Looking Forward to the New Decade

Looking Forward to the New Decade

Resolutions have never worked for me. Instead, passion and goals are a much better motivator and reason for doing.

I don’t know about you but something about a decade change feels like it should be a big year. The last ten years I’ve been an artist, fabric designer, magazine editor, and back again fabric designer/author/quilt pattern designer. I achieved all those goals through continued education and passion. I’ve created an impressive amount of work during the past decade and this blog is visual proof of all that hard work.

Soul Searching

I’ve been struggling with whether or not to host some sort of quilting sew along or follow something I’ve been aching to do for a few years now—reconnect with painting. I know all of you would love a sew along and Maureen Cracknell and I have been kicking the tires on ideas but between our schedules and fabric collections it’s been very hard to nail anything down! The amount of advance work and prep is more than either of us can give right now. That doesn’t mean it’s an absolute “no” it just means I have nothing to announce at this time. Pursuing other aspects of Surface Design and being an artist means I need to put myself into my work 100% and follow my passion. This feels like the year to make that happen.

Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit Brooklyn Museum 2017

What I Need Right Now

One of the presents to myself at the end of last year was to buy the Georgia O’Keeffe Living Modern book from Amazon. I’ll have an affiliate link at the bottom of this blog post.

I was very fortunate to see the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 2017. The book and exhibit are more than an exhibit of O’Keeffe’s paintings—it’s about her intentional life style to reflect her art in every aspect of her life. Her clothing, home decor, minimal life style, and everything she touched supported her aesthetics. The exhibit placed her beautifully constructed and designed clothing amongst her paintings and photographic portraits. She was what we would call today a social media/branding genius. From her carefully curated outfits of black and white for studied portraits of her, of her with her art, and at home her Instagram feed (if she had one today) would be so polished and cohesive without even trying. I can only aspire to have such laser focus!

Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit Brooklyn Museum 2017

Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit Brooklyn Museum 2017

Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit Brooklyn Museum 2017

Now, I’m not saying I’m going to go off the deep end and becoming a minimalist or making all my garments but I would like to be more deliberate in my choices and find my painting voice again.

I’ve dabbled in many mediums and currently am in love with gouache because of it’s poster-like qualities and how it was used by textile/surface designers of the past. If you follow my Instagram @sharonhollanddesigns feed you may have seen my series of book covers. This is just something for funnies on the side—my real love is oil painting landscapes.

Book Cover Art by Sharon Holland

I love old books and especially the poster-like illustrated ones. The Old Santa Fé Trail is a book I own that’s a first edition, signed by the author in 1897. I saw a later edition online that had a green cover and liked that better than my copy so I took some liberties for decor purposes and went this a more colorful coloration.

I’m currently working toward having some of these book cover art offered as prints whether is will be from my website or from a print on demand service—it’s one of my goals for this year.

Book Cover Art by Sharon Holland

I had given my sister an original book cover painting for Christmas and had framed it before sending it off. I envision a reading nook or home library with my framed art and totally need to make a piece for this sunny corner in my office!

Mathew Boudreaux of @misterdomestic on Instagram is hosting an Auction for Australia that began Wednesday January 8 and will run until the following week. I will be adding a select number of prints to the auction so be watching his @mrdauctionhouse handle for my listings.

Continued Learning

The key to achieving goals is to never stop pushing yourself and never stop learning. Every new experience can build off old skills and open your mind to new possibilities—that’s why I love SkillShare.

Peace, Love, and Joy by Sharon Holland

Whenever I want to learn something or improve upon what I already knew—especially with technology that moves so fast—I can find it on SkillShare. If you’ve debated about trying SkillShare in the past this may be the year, the decade to give it a go! I am a SkillShare Ambassador and with it have the pleasure to give you a referral link for a Premium Free Trial of SkillShare. The Premium Free Trial gets you into every and any SkillShare course you’ve been wanting to see for two free months. You can learn a lot in two months but just think what you could do in a year!?!?

