Pom-Pom Throw

I’ve some real exciting news about a new substrate at Art Gallery Fabrics—FLANNEL! And it’s not just any flannel, it’s AGF flannel so you know it’s going to be the best on the market, made with the highest standards. Art Gallery Fabrics flannel is 100% cotton, 43’’ - 44’’-wide, and DOUBLE BRUSHED, meaning it’s super soft on both sides and ideal to get you warm in the colder months. Also OEKO-TEX certified, so you can rest assured that it’s created without compromising the planet.

For the AGF Flannel debut, my Kismet Fleuron Haven print was chosen as one of the introductory fabrics. The colors of this print on flannel are as brilliant and crisp as they are on the quilting cotton substrate.

Pom-Pom Throw

As part of the upcoming AGF Flannel Look Book I made a new free project! This Pom-Pom Throw has all the yummy tactile goodness of super-soft flannel and extra large pom-poms! Best thing is it’s reversible! I used Fleuron print and Pink Clay solid flannels for my throw.

Download the free pattern from my Free Projects page!

This is the perfect beginner project and the throw is tied with the pom-poms so no quilting even required. I added Hobbs Tuscany 100% Cotton batting between the layers but it’s not even necessary to do that and there’s no binding either.

You can make your own pom-poms with a fork as your pom-pom tool and it’s something you can even get the kids involved making. The free pattern comes with instructions but I’ve a fun video tutorial on my @sharonhollanddesigns Instagram Reels that shows you just how easy it is to make your own.

Be watching for the AGF Flannel Look Book release and be prepared to be inspired with all sorts of flannel sewing ideas! I need to make myself some flannel Fleuron P.J.’s!

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.

Lilliput Look Book

Time has flown by and I’m behind in posting about my Lilliput Look Book that was released the end of April. My apologies but today’s the day to take a closer look at the projects I made with my new Art Gallery Fabrics Lilliput collection…

Lilliput is my first fabric collection designed with children in mind but it’s not your average children’s line because there’s so many prints an adult would love as well. Think sophisticated kids collection that focuses on nature and imagination.

I wanted Lilliput to have a very magical Look Book and so I created a painted backdrop to use in my home studio and created a fantasy forest in which all my Lilliput projects could be photographed and show the versatility of this collection from crib to kid.

This mural is no little thing, in fact, it’s about 9 foot by 12 foot and was painted onto a painter’s drop cloth canvas with household and acrylic paints. I color matched as best I could the colors from the collection and just freehand painted trees, leaves, and brush. I could only see about a 4 foot horizontal section at a time as I painted this draped over a ping pong table so it was a big surprise to see it up on the wall and coming out as good as it had!

You’ll see most of my projects have used this mural as an underlying theme to help create a magical, secret garden-type of mood.

Firelight Quilt

I’ve two new grand babies coming any day now and what a better excuse to create for my Look Book and make baby gifts at the same time! This crib size Firelight quilt is made from the Firelight quilt pattern released in February and you can find the pattern in my SHOP. I used Art Gallery Fabrics Smooth Denim as the background for the perfect boy quilt. The original Firelight quilt went to baby-to-be’s big brother so both boys will have the same style quilt with different looks.

I did a simple diagonal grid quilting in the ditch and bound the quilt with Smooth Denim in peach and backed with the navy dragonfly print from the Lilliput collection.

Make Your Own Crib Sheets

One of the easiest ways to personalize a nursery is to make your own crib sheets. I used Dana Willard’s of Made Everyday tutorial and whipped up this Forest Friends crib sheet in a matter of minutes.

Fox and Bunny

I don’t know about you, but I’m still a sucker for stuffed animals. I loved them as a kid and still do as an adult. Now I have grandkids I can live through them with new critters to love and cuddle. So, when I saw these patterns by Willowynn I knew I wanted to make them for the Look Book then gift them to the two older grandkids, ages 3 and 5.

Needless to say I had a ton of fun setting up this little tea party.

Whole Cloth Quilt

When I designed Lilliput and the Bog Party print I immediately thought I wanted to make a whole cloth quilt from this print so that’s what I did when it came time to so for the Look Book. I used the same print front and back and sandwiched two layers of Hobbs Tuscany 100% Premium Polyester batting for an extra puffy loft. I hand quilted a simple grid quilting design and used The Willow Markets tutorial for making a quilt like this.

This quilt has already been gifted to my son who’s also expecting their first child any day now.

