One of the most exciting things happening with fabric right now are all the different substrates included in fabric collections. In just the last year or two, we have seen an explosion of collections that include voile, velveteen, corduroy, linen, or knits along with the the regular quilting weight cottons.  While some might be hesitant with these new-to-quilting fabrics at first, I hope you’ll be a bit daring instead. Seeing quilters mix the different textures right into their quilts has reminded me that there really are no rules and that the possibilites are endless for making your quilts more interesting.  Right now I’m working on a pieced quilt that has: voile, velveteen, heavy sateen, and quilting weight cottons, all in each block. More on that later. For now, I want to share a few projects we’ve used the interlock knits with.

This quilt, paper-pieced for us by the wonderful Sharon Moran, used the City Weekend collection (by Liesl Gibson for Oliver + S for Moda) of woven cottons on the front. But for the back, we chose a coordinating interlock knit from the collection. We were a bit apologetic to our quilter, , about sending a knit back for her to quilt on, but she just brushed it off and had no trouble whatsoever. Fabulous! And now the back is so soft, with the kind of comfort you get from flannel, but more sophisticated.

The great thing about these Moda knits is the quality. They are 100% cotton interlock, which is a double-knit, and strong. Interlock is not jersey, which is single-knit and therefore usually thinner.

I was obsessing over the orange-red knit dot from City Weekend, so although I had no pattern and had never really sewn with knits before, I went for it.  I only dared do this with the encouragement of my friend Anita who is always able to construct amazing concoctions without a pattern. I had a knit shirt on, so I used it as a guide as I added Dolman sleeves and a couple extra inches since I wanted it to fit kinda loose and I hadn’t pre-shrunk (this is a no-no with knits, yikes!).

I didn’t use a Serger, just my regular machine with a ballpoint needle and a zig-zag stitch. I had to adjust what started out as pretty wild alien shoulders, but that was the only glitch. Phew! In fact, it turned out to fit perfectly after I washed it.  Here I am showing off those Dolman sleeves. And I can’t tell you how comfy it is.

After that I felt like I should use an actual pattern for my next project, so I rounded up one I had, written specifically for knits. It’s actually out of print, but I think it’d be pretty easy to draft. It just has a boatneck and Dolman sleeves (which apparently I’m loving lately) and the front piece is exactly the same as the back. (We also have this great knit top/dress pattern for adults, this one for kids, plus this and this from O+S)

It was pretty fast to sew, and I love it more than I thought I would.  I ended up using a contrasting woven fabric for the sleeve tabs, because I accidentally stretched my knit tabs too much, but I think it turned out better this way.

All in all, sewing with knits is not the intimidating thing you might think it is if you’ve never done it before. Here’s what you need to know:

• Pre-wash knits first. They’ll shrink more than wovens.
• Use a ballpoint needle, which will keep the fibers from snagging.
• Don’t fret if you don’t have a Serger. Just use a zig-zag stitch, which allows the fabric to stretch without breaking the stitch.
• In general, don’t pull or stretch the fabric as you sew it, or you’ll get a wavy seam. I also found that raising the position of my presser foot slightly can help it feed through more freely. (Hopefully your machine has this feature.)

Be sure to check out the Oliver + S tips for sewing with knits.  Patty Young also has some helpful showing hemming techniques for knits. Next on my to do list: piece a quilt top with knits. I’ve seen it done and I want one for myself!

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.

What do you do when you don’t want the parties of the holidays to end but you do want the coldness of the Winter to end?  Make some party bunting with bright Springy fabrics and stay inside!

Mom and I made two of these late the other night, one with the Sugar Pop collection and one with the Hideaway collection, both recently arrived from Moda. They sure do brighten things up.

There are a lot of variations on this classic banner, we like our version for a few reasons: very few scraps, very little sewing, and you get to use a scalloped rotary cutter!

We’ll show you how we made ours on the Party Bunting Tutorial page.

One of Kathy’s favorite things to do while in the shop is choose 3 coordinating fabrics for pillowcases. Here she shows her choices for the body, trim flange, and hem of a pillowcase out of the Wee Woodland collection by Keiki for Moda. She can literally plan pillowcases all day long, and then we have to think of excuses to make them. Actually, the Million Pillowcase Challenge is a great excuse. If you haven’t heard of it yet, take a look and consider participating!

