Swooning in Tuscany

I have often looked to photos I've taken for color inspiration. I did it with this Shimmer quilt, and I did it with this Swoon 16 quilt I finished up a few months ago as well. I love doing this, because it usually yields a color scheme I wouldn't have thought of otherwise, and it imbues a quilt with memories and meaning. My Swoon 16 quilt was based on colors from Tuscany. We visited Tuscany in May 2015 in celebration of our ten year anniversary and it was beautiful. The colors didn't translate precisely into this quilt, but I love how it turned out.

I also tried using a non-white background with this quilt, which is pretty far out of my comfort zone. I've used gray as a background before, but never a color like this. I was afraid of going too bold, since my colors are pastel-y, but I'm afraid I might not have gone bold enough. Still, I'm glad I tried it. I think it's important to stretch our creative muscles.

I also used some very cherished prints, including a yellow floralish one by Sweetwater and a coral floral from Kate Spain, among others. I'm glad to have them in a quilt to love and out of my stash before they stop being favorites...and now I have a few precious scraps to play with as well.

Venice Wallflower Quilt

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Okay, not really. But, we just watched Episode IV of Star Wars with our ten-year-old for the first time, and this quilt did originate a long time ago in a neighborhood far away...so...

When Kate Spain's Grand Canal line came out, I had to have some. I ended up buying a yard of the blue canal fabric, along with a layer cake. I've been slowly using the yardage, and I love it so much. After my husband and I went to Italy five years ago to celebrate our ten-year anniversary, I've been a little obsessed with sewing travel-inspired quilts, and I really wanted to make a Venice quilt to commemorate our time there. I also am still working on my Patchwork City Sampler which I'm doing with travel-themed fabrics, and I have another Italy-inspired quilt waiting to be quilted. Plus, that quilt I had published in Modern Patchwork was inspired by our brief time in Siena. So, yeah. Kinda obsessed.

Nevertheless, I love how this quilt turned out. I bought the Wallflowers pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew specifically to use with these fabrics. I have the Shimmer pattern already, and it's nearly identical. The only difference is the added corners in the Shimmer quilt, and the sashing. And the blocks are a different size. I emailed Allison and asked about the size difference in the blocks, to see if the Wallflower quilt would be a better fit for the amazing fabric, and she kindly emailed back! I'm sure she knew it was kind, but risky, as I could easily do the math from the pattern I already had to duplicate the quilt. Of course, I bought it, though. It's only fair. Be fair and honest to pattern writers, they do amazing work!

Okay, end of soapbox.

I loved picking fabrics to go with the Grand Canal fabric. I had all of the fabrics I used already in my stash, which was really helpful because when I finally got around to sewing it, I was on a fabric diet. We were building a new home, and I decided to cut my fabric spending. I did pretty well, too, and only bought fabric I needed to finish projects, like backings. And just a couple prints I couldn't live without. ;-)

One of my favorite additions is the umbrella fabric from the Charleston line from Art Gallery Fabric. It rained on us quite a bit while we were in Venice, so that's a fun tribute piece. And the geometric ones, of course, are reminiscent of the mosaics everywhere.

These blocks really are fun to sew. I love Cluck Cluck Sew patterns because they're always well-written and they're not difficult.

Northern Lights Quilt

This has been quite a summer. A year and a half, really. But that's not really why you're here, is it? The last weekend of June, we moved into a brand-new house. We spent the previous year looking for lots or homes, and planning a floorplan, and watching our builder build our dream home. Finally it was finished and we moved in! And two weeks later, we left for a trip to France. I have a French friend, and she was recently married and invited us to her wedding! She said to bring our girls, but I made the executive decision to take only the two older girls, ages 9 and 6, and we left our twins, who are almost 3, home. I couldn't imagine a 10 hour flight with them, let alone the jet lag and physical demand of European travel with two toddlers. One might have been doable. But not two.

Of course, a wedding calls for a quilt! I thought long and hard about a quilt pattern. I'm a little self-conscious about giving quilts as gifts to non-sewists because I'm not sure a patchwork look would be well-appreciated by everyone. So, I looked for modern patterns and modern fabrics that she would more likely be thrilled to actually use in her apartment. I settled on Jaybird's Northern Lights quilt pattern and a selection of solids selected from my Moda color swatch deck. The only problem I had was getting the pattern and the necessary ruler; I wish that Julie sold her patterns and rulers at her website. I bought the fabric through Fat Quarter Shop, but they didn't sell the pattern AND the ruler, only one, so I still had to buy the other elsewhere. I get it: I wouldn't want to manage an online shop. But still, with the patterns requiring a specialty ruler, it would be nice if I could have purchased both at the same source.

Onto the quilt, though! The instructions were great and the ruler made the cutting go pretty quickly. I opted to add an additional color and a couple of rows to make the quilt larger than the throw size she listed.

I knew my friend liked green and yellow, so I opted to start the spectrum with an orangey yellow and go to purple. I really love how it turned out and I hope she does, too! I made sure to back it with pinky so it's nice and snuggly.

The trip was great. I'd never met her now-husband, and he seems so amazing. I am so happy for her! And the girls did great on the trip. We started in Annecy so we could relax by the lake for a couple days while we recovered from the long flight and jet lag, and then we went to Lyon. She got married at city hall in Grenoble on a Friday and the next day she had a reception at her mother's home in the Beaujolais valley. The reception, as you can imagine, was stunning, despite a torrential rainstorm. On Sunday, we took a train to Paris before flying home on Thursday. It was just long enough, and we did some really fun things. The girls want to go back, so that's a win as far as I'm concerned!

And the bonus is that I have *just* enough fabric left to sew up a mini version of the quilt. I think. Julie has a mini version pattern, but with the ruler, I think I can wing it. So we'll see. Hopefully, you'll see a post of a mini Northern Lights quilt before too long.