Pillows, and More Pillows

The Cubist Illusion pillow is a free pattern from Art Gallery Fabrics. I adore this baby block look and want to do an entire quilt in this pattern in the future.

I used my own Hidden Zipper tutorial to professionally add a zipper closer to the pillow. If you’ve never tried it you really must—it’s easy and the perfect finish to a pillow. A pillow is also a great way to test out quilt blocks without the big commitment of doing a quilt.

Making your own pillowcases, like making cribs sheets is a great way to customize a bedroom. Pillowcases are an ideal project for beginner sewers of any age. I made these two cases using AGF knit from the Lilliput collection and they are now in use on my granddaughter’s bed. I used Dana Willard’s You Tube tutorial for these easy knit cases.

Pencil Pouch

This Rectangular School Kit is made using the free Odif pattern. Part of this project’s charm is that Odif makes a product called Odicoat that when applied to fabric will turn it into an oil cloth-like fabric. This makes a pouch nice for wiping off or as a travel or makeup bag to repel spills and stains.

Stitches From the Heart

This Stitches From the Heart wallhanging is a free pattern from our friends at The Fat Quarter Shop and was delightful to stitch up. The pattern also includes a mini version.

Since this project was small I hand quilted a clam shell design across the quilt.

Just For Fun

This had to have been the most fun I’ve ever had photographing a fabric collection because most of it was done in my studio over about 3 days. It was a lot of work but so enjoyable. This hideaway tent idea was just for fun and what I pictured my kids (when they were little) wanting to play in and dream the dreams that kids do.

Lilliput prints of Fort Imagination was used for the tent and Full Bloom covers the bottom cushion. You can see I got a lot of mileage from my backdrop!

Are you inspired to do some sewing? These were only the projects I made so to see more of these and the other incredible contributions by makers and AGF Studio, flip through the virtual magazine pages HERE.

Also, if you’re looking for Lilliput prints or any of my other collections, don’t forget to check out my FABRICS page to see which of your favorite online shops have them in stock. Soon, I’ll be adding my next collection Bookish to the collection list!

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 or related items I think you may enjoy.

Charming Nine

Charming Nine

Charming Nine quilt designed by Maureen Cracknell and stitched by Sharon Holland

Scrap quilts and Nine Patch blocks hold a special place in my heart. Collecting fabrics and making quilts from a stash is the core reason for me making quilts in the first place and what started my love affair with prints, calicos, and becoming a surface pattern designer.

The Nine Patch quilt block is especially meaningful to me because it was the second quilt I’d ever made and the first quilt I hand quilted. The first ‘quilt’ was actually a Nine Patch variation with sashing and tied, so technically it doesn’t count as a quilt because of the way it was finished.

To see my first quilt of a red and white Single Irish Chain quilt on my @sharonhollanddesigns Instagram post swipe through to the second slide to see a fun stop motion video.

Last week Maureen Cracknell posted images on her Instagram account of a Nine Patch quilt she was making that used 34 different fabrics from combining her 16 piece Art Gallery Fabrics Homebody collection with my 16 piece Kismet collection and 2 prints from Bonnie Christine’s Lambkin collection.

AGF Nine Patch bundle and photo courtesy of Lady Belle Fabric

I instantly fell in love with Maureen’s quilt and had to make one, too! Because I had written the free pattern for my Charming One quilt last fall, I thought it would be fun to continue the beginner-friendly series of easy quilts and dubbed this quilt pattern Charming Nine because of it’s inherent scrappy nature. Find both the patterns on my Free Projects page.

This fabric pull is a partial look at the fabrics that went into my Nine Patch version. I had just a few scraps of my upcoming Lilliput collection left and because they were light prints I decided to keep the lights and darks of the Nine Patches in the same place on each block, opposed to Maureen’s quilt that she mixed up the light and dark positions in the blocks.

By my using the light prints in the 4-patch positions on the Nine patch I could conserve my little bit of fabric and use the 5-patch darker fabrics in solids and blenders that I had more materials of. I ended up supplementing this pull with Homebody, Kismet, Spirited, Pure Solids, Decostitch, and AGF denim to get enough for my scrap quilt. I also kept the background squares of my quilt light to create a Single Irish Chain affect with the diagonal dark squares as a nod to my first quilt make.