Right before the holidays I had a few extra moments and sat down with my iPad and Dylan Mierzwinski course on Illustration Practice: Lettering & Florals with Adobe Fresco. The wreath illustration above is what I made after watching her course and learned how to use a program I’d not tried before and loved it!

Bonnie Christine Focus to Flourish on SkillShare

My memberships (and your free trial) gives me access to Bonnie Christine’s new Focus to Flourish SkillShare course. Here, Bonnie gives us helpful insight into how to use our time wisely as creatives, create good habits, set goals, and basically go from dreaming to doing. Bonnie has inspired me to do more with my skills and find that balance between work and life. She also has corses on surface pattern design and is a phenomenal teacher.

Robert Joyner SkillShare courses

One of my very favorite fine artists to follow on SkillShare is Robert Joyner. His loose, expressive brush strokes, use of color, and technical skills help me to keep a fresh approach to my work. I’m basically going to go through every one of his course to get my oil painting mojo back!

Looking Forward

Prairie Flower by Sharon Holland

I do have a quilt in progress and will release a new pattern the end of this month or early February for sure. It’s called Prairie Flower and was the first quilt I made for my very first ever fabric collection with Paintbrush Studios (Fabri-Quilt). It seems fitting that this quilt started the last decade and brings in this new decade with a fresh remake.

Also, I’m working on a new fabric collection for fall of 2020 for Art Gallery Fabrics and over the next couple of month I’ll get that wrapped up. It’s very hard to work on that stuff behind the scenes and not be able to share for another half a year. Such is the life of a designer—I’m not complaining!

Wishing you all the best in 2020!

I am an Amazon Associate site and earn from qualifying purchases on the products I’ve linked below. The helpful products selected are the same or similar to materials used to make the project(s) in this blog post or related items I think you may enjoy.

Spirited Look Book - The Quilts

Spirited Look Book - The Quilts

This week, Art Gallery Fabrics released the Spirited fabric collection Look Book and I can’t wait for you to see how my new fabric collection comes to life in this virtual magazine.

Because I contributed many different projects to the Look Book and took many of the images used in it I thought it would be nice to break it down into subjects over a few blog posts and give you a personal tour of this virtual magazine. Go take a look at the entire catalog HERE and then come back for more views that didn’t make it into the magazine.

The Quilts

Blossom

Blossom by Sharon Holland

The largest quilt of the Spirited Look Book is my Blossom quilt of 72’’ square. This is my newest pattern release and now available in my SHOP. I labeled this quilt a Confident Beginner because it uses A/B blocks to achieve the overall design. What you get is the perfect canvas for showing off your selected prints and a lovely chain effect that connects the blocks. I even added a Controlling Directional Prints video to my You Tube channel especially for this quilt so you can tame those directional prints and be the boss of how they go together.

My beautiful daughter is the clothing model and quilt wrangler in these images. I’m not sure if it shows at all in the photos but it was a cold day. I draped the quilt over her shoulders to keep her warm between shoots and it was so pretty—I had the capture this scene! It’s one of my many favorite shots from the photography shoot.

Normally I machine quilt my quilts but because I had a heavy sew-list of makes and not much sew time I decided to make things simple for myself and send this quilt out to be long armed. I’m sure glad I did farm out the quilting to Brooke Becker of Lady Belle Fabrics. She did a beautiful job and with a quick turn around!

Brooke is wonderful to work with and she has a wide variety of super cool quilt designs to choose from. She helped me pick out this Garden Trellis pattern and I love how it echos the shape of the quilt blocks.

Lady Belle Fabrics is also a fabric shop and Brooke is carrying my Spirited collection along with many of your favorite AGF collections. She sells by the bundle and fabric by the yard—all at great prices!

Giveaway Alert!

