Florals & Wovens Together, Oh My!!

Hi, all!

Are you inspired by nature around you?  Does the beautiful echinacea in the picture above make your heart beat a little faster?  Do you ever wish you could stop by the roadside to pick the wildflowers growing there?  (I have to admit, I want to do this all.the.time.)  

When Free Spirit Fabrics asked me if I wanted to play with Anna Maria Horner's new line, Floral Retrospective, combined with some of her beautiful Loominous woven fabrics, I was over the moon excited!  These fabrics are even more beautiful in person than I thought they would be - particularly the Loominous woven fabrics.  They add so much texture to my quilts, and were particularly fun to play with, especially after I decided to use spray starch to make them a little less wiggly.   I made a few pretties for me, and some for my little girlies too - do you want to see them?

We went to a local park for a photo shoot the other day - it was a fun place to spend one of the last days of summer vacation!

Here you can see Emmy's top, which is made using Raindrop Poppies in Plum.  

What a ham!  Here you can see the quilt I made, which combines both Floral Retrospective and Loominous in an interlocking pentagon star pattern.

The girls really enjoyed playing while I was taking pictures - it was hard to catch them standing still!!  Can you tell?

Here's Lilli wearing a top made using her favorite print, Social Climber in Perfume.

And one last shot of Emmy's outfit, just because I love this fabric so much!!

Emmy was totally fascinated with these little Pea Pod Pouches that I made using Overachiever in Velvet (the floral) and Dotted Line in Cobalt.  This is a fun little pouch and I can see that I will need to make a few for the littles to have - they are the perfect size for storing little treasures!

I love this pairing, too - Overachiever (the floral) matched with Crosshatch in Strawberry.  I'll be posting a tutorial for this pillow soon - it's a simple one-block top that works up in a flash!

Then I took some of the Echinacea print from the Floral Retrospective line and did some fussy cutting!  Of course, I had to take a picture next to the garden echinacea....

...but here's a better picture on my dining room table.  This was such a fun print to fussy cut, and amazingly, I had just the right shade of green, plus a bit of pink linen (from an IKEA curtain!) that matched perfectly!  I'll also be posting a tutorial for this table runner soon.  It's another quick easy project!

And of course, I couldn't pass up the chance to make a quilt with these beautiful fabrics!  I blended the Floral Retrospective fabrics with the Loominous fabrics in this quilt, which yielded some wonderful textures and a whole lot of gorgeous color!

Here you can see the pattern - interlocking stars built around a hexagon center.  I found a great pink Grunge fabric in my stash that worked really well for the few spots in the quilt that needed a background fabric.  Isn't it wonderful to find just what you need when you need it?  

So a good time was had by all, and the quilt was designated as definitely picnic-worthy!  Sunshine, happy faces and a great new line of fabric from Anna Maria Horner - 

the best of all worlds!!

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Many thanks again to Free Spirit Fabrics for giving me the opportunity to play with these beautiful fabrics!  I hope you'll look for them in your LQS or on-line - I think you'll love them!!

Hugs!

Sarah

PS Be sure to come back next Wednesday when I'll resume my scrappy posts - with the beginnings of a new scrap quilt!  I hope you'll be inspired to quilt along with me!