust when cutting as needed. In this case, I'd recommend getting 2/3 or 3/4 yard of fabric for the horizontal interior bands vs 1/2 yard. If only using horizontal borders at top and bottom vs the print around all 4 sides, I'd get 1/2 yard for top and bottom and increase that to 2/3 or 3/4 if fussy cutting (as I am here for the triangles). You would also need to add some yardage to the background needs to get the borders on right and left in background color. Increase the background yardage to 1 2/3 (instead of 1 1/8)- that is ONE yard plus 2/3 yard= 1 2/3.  Two more from Winterly. The "Ribbon Birds" is a flowy, elegant print and I've used it for bands and borders with top having 2 fat quarters of prints dividing those bands and the bottom quilt using all birds on green. The bottom Thatched background is Deep Sea and is a nice alternative to Pine to accent the warmer greens of this line.  Just THATCHED on it's own can be fun too in Bar Hop. I've used this "Hygge Happy" palette in some other quilts and enjoy the calm, warm, happy comfort of this combination. The "Beach Party" palette has more aqua and surf colors with summery party friends. These work best with 2 colors in each horizontal band and you can use Fat Quarters and also cut from those for smaller vertical bars or get Fat Eighths of these colors if you don't want additional cutting space. For both of these, I tried a split color border with a lighter and darker "L" shape. I like how this brings more variety to the contrast of colors. Hygge Happy uses Washed Linen for background. Buttermilk and Toast on borders. Bars with Buttermilk and Toast and Sugar Rose, Tangerine, Chartreuse and Green Curry. Add in vertical bar colors of Sprig, Berry, Burgundy, Petal, Primrose, Early Dawn, Blizzard, Oatmeal, Cocoa, Chocolate Bar, Smoked Paprika and Cinnamon (only need a 5" square of each or a couple 5" for the tans on those). Beach Party uses the same colors on vertical bars but background is 198 Brook with borders of Aqua 212 and Turquoise 101.  These last ones use THATCHED for the bars but bring in Emily Van Hoff's GROOVE print 42372 27 Unspooled Tuxedo. I love this print! Mix it with rainbow bars of crayola color fun or a more limited palette of berry, warm neutrals and browns and soft Lime and Greenery. There is so much motion in Groove print that I wanted to keep my smallest rectangle accents more subtle.  And here I have extended the background color to the outer borders to really frame the Groove and warm neutral palette more. I think this is the version I will be making in July! I just can't decide between the Buttermilk background or Soft Black or Charcoal background. I've ordered my fabric so I'll audition the final fabrics when it arrives. My bars use Charcoal, Toast, Oatmeal, Cocoa, Stone, Peach, Berry, Sugar Rose and Pink Grapefruit.  Enjoy a little Bar Hop fun, whether it is with a big mix of color and prints or with a calm and refined palette. Next month I'll be exploring Tokyo Terrace in my COLOR PLAY for quilts.  We'd love it if you sew and share in our facebook group "Robin Pickens Sew Happy Community". You can find the pattern at RobinPickensINC.com in print or PDF format. The specs below are what you need if making the original palette or one that follows a charm pack/panels/border format. If you have questions on the others, you can email at [email protected] to ask or to see if we have specific fabrics you may be looking for.  Happy sewing!
Robin Serena Shores gave me the opportunity to work with a more nautical, coastal theme and I thought it would also be nice for summery stitching on smaller needlework projects. In my mind, I envision a modern beach house with beautiful views of the water and a collage of stitchery up on the wall from vacation relaxation. These were originally shared at h+h in Chicago last May and I'm getting them put up for summer now!  Shoreline Sampler has a lot of motifs all in one. Shells, compass points, sandpipers, seagull, starfish, anchor, rope and shells are snippets of summer snapshots. I love that the samplers can be stitched as a single large image or broken out into little projects.  I did my first samplers with Fall Frolic and Winterly and also made little mini pillows or dough bowl fillers. Susan Strumpf helped me out with finishing ideas and utilized my Serena Shores fabric for pillow backs and accents along with twine and roping and tiny shells.  Instead of a dough bowl, I think these look charming in a more open-weave basket with a more rustic feel.   I love how Susan used the tine shells to accent the pillow with coral!  Anchored Life is another cross stitch that shows the anchor with compass points. It fits beautifully in a hoop and also finishes well in a square shape framed or in a pillow. The pillow here uses Serena Shores paisley fabric and Susan used 20 count linen, over 2, from Zweigart in Off White with 3 strands of floss for that larger scale of stitch. I love the texture this creates and the 20 count cork linen is such a pleasure to stitch on.   The blue mini pillow below is one of the motifs from the corners, stitched on 20 blue linen from Week's Dye Works with 3 strands over 2 threads.  Modern Beach House 1 and 2 are a set that look nice together or could be a minimalist expression on their own. With each I have used a more graphic element of linked rings that suggest life preservers or chunky chain links. I've mounted these on sticky board and floated them on fabrics from Serena Shores in the same linked ring motif. I like the extra fabric space to offset these in their frames with more color to the bottom.  