The Poppy Passion Party

Yesterday was about the finest day, weather-wise, that one could ask for to have a fabric launch party! It took place at The Pickle Dish in Carleton Place, Ontario.

This is the sight that greeted me when I entered the store. So fresh and spring-like.

I pulled my poppy sweater out of the closet for this occasion.

 A closer view of the fabric.

This is Jan Kittle, the owner of The Pickle Dish.

 Look who I ran into at the restaurant next door, on my way to the party.

Thanks to all the quilters and sewists and fibre artists who turned up for the event.

We asked people to bring Show and Tell of work they made with my previous fabric line, Falling Leaves. This one is by Lisa Smith. If you click on the photo you might be able to better see the striped binding she used. That is exactly what I envisioned for this stripe, that it would become a binding on something! I just haven't gotten there myself yet. 

This piece is by Emma Russell, and uses a lot of the leaf prints from the line.

Now I'm hoping my fabric arrives before I head out on my next teaching trip to Shelburne, Midland, and Barrie, Ontario.

I'm Having Another Fabric Launch Party!

My second line of fabric, "Poppy Passion", will be in stores in April. The Pickle Dish Quilt Shop & Studio in Carleton Place, Ontario, will be hosting a party to launch the line on Sunday, April 12, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. Come on out for refreshments and a chat, see the new line, and perhaps purchase or win some! 

Says Jan Kittle, owner of The Pickle Dish,

"If you were lucky enough to purchase some of Elaine's Falling Leaves and have completed your project, bring it along for show and tell. I will have fat quarter bundles cut and one meter pieces also. I will presell up to half of each bolt, which can be picked up on the day of the event. The remainder will be held to be sold to those who attend. We sold out of Elaine's previous collection in 1-1/2 hours so either call the shop to reserve a bundle, or plan to arrive early." 

Please drop The Pickle Dish a line if you plan to attend so Jan can determine how many cookies to prepare!

Poppy Passion is available in two colourways:

Purple Passion (click on that link to view the collection on the Northcott web site)

Coral Bliss (click this link to view the alternate colourway).

Hope to see you there!

Tutorial: Making Improvisational Curved Blocks

Here is the tutorial I've promised on how to cut curved blocks free hand. Because the background fabric needed to make my "Falling Leaves" pattern requires you to find the feature fabric that will only be available for as long as you can purchase my fabric line, I'm offering this tutorial for those who would like to try piecing blocks for the background.

In these two samples of my pattern, the background uses the feature fabric from my "Falling Leaves" line by Northcott. This is a beginner design because you only need to purchase a piece of the background fabric and use my pattern to make the applique leaves.

  

In my original quilt (below) that inspired the fabric line, I pieced every single block by cutting free-hand. Let's use the word "improvisational" to describe this method. My original quilt measures 39" x 58-59". Each block is 7" square unfinished, and 6-1/2" square finished (once sewn together). 

Because each block is cut free-hand, and the fabrics each person chooses will be different (either by type or quantity), each person's quilt will be different. I urge you to read this post all the way to the end before you begin. WARNING: This method might be challenging for perfectionists. I also strongly recommend that you not pre-wash your fabric as it will have more substance and body and piece together better. One pre-washed fabric is limper and harder to piece. 

I begin by choosing the fabrics I want to use in my quilt and cut enough squares for my quilt. For a beginner, I recommend cutting squares 3 inches larger than the finished block size you want. So for a 6-1/2" finished block, cut squares 9-1/2".  Note, the "cheater" panel in my fabric line has 4 inch squares. If you are making your blocks this small you will need to cut your fabric squares 7" in this case, but piecing such tiny blocks will be more challenging than piecing larger ones. I generally like to use at least two squares of each colour.  You will need as many squares as the number of finished blocks in the quilt.  Both my original quilt, and my Northcott pattern, use 45 squares and blocks. But as you will soon see, you are always cutting squares by two's, so you will need 46 squares of fabric. By looking at the colour composition in each quilt you can determine an approximate proportion of each colour. I would say the piece is at least 2/3 to 3/4 greens and 1/4 to 1/3 golds. I've also decided to use greens from both the "Spring Rain" collection as well as the "Autumn Harvest" collection.

