Winter Inspirations – Blithe Fabrics Blog Tour

First, apologies for being late today – I thought I was being “fancy” and scheduled my post for the morning, but I must have done something wrong… 🙁 (so much for my blogging skills!), so here we go now:

Hello everyone!

What better to get me back to my (always?) neglected blog, than fabulous Blog Tour to celebrate BLITHE – a magical, beautiful, philosophical, new fabric collection by my ever-talented friend Katarina Rocella, for Art Gallery Fabric ? (Well, there is more to this “neglected blog” story now, will tell you later!)
Blithe collection is inspired by WINTER – a season of nature’s rest, season that I always felt was unfairly deemed bad, or boring, or colorless… so not true! I love winter. I really do. I always found so much inspiration in winter, took countless photos, spotting unusual glimpses of color… All so very beautifully captured by Katarina in this amazing new fabric collection. I am so thrilled she did it – spring, summer, fall – those seasons are celebrated and captured in countless fabrics, but winter is somehow always an underdog? Not any more!!

AHHH BLITHE… where do I begin?? It has beautiful colors,

 unexpected motifs,

little surprises…like the bunny, the baby deer…

Not to mention the quotes and writing…. And that Owl!! <3

I have so so many ideas in my head! But as usual, not enough time… However, I do have TWO projects to show you today, YAY!!

First is a quilt that I actually made before the Blog Tour and it was commissioned quilt. I very rarely do this, but when friend of a friend wants to have a very special and surprising birthday gift for his wife – I can’t say no! When I was told that they want a modern, simple design and colors to be blues and grays, and Blithe just became available – I jumped to make a quick design in my EQ7 and color it with Blithe fabrics!

I had a few designs, but this one was chosen and you know what – I LOVE this simple pattern when showing off beautiful fabrics is a primary goal! It is just SQUARES!! Just simple squares (in this case 6″ finished), set on-point and colors arranged as you like.
Here is my beginning (there is just something so exciting when you start placing your design, in fabric, on that design wall!!!)

After laying out the whole quilt and setting triangles on the edges, rows were sewn (in diagonal direction) and – VOILA!: (yes, I did change few fabric form the EQ coloring)

I decided on wool batting and flannel on the back and chose (for the first time!) a thicker thread for quilting  – 28wt Aurifil!! I have to say – falling in love with this combo of wool batting and thread that shows a bit more!!

For quilting, I just let each and every print in this beautiful collection guide me for inspiration on motifs – flowers, waves, leaves… It was really so much fun!

I really LOVED making this simple quilt! And I am so thrilled that the birthday girl also loved it! It is called WINTER’S DREAM.

The actual Blog Tour idea that I had since I saw Blithe fabrics was somewhat different… Have you ever made a BARGELLO style quilt? I love them, I teach them, I p[lay with that style a lot and when I saw that Evergreens Frozen fabric, I knew I had to try it!!
It was a toss-up between using Frozen Forestland colorway or Mist Woodland colorway… oh who am I kidding – I want to make it from BOTH!! 🙂
This was initial fabric pull:

Traditionally, bargello quilt is made by cutting all your fabric strips the same width (2.5″, for example), but I wanted to use the Evergreens panel in its entirety, therefore all other fabrics were 2.5″ strips, but Evergreens was a 12.5″ strip.
For Bargello, you join all your strips, lengthwise, in order you want, and then you finally join the first and last strip to form a tube – here was mine:

After that, you cut “rings” out of your fabric tube, in different widths, and open those rings as you like, to form the design. Here is what I came up with:

It needed another thin strip, I thought…

Now I was ready to sew them all up and quilt!
I used the same, 28wt Aurifil this time too (did I mention I was falling in love with it? LOL!), and look what happened with my LAST few swirls of quilting!!

Yup, you saw that right!! – to the very last inch of thread!! Nothing left!! PHEW!!

So here is my bargello-style wall hanging!

I kept thinking…WINTER SUNRISE?
What do you think? Somehow that glimpse of peach and pink colors…jut like winter sunrise!

Of course I had to take it out, in the first morning light, for some photos…

And look – I found just the colors in my sleepy, winter garden that are in Blithe fabrics!!

You noticed, it doesn’t have binding yet. That is because I think I want to do a FACING on it (so nothing is visible from the front, I like it just as it looks now!), but facing requires hand stitching, and of course I ran out of time for that.

But of course this is not the end of my winter-inspired, Blithe-filled projects! The other colorway bargello is in my head, maybe some pillows with that amazing canvas print, and look what’s draped on my mannequin – beautiful VOILE!!

Promise to be back with more Blithe projects (and actually much more, and new blog home and domain is in the working!!), but in the meatime, make sure you follow the entire, beautiful and so inspiring Blithe Blog Tour – the list and schedule is all HERE !

See you all soon, have a fabulous, inspiring winter!!
Love,
Marija