We’re continuing our look at our new fabric collections today with Tula Pink’s Prince Charming. I highly recommend reading her interview over at Fat Quarterly where she talks a lot about this line and her design process.  What I love about her aesthetic is that even though there are often animals hiding in the fabric, her fabrics are not what you would call novelty or juvenile. She calls it “an elegant interpretation of a child like spirit” which is spot on. As always, there are unexpected things hidden in the designs in Prince Charming, and you can take that as a challenge: to find all those “Easter eggs.” I particularly like the fly in the frog prince’s stomach.  This line should also please fans of Neptune, one of Tula’s previous lines.  She has revisited some of the colors and themes of that line which is why those tonal toile and honeycomb prints may look familiar. The colors are similar, but more “electric” as Tula says. In fact, she considers aqua a neutral. How brilliant! And true. You can build nearly any color scheme or project around aqua.  Prince Charming includes quilting weight cotton as well as voile, in several colorways that can be mixed & matched.

Tula Pink truly is one of the most visionary designers in the fabric world today. Always original, and with such attention to tiny details, and always knowing what a quilter needs. Thank you, Tula.

I want to give you an idea of what’s about to happen over here. This week, we will have 17 20 boxes of fabric arriving from various fabric companies. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the deliveries the UPS man makes at the shop, but these are big boxes.  I still don’t think I am fully prepared for this. It will be like the Christmas of all Christmases.

And just imagining how much room all this new fabric will be taking up is why we are still having a Market Clearance sale, making room for everything we ordered at Quilt Market, which will keep coming for the next several months.  Continuing through this Saturday (if the fabric lasts that long) a huge selection is marked down to HALF OFF. We figured we’ve never had a sale this huge since we’ve been open, and probably won’t again for another 2 years. Now, those prices are in-store only, but we have also added new fabrics to our online Clearance section.

But back to my real purpose for this post, which is to share with you some of the new fabrics coming in. The indomitable Anna Maria Horner has a new collection that is her best yet, named Loulouthi, and in 3 colorways each named for one of her daughters.  Here is what she says about this collection:

Loulouthi is a treasure box of all that I love about flowers and fabric coming together in form and inspiration. The word loulouthi simply translates from the Greek as “flower”. But in an ongoing story, my cultural heritage has enlivened these fabrics with visions of needleworks in progress, the gentle tending of village gardens, and the luxury of living alongside everyday works of art. The language of flowers and floral handiwork has spoken to me since before I could thread my own needles, and this collection is my reply to all that beauty.

And here is what it looks like! These are the quilting weight cottons. The “Juliana” colorway:

the “Eleni” colorway:

the “Isabela” colorway:

some gorgeous voiles:

and the laminates:

These images don’t really do the real thing justice. The beauty of this collection is in the balance of fine details within the huge scales. I’m always a sucker for stripes and geometric prints, which combined with the massive florals are such a celebration of joyful design. I see some late sewing nights ahead.

We get a lot of questions about what to do with pre-cut fabric, so I thought I’d share one of my favorite and most easy projects to do with pre-cut squares like Layer Cakes and Charm Packs: half-square triangles! These are so fun to make and it’s a simple way to enjoy the fabrics without too much fuss about a quilt pattern. And yet, there are some fun variations with these triangles.

The above quilt takes one printed Layer Cake and one solid Layer Cake, and makes close to a queen sized quilt.  (It features last year’s Kate Spain Christmas collection. Her 2011 Christmas collection, Flurry, will be arriving in a matter of weeks!)

Below is a baby quilt made with 2 Charm Packs. Your solid squares don’t have to be white though, these days Moda makes solid charm packs in all sorts of neutrals and color combinations so you can find the perfect one to match your prints.

To read more about half-square triangles with pre-cuts, including full instructions for these quilts, visit the Half-Square Triangle Quilt Tutorial Page.

Well, it’s taken about a week to recover from Quilt Market.  During that recovery we chatter a lot about the trends we see at market.  There was the first market to showcase organic fabrics, the market we saw SO many owl prints, and this time we predicted lots of butterfly prints (which we did see).  But best of all we noticed that hand-stitching is really taking over!

Last market Lizzy House debuted embroidery patterns to coordinate with her Castle Peeps line. And now there’s the increasing success of embroidery artists Aneela Hoey of Comfort Stitching & Alissa Thomas of Penguin & Fish, who both showed new embroidery & fabric lines at market.

Then there’s the debut of new artists at quilt market, like Sarah Jane (who we mentioned in previous posts). Her charming embroidery patterns are the perfect complement to her new fabric line Children at Play, really emphasizing the innocence and joy of childhood. (Watch for them here in a month or so!)

And of course there’s Anna Maria Horner’s new foray into needleworks, with a range of embroidery floss, Aida cloth, embroidery patterns, and cross-stitch inspired prints coming out this Fall.  I covert this dress we posted previously, that has a stunning cross-stitched belt and hand-quilted bodice.

There is something so appealing about the texture of hand-stitching, and the time and care it takes adds to the lure and impressiveness of each piece.  I’m so excited to see a surge in the popularity of hand embroidery, and you can bet you’ll keep seeing more about it here. In the mean time, if you’ve got the urge to stitch something check out our Poppies Embroidery Project.