I’m calling my quilt a Controlled Scrappy quilt because even though I used 16 different fabrics there’s an order to the light and dark placement to create an obvious pattern to the quilt design.

You will want visit Maureen’s blog to read about her quilt and see her beautiful photos. I like to think of our two versions as sister quilts, Town and Country quilts, or Controlled Scrappy and Super Scrappy quilts but however you name them they’re uniquely beautiful and so much fun to make!

Like I mentioned earlier, this scrap quilt pattern is fat quarter friendly and written using Strip Sets rather than cutting a bunch of squares. You can use as many or few of prints as you like and in whatever way to reach the total yardage required (see PDF pattern). I used a mix of scraps, fat quarters and width of fabric cuts to get the number of blocks needed. Jelly Roll strips will also be great to use on this project.

I could’ve evenly distributed the Nine Patch blocks across my top like Maureen had done but to accentuate the difference between our versions and keep more control over the look of my quilt I placed the Nine Patch blocks in diagonal lines by color or close enough color if I ran out of fabric for an exact match.

With the low volume spring-inspired palette and playful nature-based prints I was smitten by the cottage-style of my quilt and wanted to play off the vintage feeling to it’s fullest. So, to give some added texture and comfort to the quilt I used two layers of Hobbs Tuscany Silk batting! Doubling up the batting makes the quilt heavier and stiffer but has an incredible, vintage heft and feel! The machine quilt has lovely definition and the binding edge is thick and wonderful.

This quilt needed to be made and finished quickly because there was also a pattern to be written and photographs to be taken before posting a week later. I started cutting pieces on a Thursday and by following Tuesday morning put the last hand stitches in to the binding. I didn’t have time to send this quilt out to be professionally long arm quilted so I did the free motion quilting myself. Yes, it’s irregular and very organic (a pleasant word for wonky) but I’m very happy with the results and it fits the true utility scrap quilt tradition.

At first I was tempted to do diagonal straight line quilting but thought that would be pretty boring and maybe I could do something just a little better than that. I ended up with this not-so-perfect Orange Peel design that I will share with you just how easy it is to do—without even marking your quilt or using templates or rulers!

Orange Peel Quilting

1. Working on the diagonal, and eye-balling down the center of the blocks, start needle at the corner of a block and stitch an arching half circle or shallow curve that returns to the center of the block. Repeat that same arching curve, ending at the opposite corner of the block. Continue repeating the two arching curves on each block until you reach the end of the diagonal block row.

2. Turn the quilt around and repeat Step 1, arching the curves to reflect the curves made on the first pass down the quilt.

3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 creating parallel diagonal arching stitches down and back up each Nine Patch and Square diagonal rows creating loops as show in illustration 3.

4. Repeat Steps 1 through 3 in the diagonally opposite direction to create Orange Peel quilting. Note that the quilting on my quilt has shallow loops compared to the nice computer generated example. If you’d like your quilting design to be more regular and closer to perfect, you may want to mark the top first or use a curved ruler when stitching.

For the backing of my quilt I used Ikat Diamond Posh from my Art Gallery Fabrics Kismet collection. My labels are made by the Dutch Label Shop and I hand stitched the binding with a running stitch for a little extra special touch.

I hope you make yourself a Charming Nine quilt and get your quilt friend involved too. You could have a Nine Patch block exchange or a virtual Sew In—a good excuse to play with fabrics and sew!

Fabric carrots by Sharon Holland

While we’re talking about scraps, I wanted to share a fast and fun project I had posted on my Instagram account—Fabric Carrots. This was inspired by burlap carrots I saw at Target and thought, “Heck, I could make those and there’s some prints in my Lilliput collection that would make the cutest carrots!”

The project is so easy I felt it didn’t need any more than a silent stop motion video to explain how to make them. You can use scraps, make them any size or length you’d like, and there’s only two seams to sew! I took my carrots and made a door decoration from hanging them with raffia. Use the link and slide through the photo like the one shown above to see the tutorial video HERE. See the door decoration post HERE.

If you’ve been wondering about this Lilliput collection I’ve been talking about in this post and the few prints you’ve seen used in my Charming Nine quilt, I’m talking about the next fabric line I designed. Lilliput is my first ever children’s collection but it’s not just for kids and has prints the whole family will love. Take a look at the collection on the AGF website, HERE.

Lilliput is my 10th collection for Art Gallery Fabrics and is slightly delayed because of all the shipping hassles happening world wide but due in any day and it wont be long before this collection starts showing up in your local quilt shop and favorite on line shops!