For those of you that follow me @sharonhollanddesigns or Lady Belle Fabrics on Instagram we have a heads up for you that on Friday, December 6 Brooke and I are collaborating on a Spirited fabrics giveaway! Be sure to stop by IG on Friday and enter on my Instagram giveaway post.

Inside my quilt I used my favorite Hobbs Tuscany Silk batting. Silk handles much like traditional cotton batting but has a blend of 10% Polyester to help keep it from shrinking and the combination blend is light weight yet warm. The drape is wonderful as well with beautiful stitch definition.

This quilt looks right at home on the prairie as it does inside on a bed. If you love this quilt as much as I do, Lady Belle Fabrics will be exclusively carrying quilt kits to make a Blossom quilt just like the one you see here.

Free Range

Free Range quilt by Sharon Holland

With every Art Gallery Fabrics collection there’s an accompanying free quilt pattern. The Free Range quilt was designed by me (Sharon Holland) and made and machine quilted by the AGF Studio. This is the perfect size for a baby quilt at 42’’ square. I love how you can use a lot of your favorite prints in the half-square triangles and still have the large areas of hour glass blocks to break up the busyness. I even have you use the left over scraps for a scrappy binding—it all adds to the boho vibe of the collection.

Peppermint Twist

Peppermint Twist by Sharon Holland

The Peppermint Twist pattern could be my most popular design and you can find the pattern on my SHOP page. As you can tell by it’s name, I’ve always shown it in Christmas prints and the pattern comes in a table runner and large throw size.

I’ve been wanting to remake this quilt for some time now in non-holiday prints. I love the dramatic look of the dark Pure PE-482 Forest Night solid to pop the Spirited prints. I made less blocks than called for in the large throw and added some half blocks to the top and bottom edges (which were later cut off for a straight edge) and came up with a baby quilt size. The pattern does not reflect this baby size quilt but rather I’m showing you how to make a variation on the existing pattern and customize to the size you’d like.

Another change I made to this baby quilt was to keep the pinwheels all one print rather than two prints as in the original pattern. I love the movement of this quilt block and it shows off the prints really well.

Because of the small size I decided to hand quilt this quilt and used DMC Perlé Cotton thread in size 8. I backed it with the Tender Arrangement print from my Art Gallery Fabrics Signature collection. I love that there’s so many of my past collection prints that coordinate well with Spirited. If you already have some of my fabrics in your collection then you’ll love adding Spirited in the mix!

More Quilts

The stunning quilts in the above collage are made and designed by: AGF Studio (Dream Catcher and Izel Blocks), Harvest Star by Elaine Bergman, and Blooming Prairie Quilt by Marija Vujcic. See more of these beauties in the Look Book and on their blogs.

Spirited quilting cottons, knits, and rayons are shipping to quilt shops everywhere. I’ve started a stock lists of online shops for this collection on my FABRICS page and will continue to add links as more shops get their listings up. If your local quilt shop hasn’t ordered it yet, let them know you’d like to sew with these prints and feel the AGF difference for yourself at your favorite shop.

When you do make a project with my fabrics, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @sharonhollanddesigns because I love to see what you’re sewing! And tag the Spirited collection as well with #AGFSpirited.

—Happy sewing!

I am an Amazon Associate site and earn from qualifying purchases on the products I’ve linked below. The helpful products selected are the same or similar to materials used to make the project(s) in this blog post. Thank you!

Hold Tight Petite Sew Along, Begins!

Hold Tight Petite Sew Along, Begins!

You’ve heard right, I’m hosting a sew along and it starts, today!

As part of Blair Stocker’s Wise Craft Ruby Ruler™ Ambassador series and being August’s Ruby Ambassador (Read my interview by Blair—here), I thought it would be a fun collaboration to merge my Hold Tight quilt and Blair’s ruby-viewer into a sew along workshop-like experience!

