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Layers cakes and Half Square Triangles. Fun and lacy borders. Meet "Emilia"!  This quilt uses Layer Cake 10" squares to make large triangles and reflected small triangles on the opposite side with the same print. I've grouped them into color blocks. If you don't have a layer cake to use, you may want to make your cutting easier to start by using Creative Grids Perfect10 Ruler (CGRPERF10) to make those nice sized starting blocks!  One of the distiguishing characteristics of Emilia is the borders. The half square triangles continue out into the side borders, using the sashing color, to make a lovely triangular lacy edge. It makes the whole quilt almost sparkle! Wouldn't this pink version be pretty in a girl's room? I focused on pink, green and lighter purple shades for this one. I used a chartreuse green for the sashings but a minty green would be pretty too.  Emilia is written for two sizes, a larger, 76" square or smaller, 55" square lap size. You can easily adapt the pattern to add more rows of blocks if wider sizes are needed.  Emilia was designed to show with the Sweet Pea & Lily collection, which is shipping in March 2019 to quilt shops. But since I have Dandi Annie here...and its in stores now, I thought it would be fun to take a look at how Emilia might look in some summer Dandelions! These computer renders are some color play to look at the pieced blocks and how the quilt changes looks with the sashing and border colors.  I think I am partial to this darker gray border. I would use Moda Bella Solids Graphite 202 for this. I think the Moda Bella Solids Gray 83 would be nice for the sashings and border triangles.  This makes me think of a sunny summer farmhouse day! Moda Bella Solids Baby Yellow 31 and Maize 273 work nicely together with this line.  And back to grays with a lighter version of border. I like having a slight difference to white so the inner triangles pop and sparkle more. Moda's Bella Feather is a lovely very very pale gray, close to white.  Emilia can be found in local quilt shops or at my shopify shop. I hope you have some fun with half square triangle love and border play with this one! Happy sewing! For more ideas for Sweet Pea & Lily or Dandi Annie, take a look at more patterns...  
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I've been busy doing more catch up on the Moda Blockheads 2 project! When the week calls for an applique block, Corey Yoder does an alternate block that is pieced. Due to my time constraints, I went for the pieced block. Applique just takes me longer and I have a few hand sewing projects in progress now, so pieced it is!  This Happy Scrappy Baskets pattern was so fun to make. I love simple patchwork blocks and enjoyed making it into this charming basket. Corey also has a pattern for a whole quilt with this one and it looks delightful! You can check it out here! The fabrics I used for this one were a combination of Poppy Mae, Blushing Peonies and Dandi Annie.  This 18 inch block "Mountain Climbing" was a block pattern from Lynne Hagmeier of Kansas Troubles Quilters. More details on her blog. It did take me awhile to make all the half square triangles and I tried doing a group of 4 or 8 each night. When I have lots of triangles to trim, I use a rotating mat and that really helps to streamline the trimming. The light spotted fabric here is from Dear Mum and I liked adding some solid white triangles too for a little additional pop of lightness.  And more on the catch up list- Blocks 13- Patchwork Flower designed by Corey Yoder, Block 25 Oshkosh Star by Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings, and Block 22 Economy Path by Laurie Simpson. Big flowers, tiny stars and delightful plus signs...each block has been so enjoyable to make each week. The catch up continues and I only have two more blocks to go and I will be completely caught up!