I'm using Monaco 28 count evenweave on a lot of these with Cosmo flosses. I always cross reference to DMC on the backs of my patterns. I like Cosmo floss a lot since I feel it has a nice feel, tangles less and has some really rich colors, all within a reasonable price point. Cosmo is from Lecien in Japan and they also make a lovely Tsu Mu Gi 40 wt. cotton thread that I like to use with my sewing machines. The Monaco material I have stitched on feels a little stiff to stitch on at the beginning but softens up and I like how even the weave is and feel I can get even tension when stitching on it.  The last summery beach cross stitch I designed is Beach Day with Emerson. I love this quote and wanted to use it as a framework around my mix of shells. Don't you enjoy collecting an assortment of these beauties as you walk along the sand? A pop of color in the coral offsets the soft type and warm shells.   Let your local needlework shop know if you want them to carry these charts or you can get them through robinpickensinc.com. Take a break this summer, relax, and visit the beach daily in a little summery stitch!  It is summer time and it is getting hot! I realized I needed to add a little "cool" into my world by getting out my Serena Shores quilts! This collection of fabrics has coastal vibes of big blooming Agapanthus (also called Peter Pans) in cream and blues are accompanied by shells, wispy seaweed and sketchy linked rings. I showed this line at h+h last May of 2024 and it shipped to shops that fall. I don't think I showed it on the blog at the time so I thought it was a good time to bring back the watery coastal pics to share.   The line has precuts of 10" layer cake squares, 5" charm pack squares, mini charms and jelly roll 2 1/2" strips.     I designed quilts and coordinating cross stitch for this line. The next blog post will show the cross stitch (and a little experiment in punch needle!). As for quilts, I showed 3 patterns in Serena Shores.  My new quilt pattern with this group was Surf Wave. I love the simplicity in this but still so much motion with the waves. This quilt uses a layer cake for the larger 64" x 66" quilt or charm pack for the smaller 32" x 33" wall size quilt. This is an easy, fun quilt to make and could be a great gift for someone who likes to surf, swim, boat or water ski.  The background on the larger quilt is Thatched Coastal Blue 48626-209 and I love this new shade! Brighter than Navy but still dark enough with just a little warmth. The smaller quilt has Linked Rings in Cloud 48775-11. Pantograph used on large quilt is Oil Spill from Longarm League. These quilts make me feel like taking a breath and slowing down to enjoy a beachy day.  I also remade Tokyo Terrace (and made some needed corrections and updates in the pattern) in Serena Shores with the same Coastal Blue background for the large. Tokyo Terrace is a good pattern to use to show off large scale prints and in this instance I wanted to hightlight the flowers in two colorways as well as the sketchy shells. I liked the balance of the green for a more lively color accent and the wispy seaweed in cloud to show off the delicate leaves.  The drawings of all the shells are really a favorite of mine in this group and I enjoy them on the cream background as well. The print with coral and shells is a nice backing print for a quilt.  A pantograph I have used before on Tokyo Terrace is Modern Curves by Anita Shakleford. I've used it on the blue Coastal large quilt and Wishbone from Longarm League on the small one.  Another thing to point out about Serena Shores is the addition of some new Thatched colors! Along with that Coastal Blue 209, there is also Breeze 210, Lime 214, Frost 211, Aqua 212, Surf 213, and Lagoon 199.  The last quilt I showed in Serena Shores was Backslash.  This is a fun quilt to make and I enjoy the angles and how they lead your eye around the quilt. The pattern has several sizes including Lap, Twin and Queen. Both of these are lap sized at 64 1/2" square. The one on the wall is using Thatched Lagoon for the background. The pattern calls for 11 fabrics for the blocks so you can pull a nice range of coordinating prints in either 1/3 yard, 1/2 yard or 3/4 yard pieces (depending on size lap, twin or queen).  Susan Vaughn of the Felted Pear helped me out with some longarming on these (I try to do my own longarming but I was swamped at the time). The pantograph on the Lagoon version is Alga from Karlee Porter. The white one uses Mini City of Fountains pantograph from Julie Hirt of 627handworks.  Thanks for taking a look at Serena Shores and I hope you have some to play with. The beach and coast are calling!   This is Kiley Ferons' block, Cat's Cradle, for week 4 of Moda Blockheads. I like the soft angles of the outer shape that is created from the half rectangle triangles. For my color studies I kept thinking that center block would be great for some fussy cutting! So keep that in mind with any of these as borders around a fussy cut image.  Keep the outer sides all background white or split them into black and white high contrast sections. More white in the top right brings propeller motion. In the middle row, the middle middle image just pulls me in to that center and I like the various shades of colors surrounding in each quadrant. Those borders feel 3d to me, like faceted cuts of a gemstone. The bottom row plays with more white pieces to highlight an angled view. The middle one started to whisper "spool" to me so I had to try that with a striped center. I love the spool of thread!  