To cut blocks, I work in pairs. I pull two squares randomly (that look good to me at the moment), LAYERING THEM BOTH WITH THE RIGHT SIDE FACING UP.

I take my rotary cutter and cut a gentle curve across the squares, slightly diagonal. 

Then I pull out the bottom (green) fabric and match it up with the two pieces of gold fabric. Perfect fit!  I usually do many of these in succession and then take them to my sewing machine to chain piece.

Before I feed them in my sewing machine I always lay the pieces out on my table to the left of my sewing machine to make sure those are the curves that fit together (easy to mix them up or flip them).

I use a 1/8" seam to sew the curves together. You will notice that once I flip half of the pair over to allow me to sew my seam on the wrong side of the fabric, the fit on the curve isn't perfect anymore and I have to do a little manipulating.

I find it easiest if I hold the top fabric with my fingers on top and thumb on bottom and keep making it meet the edge of the bottom fabric.

I press each block after each seam. I simply lay the block face up on the ironing board, feel with my hand to check that the entire seam is pressing in the same direction and gently steam press. I strongly recommend you do not pull and tug from the back side because you will stretch the seam. It doesn't matter which direction you press the seam.

You can see I've cut and sewn the first seam in an entire series of blocks here.

Now you are going to begin randomly choosing two blocks, layering them, and cutting your second seam. This means that all the blocks you match should have all had one seam already cut and stitched.

Again, I LAYER BOTH BLOCKS with RIGHT SIDE OF FABRIC FACING UP. The more seams you cut and sew, the wonkier your blocks are going to grow. So I also recommend that you line up your blocks so they meet up on the side where you are going to begin sewing.  I am right-handed so I will cut from the upper right side to the upper left side, and will begin sewing on the upper left side, so I want my blocks to line up on the upper left and top side.

 
Taking my next cut.

I now have a block with two cuts. I'm laying it out before putting it through my sewing machine.

Second seam sewn. 

Now I'm going to randomly match up blocks again that have been pieced up to this point (two seams each, 3 fabrics in blocks) and cut a third curve, which brings me to the stage below. Each block now has 3 seams and four different fabrics.

One more cut to go.

Here are my blocks all sewn (5 fabrics in each block, four seams). No it doesn't matter if a fabric gets used more than once in a block. This is a pretty serendipitous looking quilt.

I'm going to use my square ruler to square them up. Some blocks are going to be larger or smaller than others.  I want all the blocks in my quilt to be the same size, so I'll square up all blocks to the size of the smallest one, or to the size I originally intended,

The block on the right has been squared to 6-1/2 inches.

Once I complete all blocks I start playing with them on a design wall. For this design, I place them all in the same orientation with the look of a downward flow from upper left to lower right. WARNING: playing with blocks on a design wall is highly addictive and you might not be able to get to bed before 3 a.m. If you think you like your layout, take a picture, just in case you change your mind and then decide you liked the previous layout better.

After you sew the blocks together, you can add your appliqued leaves. The pattern is available from the Shopping Cart on my website. Or you could design your own leaves.

I hope this tutorial makes sense. I am going to consider it a work in progress. I will be happy to entertain questions and make clarifications as needed. If you have taken my "Reflections" class, we are using a similar piecing method, except we are keeping a gentle diagonal cut to this block. In the "Reflections" class we are making our first cut from corner to corner, which has a different result.

Shopping Cart is Live!

I am pleased to announce that there is now a shopping cart on my website so that you can purchase my patterns. You can get there from the Patterns page of my website. This link will take you there.