Want to join along? Visit the facebook page to get started! Imagine light coming in through the windows of the farmhouse, dancing between the panes, glowing with the warmth of the sun and soft colors of growing things.  Simple one lane roads intersecting among golden fields and the colors of morning dawn.  The dandelions in Dandi Annie celebrate the simple pleasures, joined with prints of seeds blowing in the wind, sketchy plaid, and painted leaves. Growth and warmth.  I love the way the thin sashing plays from light to dark and extends into the borders. The gray borders add a calm grounding to the bright colors.  There is something so satisfying about making stacks of half square triangles and getting them ready to arrange in balanced symmetry. This quilt is arranged in four colorways of yellow, coral/pink, green and gray. Each color group surrounds an intersection of thin sashing.  For the backing I used Moda Bella Solids in Pesto. What a great green! I'm excited to get my bolts of Dandi Annie fabrics and I'll be kitting a limited number of these quilts in this fabric. But the pattern itself is available now on my online shop and would be fun to make with other fabrics too.  Dandi Annie is shipping from Moda now (December 2018). The quilts shown here were pieced by me, Robin Pickens, and longarm quilted by Sally Corona at Corona Quiltworks.  Happy sewing and farmhouse dreaming! Check out more Dandi Annie patterns at my new shopify store!  Modern graphic blooms stand tall, reaching for the sun. This is the inspiration for my Towards the Sun quilt pattern.  I wanted a quilt to go with my Dandi Annie fabrics that reflected the round spheres of the mature seed puffs of the dandelions. The main prints have a play of large circles behind the plants and I thought they would play nicely within larger circle shapes. This became the overall composition for the blooms within a grid structure for mixing in coordinating prints. With such a graphic and geometric structure, I felt straight sectioned lines as stems would work well to support the blooms and add a new graphic element to contrast with all the circles.  This was my first time making a quilt with half circle and full circle blocks. I created a paper template to go with the pattern that you can use for making the blocks or if you'd prefer to use a specialty ruler template I'd suggest the Creative Grids Circle Savvy Quilt Ruler (CGRSAV1). It has a large range of circular sizes and I used this ruler to make my 6" finished circle blocks. Working with circles was actually quite fun and I found I was most successful with my shapes when I slowed down my sewing a little and lengthened my stitch length to help with the give and stretch going around curves.  This quilt can be made as pieced blocks or as applique, either fusible raw edge or turned edge. The white and yellow quilt here is pieced using the Creative Grids circular ruler and the pink and gray quilt is made with the fusible raw edge method. I top stitched on my machine close to the edges of the shapes after fusing. The quilts were long arm quilted by Sally at Corona Quiltworks (IG @coronaquiltworks) using pantographs that also use circular shapes and lines, further reinforcing the graphic shapes. Towards the Sun is available at Quilt shops when it ships with Dandi Annie from Moda Fabrics in November. It is also available at my etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/robinpickensinc. If you get the digital PDF make sure you print out the template at actual size or 100% vs letting a printer resize. You can double check the sizing with the 1" marker on the template. Happy sewing!     Positively Bohemian quilt pattern uses quick piecing and cutting to make a quilt with strong vertical movement and an interplay of shapes, colors and plus signs. Four color families of Dandi Annie fabrics group together in panels that shift up and down vertically to create a more random look.  The bohemian influence came from using the Dandi Annie collection (shipping from Moda Fabrics in November 2018) which feature wild and free dandelions and lots of print on print blocks. I could just imagine being carefree in the meadow, picking dandelions and soaking up the warm sun.  This is the first quilt I've made with my fabrics that has been completely all prints on the quilt top. I usually balance some of the small and large scale designs with solid colors to give a calm place for the eye to rest. But I have to say I'm loving the mix of all the prints, especially the little birds picking dandelions in the grass. With all the prints, it felt like a good contrast to make the backing a solid color and use a strong saturated one- in this quilt I chose Moda Bella Solids Flamingo 299! Love that burst of lively pink!  Another interesting way to try this quilt would be to put solids in the thinner rectangles or to play with even more placements of plus signs, adding them stacked on top of each other at times. I'm looking forward to trying it with soft and subtle low volume prints and bright plus signs to see how that changes the feel.  Positively Bohemian is a pattern that uses yardage and is appropriate for more beginning level quilters or someone looking for a fast and fun easy project. You can find the pattern through local quilt shops or you can visit my etsy shop for print or pdf downloadable versions. Happy sewing!    Each year spoonflower.com has a calendar tea towel challenge. This year I thought it would be fun to make one that coordinates with Dandi Annie, my new line with Moda that is shipping to stores soon (November!) So here it is with dandelion seeds floating off to bring wishes to you and a great 2019 ahead! This is sized for a fat quarter of Cotton Linen Canvas and I'll be sampling it soon to make it available in the marketplace. Check out spoonflower here! Wouldn't it be great color fun for the kitchen to make cloth napkins or placemats from Dandi Annie? There is a cute pattern for a Pocketed Table Runner at the Moda Bakeshop blog by Heather Long of @Coffe_and_Quilts using Dandi Annie. Check it out and get started with some kitchen goodness sewing! Bakeshop Runner   And if you don't want to sew a tea towel yourself, you can get one already made for you at Roostery! I think I'm going to order one since I have a big list of sewing projects :) and I think I'd like it ready-made this time. Check out the Special Edition Spoonflower Tea Towel!
