Ladybug Picnic! (And a giveaway too)

The winner of this giveaway is Kathy S., who likes lilacs.  Thanks to everyone for participating!

Well, it is day 4 of Sew We Quilt's Perfect Picnic blog hop and it is my day to post!

We had a "Ladybug Picnic"!  (Does any other child of the seventies remember a song by that name?  I think it was on Sesame Street maybe?)

This quilt was inspired by the ladybugs that always make their way into our daughter's room for two week in the spring.  They love her sunny window but drive her crazy!

I was interested in contrasting the traditional appliqué ladybugs and blooms with something really modern and came up with a herringbone idea.  I wanted the herringbone blocks to lead your eye travel around the quilt and be bold in scale - really quite different from the style of the appliqué.  (I thought about doing the herringbone blocks scrappy, but in the end I decided to make them symmetrical.  One could really do it either way.)

Because the motifs were fairly bold, I kept the colors soft.  The fabrics are from my Bella, Topiary, and Bonjour Mon Ami lines for Blend Fabrics, and some Vanessa Christenson prints, all thrown together.  I'm thinking that I might put this together as a PDF-only pattern - what do you think?

Riley Blake makes this wonderful polka-dot laminate in a variety of colors. The aqua matches perfectly.  I pieced it and turned under the edges and tacked it on the back of the quilt.  That way I can just remove it when it might need a wash!

For our picnic we had homemade lattes and sweet potato apple muffins!

And of course you have to choose a game that matches your quilt so it had to be Quads... (You can see the embroidered accents on the ladybugs in this shot.)

Now for the giveaway.  I'm going to be giving away a copy of my new pattern, "Flower Power".  Just leave me a comment on this post telling me what your favorite flower is, okay?  Deadline is the end of the blog hop - Monday the 9th at midnight.

Thanks so much to Cori from Chitter Chatter Designs, Mary from I Piece 2-Mary, Riley Blake Designs, and Madame Samm of Sew We Quilt for making this blog hop possible.  Don't forget to stop by and see all of the wonderful entries on the bloghop!

Monday June 2

Sew Incredibly Crazy

How Art You?

The Reluctant Quilter at Hazelnut Deux

GrammieQ's

I Piece 2 -Mary

Pig Tales and Quilts

Tuesday June 3

Ridge Top Quilts

A Stitch in Time

Quilting in a Not Shell

Just Let Me Quilt

Creativity Amongst Chaos

Wednesday June 4

Quilt Taffy

Pampered Pettit

Creatin' in the Sticks

Miss Priss Quilts

Life in the Scrapatch

That's Sew Julie

Thursday June 5

Ella and Nesta's Little Room

Thimblemouse and Spouse

Jane's Quilting

Amanda Murphy Design

Quilting Quietly

Words & Stitches

Childlike Fascination

Friday June 6

Quiltscapes

More Stars in Comanche

Stitchin' By The Lake

Life, Quilts and a Cat Too

Kris Loves Fabric

In The Boon Docks

Living with Purpose

Monday June 9

Cherry Blossoms

The Quilting Queen Online

Mad Quilter's Disease

Daisy Days

Buzzing and Bumbling

From My Carolina Home

Sew We Quilt

Happy sewing!
Amanda

City Lights… to benefit the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America

Hi everyone!  I hope you've been enjoying the solids projects popping up on the Wake Up to Kona Blog hop over at Sew We Quilt!  To celebrate the final week of the blog hop I'm offering up the Sunset version of City Lights as featured in Color Essentials, with proceeds going to CCFA, the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America.  (This organization is a non-profit, volunteer-driven organization dedicated to finding the cures for Crohn's Disease and ulcerative colitis.  They are also a great resource for people living with the disease.)  Lots of people have a misconception Crohn's disease and colitis only afflict the older population but there are millions of people of all ages who deal with these diseases on a daily basis.  Chances are you know one… or a few.

"City Lights" in the Sunset Palette (64" x 82")

I had a lot of fun making this quilt, and figuring out how I water to colors to flow in alternating blocks.  It is set on an Kona Amethyst background and the appliqué is done in various cool shades of Aurifil thread.  I used Warm and Natural batting for vintage feel.  Deborah Norris quilted it for me using an "Interlocking Shooting Stars" pattern by Bonnie Borseth.

I hope you like it!  If you are interested in bidding on it please visit this link!

Happy sewing!
Amanda

Wake Up to Kona is Here!

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season and is ready to begin the New Year with a  smile!