At the moment there are four patterns available, with more to come in 2015. Current patterns are:

Hosta Duo:

Hosta Trio:

 

Sunkissed Poppy:

                                     

Falling Leaves:

Please note that making the Falling Leaves pattern below requires that you purchase a pre-printed fabric from my Northcott fabric line. The fabric mimics the look of the free-hand, curve-pieced blocks of the original quilt that inspired the line of fabric. Since the Northcott warehouse is sold out of this fabric, you will need to source it from one of the shops that still carry it.  In addition, I am also working on a tutorial that will appear on this blog before the new year, that gives step-by-step instructions on how I create these curved blocks. This will hopefully help those who cannot find the fabric, as well as give my pattern a longer life. The pattern includes all the leaf templates.

 

This is my original quilt that inspired the "Falling Leaves" fabric line. All of the blocks in the background are pieced using free-hand, curved piecing techniques.

This is an example of the blocks. 

Poppy Passion and the brief life of a fabric line

It has been an interesting year being a Northcott Fabric Designer. I have learned a great deal! It was a year of planning and work that lead up to the release of "Falling Leaves" in September. Much to my surprise, about 8 weeks after release, the fabric line is now sold out at the Canadian warehouse, with a little of the autumn line remaining in the American warehouse.  What does it mean when a fabric line is sold out? Well fabric companies typically take orders before the fabric is even available, and then they decide how many yards to print based on the number of orders received. Orders are made at Fall Quilt Market in Houston or Spring Quilt Market, which tends to move around. At Market, shops in the retail business can go to see and order all the new wares, and they are able to view a limited quantity of fabric (they call these first prints "strike offs"). In addition, sales reps travel to shops around the country showing displays of upcoming lines of fabric. Based on all the orders at a certain date, the company decides how many yards to print.

So has it been worth it?  Yes, it has been more worth it than I expected. Originally I was under the impression that only 1000 yards of each of the 30 fabrics in the line would be printed, but based on the orders that came in, Northcott ended up printing 2,000 to 3,000 yards of each fabric in the line. I have also found that having a fabric line has lead to an increased flurry of teaching and speaking invitations. So in a way ou could say that I'm the flavour of the month, for I know the flurry will pass and then it will be someone else's turn. After 8 weeks of being available, even I cannot purchase any more of my fabric line from Northcott. I would have to go to a store that still has some of the fabric available and pay retail price. Somewhere in my little brain I expected that I would always, at least for quite some time down the road, be able to order more of my fabric line if I wanted to.  Not so, as there has been a good run and no more will be printed.  In that vein, let me introduce you to each player in my new and upcoming Poppy Passion line, due to be released in April 2015.

Poppy Passion comes in two colour ways. Each of the two colour ways contains 15 different fabrics: a major poppy panel, two ombre fabrics running from dark to light and back to dark, a stripe, two poppy prints, a pixelated print, and 8 single colours that coordinate with the line. All of them feature that mottled hand-dyed look since they are inspired by my hand-dyed fabrics. You will also notice that this line features MY poppies, and so I feel very much that this line really does look like Elaine Quehl. In the centre of the panel you will find the very same poppy that is featured in my "Kissing Joy" quilt.

Kissing Joy, 2009

This first colourway is called "Purple Passion", and is in every way inspired by the quilt above, as well as some of my sketches and photographs.

The second colourway is called "Coral Bliss.  It features the very same poppies as above, but in an alternate colourway.  I'm loving these softer shades.

Finally, here is the beginner pattern I designed to go with the fabric line.  It is a very simplified version of the poppy featured in my "Kissing Joy" quilt. I have simplified it so it can be managed be a beginner. And that is the goal that Northcott presented to me when they approached me about collaborating on a fabric line: that beginners and beyond could make something fast and easy that had a similar look to my work that had taken a great number of hours.

Seems to me that I move a lot slower than a fabric company.  I had planned to have a shopping cart on my website for ordering patterns by the end of November. Little did I know that the flurry of requests for my "Falling Leaves" pattern would trickle out by November, due to fabric in the warehouse being sold out. We did sell more patterns than I expected ... I really did not know what to expect as I'm new at this. For my next line, I'll need to have that shopping cart working from Day 1!

So if you were hoping to get some of my first line of fabric, I'd advise you to get to a store that carries it ASAP. Once it is gone, it is gone!