 I remember having a knit poncho growing up with colorful fringe hanging from the bottom edges. I loved the sway and free feeling of the long strands of yarn. I wanted to capture that idea of fringe- of fibers extending off beyond the edges- in my new quilt pattern "FRINGE."  FRINGE is a Layer Cake friendly quilt pattern (but yes, you could use yardage instead of precuts). The quilt design "frames" big squares with small squares and lines in a grid structure that is easily scaled up or down to make different sizes. The pattern is written to a Twin or Lap/Wall size but could work as well on a Queen or King bed by adding more columns of blocks.  I like designing big florals so I also like having some quilts that can showcase larger blocks to show them off! Fringe gives you great squares for doing just that. I decided to use mostly dark charcoal fabrics in the small corner squares to make those pop nicely and be a cohesive color story.  I wanted to combine yellows with my Dandi Annie fabric collection to emphasize the warmth of the fabrics. I love how the quilt looks so sunny and happy! I've used Moda's Bella Solids Baby Yellow 31 and Maize 273. Maize is one of my new favorite colors to work with!  There is an alternate twin quilt with the pattern where the "fringe" is longer. I wanted to play with an asymmetrical layout to emphasize the fringe borders and give them even more length and space. The larger borders would be a great place to do some custom quilting sewing.  Sally Corona from Corona Quiltworks did my longarm quilting and for the asymmetrical alternate twin we opted for straight line quilting to mimic the direction of the fringe. The regular twin uses a wonderful swirling design to create a different type of texture and feel. I like to see the contrast of styles and how the longarm quilting designs impact the look of the quilt.  Fringe printed patterns are shipping with Dandi Annie fabric to quilt shops in November and I hope you will check with your local shops for it. You can also find it at my store, along with other new patterns that launched with Dandi Annie - Positively Bohemian, Farmhouse Crossing, and Towards the Sun.  I have a new addiction. Its not buying shoes. Its not chocolate (okay, that one is already established). It's joining in to Sew Alongs. There is a rush of excitement when you finish a block and photograph it and add it up on instagram or facebook or where ever your sew along is happening. Little pockets of motivated time for a do-able thing. Baby steps that add up to a bigger thing. Sharing in the online community and interacting, getting feedback, seeing how people interpret and add their style and taste, encouraging each other...it's about the people as much as the sewing. Sew alongs are like my new crack. And in my need for my next "fix" I jumped into two of them in the last few days: Moda Block Heads 2 and the Splendid Sampler 2.  There is a huge group on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/253867175058745/ where you can post your blocks. The first block pattern is Stellar Star from Lynne Hagmeier . The second one is Buckeye Beauty from Me and My Sister Designs. I'm using fabrics from my lines- the top one has fabrics from Blushing Peonies and Dear Mum with Bella Solids Ruby Ice and Light Lime. The bottom one is Dear Mum in the middle with Dandi Annie for the dots and birds. I thought it would be fun to just mix the lines and use them all. The next Sew Along I jumped into is The Splendid Sampler 2 hosted by Pat Sloan and Jane Davidson. I loved seeing what people made from the Splendid Sampler 1 and the first 20 blocks will be released free on a weekly basis, on Thursday mornings. If you want to make more than the first 20, as I'm SURE I will, then the remaining blocks will be in the book The Splendid Sampler 2 which comes out in October.  This first block, Quilt Market, is from Alex Veronelli at Auriful thread and I love it! I always take a deep breath before trimming something like this...and double check the placement as its noted in the directions. For this project I think I am going to stay in the gray family and mix in yellows from my new Dandi Annie collection. Maybe I'll add more colors as I go along- we'll see. That is the fun of a sampler. You can experiment as you go along and see what fits the blocks and the group.  Want to join along? Come on, its a GOOD addiction! I'll try to post here each weekend to show my progress. Or check out my feed at Instagram @robinpickens.
Happy sewing!  Now that Quilt Market has passed, I'm thrilled that I can finally share my Dandi-Annie line for Moda Fabrics! The glowing golds and yellows have been warming up my office and brightening my days. This was a special collection to design because it reminds me of growing up and seeing the cheery yellow blooms pop up in our yard. As kids, we loved the simple happy flowers that could be twisted into necklaces and rubbed into our skin to make a lovely golden color. But even better than the yellow blooms were the mature puff balls of seeds. We knew our dreams would come true if we could blow the seeds off the stem in one breath.  After blowing the seeds off the dandelion stem, we would watch our seeds travel off in the breeze in a graceful dance. Hopefullness. Sunny days. Being a kid and finding the beauty in a what others considered a weed. Those are the memories and wishes wrapped up in the threads of Dandi-Annie. Little birds also pay a visit in this group, jauntily picking their own bouquet of dandelions. Flyaway seeds, some woven textures and plaid, and a lattice repeat that makes me think of cottage gardens...cheery coordinates for a happy group.  Warm colors fill the group with golds, pinks and greens and they are balanced with the cool of gray. The line still coordinates with the colors from my previous collections so I'm sure to try some mixing in of Blushing Peonies and Dear Mum and Poppy Mae. The more the merrier in the garden!
I hope you like Dandi-Annie as much as I do. I think its my favorite Moda group so far! It will be arriving in quilt shops in November 2018. Stay tuned for QUILTS! |
About ROBINDesigner of colorful florals for Moda fabrics. Modern to transitional quilt designer. Illustrator, sewist, crafter. I am proud to be a designer for Moda Fabrics!
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