Hosting a new sew along is the perfect way to introduce you to Blair’s ruby-hued artist’s viewfinder tools the Ruby Ruler™ and Ruby Minder™ and to continue our exploration of selecting color and value for your quilts that we started in the first Hold Tight Sew Along. The extra bonus to this sew along is the opportunity to connect you to more than 1,500 other quilter’s via Blairs private Facebook group where Blair will have live workshop-like sessions to support my sew along blog posts. Note: Blair’s FB group is free to join by answering three questions when requesting to be added to the group. If you can’t join in the live sessions—no problem—the videos are available for replay and ready to view when you are!

Wise Craft Ruby Ruler™

This sew along is also free to join—no sign up forms—just follow along and have fun. You’ll will need, however, my the Hold Tight pattern. If you don't have my Hold Tight quilt pattern already, you'll want to purchase the Hold Tight PDF pattern from my Shop page. The Hold Tight pattern now includes two sizes—the original over-sized throw and the new petite crib-size quilt. The material lists, cutting requirements, coloring sheet, and full-size templates are part of the fully illustrated PDF pattern. These sew along blog posts serve to supplement the PDF but don't provide the detailed pattern information that you'll find in the PDF available for purchase. If you’ve purchased the original PDF prior to August 5, 2019 and didn’t receive a special newsletter email from this blog sharing the link to the Petite Add-On download, see my SEW ALONG page to get your copy of the bonus size. You’ll find the Add-On download that contains the crib-size material list, cutting guide, and coloring sheet. Note: You’ll still need the original Hold Tight pattern for quilt details. The current PDF in my shop has been updated with both quilt sizes so patterns purchased after August 5, 2019 include both quilt sizes—no add-on necessary.

Week #1 - Color and Value

Welcome to Week #1 of the Hold Tight Petite Sew Along! For this blog post and the following two posts, I'll share tips and tutorials to bring your quilting skills to a new level. In three weeks you’ll no longer be hesitant about working with color and become confident about stitching a quilt with curves!

From now until August 21, 2019 I'll break down the key components of the Hold Tight quilt pattern into three manageable tutorial blog posts. These tutorials will be useful to anyone working with fabric and patchwork regardless what quilt you’re stitching. In addition to my written posts, I’ve adding skill-building demonstration videos from the first Hold Tight sew along. Find these helpful videos on my Sew Along page and can be accessed at any time. Plus, for this Hold Tight Petite sew along, Blair Stocker will be following up my Wednesday morning blog posts with a Facebook Live session at 3:30pm PDT covering the same topic that same afternoon!

For this sew along I’ve designed a 6-balloon Hold Tight quilt using Art Gallery Fabrics Pure Solids. This crib-perfect size is not only quicker to make than the original quilt because there’s fewer blocks but also has a manageable number of colors needed to achieve the balloon shapes and transparency effects between balloons. Either size you choose to make the principles of color selection and construction are the same.

Where to Begin When Choosing Colors

The Ruby Ruler™ and Ruby Minder™ rulers are perfect for helping to see values between colors by reducing hues to gray scale—allowing you to see value changes. But what does it mean when I say, value?

Value is the darkness or lightness of a color (hue). A high value change between colors can also be called contrast. Black and white have high contrast. A low value change between colors can be called tonal, making the changes (or steps) between the colors subtle and less noticeable.

Let’s assume you’re NOT working with a kit or fabric collection that a designer has already determined the color story. Most of you will be working from your stash of solids and/or purchasing fabrics for your Hold Tight quilt. Where do you begin in selecting colors and how do you get the transparency effect?

The answer is to think like a designer and artist. So as not to overlap too much on the great information I’ve already covered on Week #1 and Week #2 of the original Hold Tight sew along, I’ll cover aspects of color and value as I use them in my surface pattern design, artwork, and quilts. Be sure to take a look at those earlier posts if you’re wanting more insights into Color.

