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!