I’ve started a stock list for online shops carrying Lilliput and you’ll find link on my Fabrics page. Some of these shops are taking pre-orders for the collection to if you’re one who likes to have collections as they first come out and before shops sell out you’ll want to get your name on the list!

Trust me, there’ll be much more to share about Lilliput and new quilt patterns in the weeks ahead. Until then, 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 or related items I think you may enjoy.

Sweet Home Quilt Along Finale Week 6

Sweet Home Quilt Along Finale Week 6

It’s been so much fun sewing along with everyone and seeing all the beautiful Log Cabins and Bungalows being constructed! This is our finale week for the Sweet Home Quilt Along hosted by myself, Maureen Cracknell, and Jennifer Jones. This Quilt Along’s taken a bit of the isolation out of staying home to be able to connect with the Sweet Home quilt makers on our Instagram community as well as on our blogs. Thank you to everyone who participated! The quilts being made are so adorable—see what I mean when you search the #SweetHomeQAL hashtag on Instagram and see all the amazing quilts in progress and finished quilts.

This may be the last official week of the quilt along but the blog posts and tutorials will remain up for anyone just starting their Sweet Home adventure. Before my big reveal of my Sweet Home quilt I thought I’d show a favorite photo from each week of my QAL posts. You’ll find links to those posts in the Highlight review if you need to read more, simply click on the aqua highlight “Week” title.

The quilt along ran six weeks total and covered a different aspect of piecing or finishing for each week. If you’re a novice quilter and want more instruction along the way—we have that too in the form of recorded Instagram tutorials over on my IGTV channel on Instagram. I’ve recorded step by step tutorials for you to access on my @sharonhollanddesigns IGTV channel on Instagram and the Sweet Home Quilt series covers fabric selection, Log Cabin block, and Bungalow block construction.

You can purchase the Sweet Home quilt pattern from my SHOP here.

A Look Back at the Highlights

Week 1

The first week was about selecting your fabrics for your quilt and cutting out the pieces for the quilt. You’ll find Instagram tutorials from myself and Jennifer Jones on how to substitute your fabrics in the pattern.

View my IGTV Sweet Home QAL series

View Jennifer’s IGTV story

My fabric pull for this quilt consisted of Art Gallery Fabrics Terra Kotta collection mixed with a couple Pure Solids and one print from my Spirited collection. This kit is available at Fat Quarter Shop if you’d like to sew a quilt like mine.

Week 2

Construction of the 10 Log Cabin blocks began and we learned about the many merits of chain piecing and how to control directional prints on Flying Geese units.

Week 3

Week 3 was devoted to making the Bungalow blocks and utilizing all the skills we’ve learned during the Log Cabin construction. There’s also tips and tutorials for using up those leftover half-square triangle from trimming the roofs.

Week 4

On week 4 we stitching up the Cornerstone Squares and adding sashing to your blocks to make a quilt top.

Week 5

Week 5 was a big blog post about sandwiching a quilt, spray basting, quilting, and binding. That post is loaded with tutorial links to earlier blog posts and tutorials on my blog. I finished my quilt with Chenille-It Blooming Bias (faux chenille) binding and you’ll find a video tutorial for that on the Week 5 post.

Week 6

Finale week is were all three hosts get to show off my six weeks of work and enjoying our fun Sweet Home quilts.

Here’s my finished quilt…

This sweet little stone spring house at a local park made the perfect backdrop for my quilt. We weren’t lucky enough to have a sunny day but the wind calmed down enough to get some shots.

Don’t forget to stop by Maureen Cracknell and Jennifer Jones blogs to see their big reveals and beautiful Sweet Home quilts.

This Friday will be the last Friday Giveaway for the Sweet Home Quilt Along and it will be our grande finale giveaway. Be following along on Instagram as all the giveaways will be held on that platform and winners will be randomly drawn the following Monday from the #SweetHomeQAL hashtag pool. The quilt along members that post their progress photos to public account on Instagram and use the hashtag #SweetHomeQAL will automatically be entered into every Sweet Home Quilt Along drawing! It’s that easy to enter, so enter often to up your chances!

And, while you’re on Instagram, take a look at the #SweetHomeQAL hashtag on Instagram and see what the other QAL Makers are using in their quilts—it’s an amazing resource not only to see fabrics but to make new friends!

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.