It's that time of year on spoonflower.com when the calendar tea towel competition happens. I love this challenge because there are so many amazing and lovely designs submitted- yummy visual treats to see! 

This year I decided to use my Deco Garden motif to make a citrus palette towel to ring in 2017 on a cheery, happy note. Designs on spoonflower can also be ordered through their sister site Roostery.com in an already made tea towel. Now I just have to get this sampled, but I couldn't wait to share!

Last weekend my husband and I went to Paso Robles to visit some friends. Darci and I have known each other through licensing artwork and exhibiting for numerous years. She very kindly offered to photograph my quilts with her creative eye and expertise. 

These quilts use my Poppy Mae fabrics for Moda which ships to stores in November. I wanted to make some quilts that used larger panels to showcase some of the larger poppy prints. I love how the flowers peek out in horizontal slices of panels. This is actually the first pattern I have created for the line and the first quilt tackled in the samples. The fun thing is that it can be cut and pieced in a weekend. I love quick gratification! The quilt uses jellyroll strips to separate the patterned panels so it makes cutting go much faster to use a precut in the mix.

The Sliding Shoji Screens pattern has plans for two companion quilts. When you have cut the fabric according the the diagram you have enough panels left over to do a nice complimentary quilt so I decided two was better than one! And this was a fun experiment in how to have them quilted too- the horizontal line quilt was quilted by Doug Sobel of Quilt Hero and the oval, chicken wire reminiscent sewing was done by Gina Siembieda of The Quilters Cure. She also did my white version in vertical lines and the basket quilt with curves. 

The Sliding Shoji Screen pattern lays out the patterns according to the Poppy Mae fabrics and gives you a diagram for either a dark version with black (using red poppies on charcoal and other charcoal coordinates) and also a light version with white (using pink poppies and more red and green coordinates). Of course you can use the fabric map and insert your own fabrics and patterns!

Getting ready for the Halloween season and I decided it was time to make up my Sugar Skull Calaveras pillows! I ordered this fabric from spoonflower.com a year ago but it sat in my "to do" pile. I'm guessing you have one of those too? It was silly that I waited so long because I had three new skull pillows within an hour and a half! I included everything you need to make the pillows easily on one yard length of linen cotton canvas. 

The repeat pattern can be used when doubled over to make an 18" square pillow and the long horizontal images make 14x28" pillows. I used Moda's Bella Solid Charcoal fabric on the back which matches perfectly with the gray. You could make your pillow double-sided with the images and make one horizontal pillow but I wanted them in a couple rooms so the charcoal backing was a better choice for me. I haven't made up the single skulls yet but they will be a cute chair accent pillow. I'm going to back the one with roses with a red fabric.

My spoonflower shop offers my skulls design along with some other repeat coordinates from this group. You can find this specific design at 
​http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/3623628-calaveras-pillows-01-by-robinpickens
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