Here is another view in black and white and with the line divisions. On any of these color studies, to actually make these versions you need to read through your directions and assign different fabrics and more varieties to the pieces. But that is part of the skill-building and fun of starting with a pattern and making decisions to get the look you want.  Here are the actual sewn blocks from Melina. I am so glad she was busy sewing while I was away at the ModaVation retreat. She did mention that you should make sure you read the directions on this block. We have a tendency to look at pictures and the written instructions can be very important any time you do half rectangle triangles to get your trimming of pieces correct for proper seam allowances.  Here is the Popsicle palette. Having a little bit of dots sprinkled into parts of my blocks adds a bit of whimsy. My overall background on this palette is Thatched cream 36. It is interesting to see how the feeling changes subtly with the snuggly palette with the Buttermilk Thatched background that is shown after these images.  Snuggly palette with Buttermilk background:   Four weeks in and I've got 5 blocks that are starting to tell a color story of their own. My block is week 6 so I will try to have my setting idea ready to share with you then.  Snuggly palette. The Dotty Thatched is only in the popsicle one so I'll be interested to see how much influence those dots have on the feeling of the quilt. Don't these groups look pretty?  I'm happy to have a fun project like Blockheads for summer and fall sewing. Baby steps each week really adds up. Happy sewing everyone!
it's week 3! Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill Designs is bringing us "Sunday Best". This is a fairly straightforward block but sometimes I like to carry through a band of light or dark to define the space in ways you may not have thought of. Or, like the first one on second row shows, accentuating the propeller/pinwheel potential. On the last row, the first two make me think of a flashlight or security light shining down.  Black and white and grayscale...but this week I don't have the version with outlines since my computer seemed to go on strike and was not going to cooperate with the added outline. I decided to not fight it. Some weeks are like that. Know when to walk away from the computer...  As for the sewn blocks, I'm using more color and more Dotty Thatched for this block. I like how the little dots almost look like raindrops on a stained glass window.  The mix of regular Thatched and Dotty Thatched creates depth to this block. I like to "sprinkle" the placement around in the overall quilt so most blocks will have some elements but not be fully dotty.  I'm making one block per colorway this week. The Snuggly palette stays all regular Thatched. I've got 8 different colors in this block but the colors are so harmonious that it still looks cohesive and calm.   I'm at ModaVation this week so I don't have time to show you my layout yet but I promise to share it soon! In the meantime, have fun sewing and continue to post your blocks on the facebook group. I love to see what people come up with! Happy sewing!
Week 2 of Moda Blockheads 6 and we have a beautiful block from Lynne Hagmeier of Kansas Troubles. Meet "Crossroads."  Summery June brings out those warm sunny colors in my mind. I worked with yellow to orange to red and burgundy. Is the center a bowtie? Or points on arrows? A turning point for a ribbon or line? With the first block I notice the corner triangles on the block a lot. The right one on the top row reminds me of a twist tie or the twisted ends of a wrapped candy. The right one on the second row has 4 arrows meeting in the center. The third row left is almost like horseshoe magnets. It can be a fun play of negative/positive with those horseshoe magnets in the next one. With only two colors, the next one is a strong silhouette. My bottom row uses 4 colors in the quarter square triangle center with more shades of the colors. In a case like this, if I were sewing one of these in Thatched, I'd flip my fabric to the back to get the lighter shade of a color.  Black and white and grayscale to see them without the color influence. And with the lines, below, to be clear on the piecing. I know with color studies like these, if you want to use them as inspiration, you may have to make some extra pieces to get the color and value differences in the pieces.  How about the sewn blocks? Well lets add a little Dotty Thatched to some corners in my Popsicle palette.  I'm using 2 blocks in the quilt this week, for each of the two quilts...so that is 4 blocks.   And same color vibe happening in the Snuggly palette too. Instead of Dotty, I've got the fuchsia in regular Thatched.  I stayed with a more traditional use of color arrangement in the Crossroads block. I'm excited to already have a total of 6 blocks made to be used in my two quilts!  How about you? Are you making multiple blocks? Or one a week is perfect for you? Some weeks are busier in life than others so go at your own pace, be good to yourself, and enjoy the process. Happy sewing my Blockhead friends!  |
About ROBINDesigner of colorful florals and Thatched basics for Moda Fabrics . Modern to transitional quilt designer, cross stitch designer, sewist, crafter. I am proud to be a designer for Moda Fabrics!
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