My Process

I’ve introduced you to the trick of using inspiration images for color selection on the Community Sampler Week #1 post and like I said, on Week #2 Hold Tight Sew Along. I used this same approach when selecting the colors for my fabric collections and my finished Hold Tight Petite quilt. Now, let me walk you through the process….

Spirited by Sharon Holland

My next Art Gallery Fabrics fabric collection Spirited comes out November 2019. Before I even begin designing prints I consider the season the fabric collection will be released—in this case fall. Then I think about the mood of the collection or what sort of story I want to tell—this very much influences color, values, and of course print designs. When you’re selecting fabrics for a quilt you may subconsciously be asking these same sort of questions: What room will I be using this in, who is this quilt for and do they have favorite colors, what story or mood, energy, or feeling should this quilt have.

After I have my brief or concept from those initial questions, I then go to my iPad and start poking around on Pinterest. I start a private folder to gather my ideas and allow myself to go down that rabbit hole. For your assignment, I want you to do the same thing but try not to think literally (like in this case, balloons) —just explore a wide range of images. You’re bound to have a couple beautiful images jump out at you that check off all the boxes in those initial questions. You’re golden when you can find one or two—that’s all you need—that sum up your vision in that image. Here’s the four Pinterest-pulled images that were the color and storyline inspiration for Spirited. You can view all the prints from the collection, here.

Storyboard images pulled from Pinterest

I used this exact same concept to develop the palette for my Hold Tight Petite quilt and I’ll go further into exactly how I extracted the colors from my inspiration images for my collection and for my quilt.

Inspiration images pulled from Pinterest

Because I’m heavily influenced by my upcoming fabric collection and craving fall colors (my favorite season) I found myself wanting earthy hues and an ethereal, muted palette and had that as part of my brief. Nature has always been an inspiration for me in my art so I started a search on butterflies and found these two images that I thought would make a nice color story. It’s a rather limited palette of chartreuse, gold, burnt orange, rust, cornflower blue, and lavender. I could’ve easily extracted the green in these images but instead decided not to introduce that color into the analogous/complimentary scheme that was happening already.

An analogous palette is one where shades (black added), tints (white added), tones (gray added) of hues (colors) lie next to each other on the color wheel. Complimentary colors are two hues directly opposite each other on the color wheel and include the shade, tint, or tone of those hues.

Knowing that the 6-balloon quilt has spots for four transparencies I was conscious to select colors that if mixed could yield plausible transparency colors. See Hold Tight Sew Along Week #1 post from the first sew along—it talks all about color mixing.

Extracting Colors

I’m fortunate to have a lot of design tools in my bag of tricks and I use Illustrator or Photoshop to extract colors from images. I don’t have any specific suggestions but I’m certain there’s many wonderful apps available that you can do on your phone and get the same sort of results—just do some looking around.

I import my images into my program and use the eye-dropper tool to extract a color I like from the image. Of course one could go crazy pulling colors so I limited my pull to eight on my initial pull—knowing my background was going to be off-white, I didn’t need to include that in my selection.

What I was aiming for in my initial eye-dropper extractions was a pleasing range of colors of similar value (darkness or lightness) to maintain my idea of etheral but yet, if I were to line up those selected colors from darkest to lightest there would be a noticeable change in value steps. In my fabric design, artwork, and quilting I try to have one or two value steps between colors that will be touching so they can stand out from each other. You can see that in my above example the colors almost step dark, light, dark, light….

Remember, my background is going to be off-white which in my quilt will be the lightest value. Any of the colors from my initial pull will have enough contrast next to the off-white fabric. So, if your quilt has a medium value background you will want to be pulling a lot of light and dark fabrics for the balloons.

From that initial pull I (with the use of my Adobe program) I then let the computer select the nearest Art Gallery Fabrics Pure Solid color (that I’d preloaded into my program). You can see the results of what the computer selected as the nearest equivalent. As for my textile designs I have all the Pantone colors preloaded into my program and do this exact same process on my first pass to creating a color story for a collection.