Here is how the last few hours of quilt market are spent: rush to the Westminster booth to make sure we have ordered the new Joel Dewberry, Kaffe Fassett, Anna Maria Horner, & Tula Pink; rush to Michael Miller to make sure we get Sarah Jane’s first collection in it’s entirety, rush to Joel Dewberry’s booth to say hi, rush to Andover to make sure we get to see the future future Lizzy House collection and order it even though it’s only printed on paper and it won’t be out until Fall but we just looove it, rush to C&T to order the newest Stash books because oh em gee the Block Party book is out, forget to rush to the Threaded Pear booth to say hi to Gina (why is everyone always out of their booth when we remember to visit!) and then hurry over to reverently walk through the quilt exhibits and appreciate them while your heart is still pounding, until you can exit the market doors for the very last time this season, an actual half-an-hour before the show closes because you are just too hungry to stay till the very end. Phew!  The rest of the day is spent anxious to get back to the shop to show you everything we found. For now you’ll have to live with the 2-D version of our findings…

In the middle of the trade show floor is a small exhibit of quilts. I’d passed this a few times before I finally noticed it today. This quilt is called Circular Momentum and is made by Becky Goldsmith, half of Piece O’ Cake Designs, whose quilts always give me such an urge to applique.

Dummy me, I just now realized that the circular theme in this quilt is not only found in the pieced design and appliqued shapes, but also repeated in the various polka dots print fabrics used.

Not only is Anna Maria Horner debuting her new fabric collection this market, but she’s launching a range of hand-stitching supplies. Her Aida cloth, embroidery floss packs, and perle cotton boxes are arriving this September, which is not soon enough for me! I’m so happy to see such a resurgence in hand-stitching. I love it!

Tula Pink is no slacker. She has four quilt patterns coming out with her new collection, Prince Charming. This one is Crown Jewels and features the star of the collection, the frog prince. The best part of the frog is the fly hidden in his tummy! (Take a peek at the coral colorway. )

I’m loving this new bag design from Joel Dewberry, especially with that piping detail and made up in the laminates.

In the final moments of quilt market I was drawn into this thread-painted quilt, and just wanted to stare at these clouds created in the negative space of the stitched sky.

And with that, market is over!

We are exhausted and yet we can’t really contain ourselves what with all the inspiration (and fabric!) we’re getting here at quilt market.  Just you wait, you have no idea what is in store for you. For now, we’ve just got a quick update because, well,  I’d like to get some sleep this week.

Today we got to preview upcoming Alexander Henry lines.  These guys consistently set trends. Whether it’s being the first to do owl prints, or the first to use grey as a central colors in collections, we can count on AH to do it early and do it right. They’ve got an Asian-influenced indigo color story happening now that has got the wheels turning in our heads.

Jillily Studios pattern & notion company had probably the cutest booth at market, set up to look like a gelato shop, but with fabric on display in the gelato tins!  The sweet surprise was that they actually served us up mini sorbet cones. You’ll be seeing their new sticky finger-tip thimbles, Poke-a-Dots, in the shop soon.

Sarah Jane’s booth was calling to us again today. We cannot get her new line, Children at Play, out of our heads! Classic, retro, and simply adorable prints to watch for coming soon.

Sweet fabric dreams…

Friday is the first day that the show floor is open and we get to see the amazingly constructed booths of our favorite fabric & pattern designers, plus every new notion inventor and whatsit promoter. A few highlights…

Seeing Annela Hoey’s embroidery in person! Her  newest line for Moda, Little Apples, will be in the store this September.

Quilt from new Michael Miller designer Sara Jane, who also does the most adorable embroidery and has some sweet children’s prints coming soon.

Ok, so not fabric related, but I caught Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head in a tiff at the deli where we had lunch.

In a small exhibit we found this small quilt with the smallest of paper pieced compass points. I am in complete awe!

New patterns, fabrics, and stichery patterns from Anna Maria Horner.  Yummm.

Got to chat with the lady herself for a bit.

And of course I geeked out at Tula Pink’s booth.

Solids are really getting their due and are featured in this cute display from Kona Cottons.

More with solids. Always love a good rainbow quilt! If you want to be more sophis you can call it a color wheel quilt. Yet more quilting by the genius Angela Walters, who also has done market quilts for Tula Pink & Lizzy House (among many more).

What? This is pieced and appliqued entirely with minky/cuddle fabric!

Local pattern designer Jen Giddens had a booth at market for the first time and it looks so good!  Not only does she have new bag patterns out soon, but she designed all the fabrics in these bags as well.

Kaffe Fassett has a new book coming out of his quilts in Sweden! (If you know me, you might be able to imagine the squeal elicited by the Sweden part.) And I’m dying to make this new design using his shot cottons and stripes.

Phew!  2 more days… more to come!

It is SO nice to have quilt market in our own backyard in Salt Lake City!  Being able to drive our own cars instead of rentals and eat at our favorite local restaurants and have the entire Suppose staff come is making this market one of the best yet.  Not to mention all of the amazing quilty things we’re finding. I’m telling you, the bar keeps getting higher and higher in this industry. Rather than tell you, I’ll just show you. Here’s just a bit of what we’ve been seeing…

Tula Pink reveals her new fabric line, Prince Charming, in some new quilt patterns.  Look closely at the quilting, it’s pretty amazing and really accentuates the quilt design.

This quilt shows off all the prints in the Prince Charming collection.

Lizzy House tells the stories behind the stories of her new fabric line, 1001 Peeps, which will be arriving at Suppose in a matter of days.

Anna Maria Horner is releasing a new fabric collection called Loulouthi, as well as a range of embroidery & cross-stitch patterns & threads. This pillow shows off a big-stitch quilted panel from the collection. We’re a bit ga-ga over Loulouthi!

Those are just a fraction of the highlights from Schoolhouse Series, which we attended Thursday. Stay tuned for more from the show floor!