When Bonnie Christine posted a call for designers to participate in her Cultivate fabrics blog tour, I jumped up and raised my hand!
Bonnie is a textile designer with Art Gallery Fabrics and the sweetest person you'll ever meet. I love her beautiful prints and inspired collections. Bonnie's Cultivate fabrics grew out of her love of gardening and wrote "It's about the romance of reaping the harvest". It was that sentence out of Bonnie's describing her collection that became my inspiration for my blog tour project.
Even though it's not technically fall by the calendar, it feels like fall time to me. My vegetable garden is winding down, fall flowers are gearing up to bloom, back-to-school preparations are in full swing and the daylight hours are slowly shortening. Fall is my favorite time of year. Although it's always bittersweet to see summer go, I love the "squirreling" instinct that sets and find comfort in gathering the harvest and preparing the house and yard for the winter months ahead.
Bountiful Table Runner by Sharon Holland
When I found out I was going to be part of the tour I immediately envisioned a harvest table and what better way to dress up a table but with a beautiful table runner! This project has even more layers of meaning to it because of my source of inspiration for my design. I am always scouting for new quilt ideas and found the inspiration for this quilt block in a wire mattress spring!
Donna, from Funky Junk Interiors had repurposed a wire mattress spring into a bulletin board. I loved the graphic shapes found in the mattress spring and immediately thought-- there's a QUILT!
Photo courtesy of Funky Junk Interiors
Photo courtesy of Funky Junk Interiors
This is a fast and fun project. You'll only need 4 fat quarters to make the blocks. The runner was a nice size to do a little hand quilting as well. I used these yummy 50 weight Aurifil threads in colors 2225 and 2920. A perfect weight for the hand quilting stitches to show on your work.
My "table" for this harvest gathering scene is really an old shed door turned back side up. I love the impromptu feeling not having a traditional table brought to the scene. Can you tell I had a lot of fun with this project!
Gather your friends and family and enjoy the bounty of the harvest (big or small). Take time to revel in the beauty around you--inspiration is everywhere.
Talented makers from all over the world also raised their hands to join Bonnie's Cultivate Blog Tour. To see the full list of the 20 participating bloggers click here. Yesterday, Danielle Golinski of Food Family Story posted about a sweet scrapbook page decorated with Cultivate fabrics detail. Tomorrow, Audrey of Skirt Fixation will be posting an exciting sewing project you won't want to miss!