But what if you don’t have access to computer programs or apps? Go old-school and manually compare your fabric swatches. Here’s some ideas:

• Print out inspiration photos

• Take your own photos that could yield an interesting color story

• Use watercolors or paints

• Pull physical items from around your house that have colors you love

• Use a painting or colorful printed fabric

• Take a walk in a garden or museum

Getting Real

Now it’s time to get off the computer and start pulling fabrics in real life. I took my initial Pure Solids results to my sewing room and spread out my stash of Pure Solids to compare the print out to actual fabric. Here’s where your design instincts, the Ruby Ruler™, and your personal preference will go to work.

The Goldilocks Syndrom

1. The first photo is the fabric pull based on the initial computer generated AGF Pure Solids selection with two exceptions: The removal of PE-421 because it was too close in value to another fabric and PE-460 because it was too dark compared to the rest of the pull or too high of a contrast. I exchanged those fabrics with PE-485 and PE-457 and that’s what you’re viewing in this first photo. Colors don’t always translate perfectly from screen to reality, so it good to see them in person. I also wasn’t feeling the lavender (although its a gorgeous color and I so wanted it to work!). Viewing the lavender with the Ruby Minder™ I could see it was too bright or a pure a color (one without as much gray added) and not muted enough to play well with the vision for my color story. It threw a bit of a cog into my color wheel (ha ha).

2. The second image shows that I’ve replaced the lavender with a mid-tone gray but when viewing the new selection through my Ruby Minder™ the gray and the blue were too close in value—making it ineffective as a transparency choice.

3. For the third photo I selected PE-432, a lighter gray with a hint of yellow undertones so it related to the honeydew yellow. This color selection actually made more sense as a transparency color between the blue and the light yellow even though in reality mixing those two colors would produce a green—I wasn't going to bring green into my palette so this was my best neutral that would convincingly work as a transparency. A quick confirm with my Ruby Minder™ and it was just right!

I cut out all my pieces and put them up on my design wall to double-check my selections before starting to sew. It’s hard to see the off-white background pieces against my white design wall, but they’re there. I used my Ruby Minder™ again to negate color and view my pieces in gray scale to see if the transparencies and balance was cohesive. That’s when I did just a bit more tweaking to color placement from my original plan and added in a ninth balloon color of PE-484 for a smoother transparency between the lightest yellow balloon and the dark gold balloon.

Here’s my final fabric pull for my Hold Tight Petite quilt and I’m super happy with how it looks and relates back to my inspiration photos and brief for this quilt. I’m excited to see what Blair selects for her quilt and would love to see your inspiration for your color story and fabric pull, too! If you’re on Instagram, tag me @sharonhollanddesigns and Blair @blairs use the #holdtightquilt hashtag so we can follow your progress. If you’re sewing with Art Gallery Fabrics be sure to tag #artgalleryfabrics too! Don’t forget that you can join Blair’s Facebook group and meet others working on this quilt along with value and color insights from Blair’s expert knowledge of the subject.

Blair also has a wonderful online class, Make Modern Scrap Quilts Using Color Value which is an evergreen class—you buy its and it’s yours forever, there are no "sessions". Read more about this class on Wise Craft Handmade.

Looking Ahead

This first week has been all about color and value and making your fabric selections for the size quilt chosen. If you’d like to work ahead and begin cutting out your materials you can reference the Cutting Templates and Fabrics video from the first sew along as well as the additional tutorial information found on the corresponding blog post from the first sew along.

Otherwise on week two I’ll blog about Cutting & Sewing Curves and Blair will being cutting and piecing live on Facebook. We’ll also have a fabulous giveaway from myself and Art Gallery Fabrics of a Hold Tight Petite Quilt Kit consisting of the pattern and the exact Pure Solid colors I used in my Hold Tight Petite quilt along with your choice of any AGF print for the backing! More details on that giveaway next week. Note to anyone winning a Hold Tight quilt pattern on this SAL that’s already purchased the pattern—we can substitute with your choice of a different PDF pattern from my SHOP.