I'm so excited because today is the first day of the Wake Up to Kona blog hop featuring my Color Essentials book on Sew We Quilt!

As many of you know, Color Essentials is a part-quilting/part-color theory book; the projects explore combining colors in unique ways, all using Kona cotton precuts by Robert Kaufman and sewn in Aurifil thread on my Bernina 580!

Every day from now until the 21st, talented quilters will be showing off projects over at Sew We Quilt.  There are some really fantastic giveaways sponsored by Robert Kaufman and Aurifil!  I'll also be showing some projects from the book every few days over here.

The Kona Sunset palette as featured in Color Essentials

And to top off the blog hop, I'm be raffling off my Sunset version of City Lights from Color Essentials, with proceeds going to CCFA - the Chrohn's and Colitis Foundation of America, a non-profit dedicated to finding cures for Chrohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.  Bidding will start at $150 on the 15th and last until the end of the end of the blog hop - the 21st.  I'll be posting a link then.

If you love color and quilts check out the projects from now until the 19th!

Happy New Year and happy sewing!
Amanda

P.S.  I'll be going over some of  the principals of color theory that I cover in the book over on Bernina's blog, We All Sew, later today as well.

It's here! Color Essentials!

I'm so excited to finally show you all my second book, Color Essentials: Crisp and Vibrant Quilts!

Color Essentials is a book I've dreamt about for a long time.  It straddles the worlds of quilting and graphic design - two things I'm passionate about.  Color was my favorite class in college and it is my favorite part of designing fabrics and quilts.  I love exploring the ways colors interact with each other and make the same design appear wildly different.  In Color Essentials I cover the basics of color theory using Kona cotton solids and Aurifil threads and I provide some tips for stepping out of your color comfort zone to create something new.  I hope that this book inspires you to try something you've never tried before with color!

I want to thank all the people at C&T Publishing for taking a chance with this book.  Since it straddles the line between art and design it is a different type of book than you usually see - and C&T's fabulous design team made it look like a museum catalog from cover to cover just as I'd envisioned.  Because quilting is an art… our art, and beautifully colored fabrics are our palette.

Speaking of palettes, Robert Kaufman allowed me to put together special palettes of Kona solids especially for this book so that shops and quilters could affordably make the projects (thanks, RK!), so in addition to the Bright and Pastel palettes that already existed I designed Sunrise…

And Sunset…

The charm squares and roll-ups each contain 42 colors and the fat quarter bundles contain 23 colors.  I love them!  You can use these precuts for nearly all the projects in the book simply by adding background and border fabric!

To make things easy, I have included a spread in Color Essentials dedicated to each palette in turn, showing all its colors as well as suggested backgrounds.

But you shouldn't feel like you have to stick to those backgrounds - have fun with it and feel free to explore!

And here's the best part - we are all going to get to play with color TOGETHER because the fabulous Madame Samm will be hosting one of her wonderful blog hops at Sew We Quilt January 7th-17th featuring projects made with these fabrics - they can be a project from the pages of Color Essentials or they can simply be inspired by the colors found there.  I'm so excited to see what you all create!!!!  Really - this is the most gratifying part to me as a designer.  So if you are interested head on over to Sew We Quilt and sign up for a spot on the blog hop.  The January date gives us plenty of time to experiment.

And while you are over there take a sneak peek at the Aurifil thread box that Madame Samm put together to coordinate with the projects in Color Essentials.  It is BEAUTIFUL! While I wait for mine I thought I'd share the colors included there with you courtesy of Madame Samm.  They are:  1216, 1482, 1228, 189, 1706, 1392 , 357, 1285, 152, 1513, 1173, and 184.  I did use many of these same threads in the projects in the book (so much so I've very little left to show) - in case you plan to order any I like 28 wt. for appliqué and 50 wt. for piecing.

The entire book was sewn on the Bernina 580 - I love that machine!  It is a real work horse and can do so, so many things.  And the large projects were quilted beautifully by Deborah Norris.  Thanks, Deborah!

Goodness, what else?  Oh yes, I now have advance copies of Color Essentials in my store if you are interested.  I ship to the U.S. and Canada at this point and there is free shipping in the U.S..  For international customers, please contact your nearest shop - they should be able to place an order with C&T or with a distributors.

I hope you like Color Essentials!
Happy quilting and have a wonderful weekend!
Amanda

P.S.  For shops… I do not take wholesale orders but feel free to order a book to make samples if you are interested.  Wholesale orders can be placed through C&T Publishing or any of the major distributors.  It will start shipping later this month.