Looking to week 3… I’ll be covering how to finish your quilt in a Quilt-As-You-Go method (QAYG) and talking about the hand quilting I did on my sample. If you’re interested in QAYG —don’t sew all your blocks together if working ahead! We’ll need the blocks as (horizontal) rows for securing to the batting and backing. More about that on the final week.

Hold Tight Petite Quilt-As-You-Go quilt assembly peek

Week #1 Giveaway

Right now, over on Instagram, Blair and I are holding the first giveaway. Visit my IG feed @sharonhollanddesigns and enter to win a Hold Tight quilt pattern and Ruby Minder™ ruler for yourself and a tagged friend! Follow the giveaway rules on the post. Look for the post giveaway image on my feed just like the one above and enter by commenting. Two pairs of friends will be randomly drawn from the comments on around 4 pm Eastern Friday, August 9, 2019 and notified on Instagram.

Both giveaways for this tour will be held on my Instagram account @sharonhollanddesigns. Be sure you’re following myself and Blair @blairs and Art Gallery Fabrics @artgalleryfabrics so you don’t miss a thing!

New Fabric Collection!

New Fabric Collection!

Spring is an exciting time of year with trees leafing out, flowers blooming, and the weather warming up for spending time outdoors. I’ve been anticipating spring even more than usual because my newest fabric line, Everlasting for Art Gallery Fabrics will be available in May at your local quilt shops and favorite online retailers.

Everlasting is my seventh collection for Art Gallery Fabrics and it tells the story of love, marriage, and family.

The summertime palette or navy, coral, blush, and teal pull at my heartstrings as I associate this collection with my daughter, Anna. As my only girl, Anna and I have had a special bond. She has a creative mind, is a nurturing mother, is smart, positive, and has a tender soul. Sometimes I see myself in her mixed together with the other important women in my life, my mother and grandmother but mostly she’s her own person and I love her dearly. I’m so proud of the woman she’s become.

Photo credit: Red Tree Photos

Everlasting has a classic elegance to the prints that were inspired by my daughter’s wedding. The colors for her wedding were navy and sunflower yellow. The bridesmaids, groom and groomsmen all wore navy. Anna’s bouquet was simple, ivory roses and the other flowers and colors came from seasonal wildflowers.

Photo credit: Red Tree Photos

My daughter wore my mothers 1959 wedding dress and the cut of this dress couldn’t have been any more perfect for my daughter’s classic yet modest style. See more about this collection and the other spring collections in the AGF Fabric Collections | May-August 2019 Look Book.

Just as it would be hard to image a wedding or springtime without flowers, I can’t image a fabric collection without floral prints. Joyful blooms and fresh picked wildflowers make this collection feel like you’ve stepped into a summer garden party.

Rather than calling my Everlasting collection a mini collection (because there’s only 10 quilting cotton prints in one color way) I think of this collection as being an intimate gathering. 

Everlasting has all the things needed for stitching beautiful quilts from the large floral hero print, medium scale prints in coordinate colors, and beloved, low volume blenders. Think of this fabric line as a marriage ceremony with only close loved ones in attendance.

There’s three knits and one rayon prints—perfect for summer garment sewing!

In just a few short weeks, the Everlasting LookBook will be published for inspiration viewing and quilt shops will have these prints in stock for your next make. Let your local shop know you’d like them to carry Everlasting from Art Gallery Fabrics and as online stores start listing their inventory I’ll be adding links to those shops on my Fabrics page.

Meanwhile, myself and a bunch of other super talented makers will be busily stitching up beautiful and inspirational projects from Everlasting prints. Here’s a peek at a new quilt pattern I’m working on called, Diamond-Cut. I can’t wait to show you more!