Our favorite pillowcase pattern is a double trimmed pillowcase with a clever trick that makes it super quick and easy to sew, and gives you a lovely hem with an enclosed seam. In fact, we’ll be teaching this method in a class this Saturday!  It’s the perfect project for a novice sewist, or anyone who just wants to feel the satisfaction of completing something in less a couple hours. (I’d love the satisfaction of completing a project in less than a month!) Once you make one, you just want to keep going. In fact, our teacher Evelyn Greene made boatloads of pillowcases with this pattern for Christmas last year. What a great gift!

I think the holiday pillowcases might be our favorite.  I have great memories of finally being allowed to pull the Christmas pillowcases out of the closet after waiting all year, and seeing what little treasures were to be found in the print of the pillowcase as I laid in bed.  But before Christmas is Halloween, and Alexander Henry’s spooky prints have just been begging to be made into pillowcases.

Our glow-in-the-dark fabric makes the perfect touch as a little trim piece. And I adore all the little different haunted houses in the Boo! Street print.  Just so perfect!

Join us this Saturday 9/11 for the Magic Pillowcase class, the first in our Beginner’s Series. It’ll be a blast!

Can you believe that Christmas fabric is arriving already? Here’s a little peek at BasicGrey’s brand new Christmas collection for Moda, Fruitcake.  Even though it’s only June, it’s beautiful enough to motivate a person to start early on holiday projects, like this quilt.

These reverse appliqued circles remind me of vinyl records. Ooh how I loved breaking out the Christmas vinyl as a kid.  But no, it’s still too early for that… right?

Go ahead and check out the entire Fruitcake collection or download the free Fruitcake quilt pattern.

Ah the quilts!  I could stare at fabric all day. I mean, I do stare at fabric all day.  And I love it, but when they are put into a quilt they take on a whole new life.  The quilt I kept coming back to every day of market is this Denyse Schmidt quilt featuring her new fabric line, Hope Valley.  These colors are more muted than her previous collections, which is part of why I’m so drawn to this quilt.

I also love that askew cream diamond between the print and the off-white background.

This will probably end up being a free pattern from Free Spirit and there’s a good chance I’ll be making it as soon as the entire Hope Valley collection arrives here in a month or so.

Speaking of muted colors, one of the directions that fabric is going that I’m liking is the trend towards less saturated colors.  We love the brights at Suppose, but I also like the sophisticated look you can get with grayed down colors, like in the Japanese Taupe movement.  And in this Jean Wells quilt seen in her schoolhouse series presentation.  I wouldn’t call them pastels, but low-intensity hues.  Gorgey.

More quilts of new fabric lines… Here we have Amy Butler’s “Sexy Hexy” quilt showing off her new Love collection.  A free download of the pattern can be found here.  There are some gorgeous prints in this collection including laminates (like oilcloth) that we’re looking forward to.

This photo is unfortunate because it doesn’t give the true effect of the colors in this quilt.  The salmon and greens are so bright.  This quilt features the Botany fabric collection by Lauren and Jessi Jung, new fabric designers for Moda. They have a great website where you can get project ideas and preview the fabric, which will release this March. (And yes, we will carry every single print in the collection too!)

Getting excited about all these quilts is exhausting.  I’ll save the last few for next time…

There is so much to see at market it can be a bit overwhelming. With all the appointments and to-do’s there’s not a whole lot of time for leisurely checking things out, but we try.  How could you not stop when you see all these pretty trims sorted by color?

Of course we make time to visit the booths of our favorite designers and stroke all the pretty things like the little dresses in Little Folks at Anna Maria Horner’s booth.  The entire fabric collection will be arriving at Suppose in December and we’re nearly peeing our pants with anticipation.

Heather Bailey’s booth was homey and oh so happy.

This adorable dress she made shows fabric from her new line, Nicey Jane.   I couldn’t help but harass her to start making clothing patterns.  (It’s pretty hard to find cool, well-fitting adult clothing patterns for quilt shops. In the mean time, at least there’s Built by Wendy’s patterns.)  The Nicey Jane fabric will start arriving in the shop within weeks!

Whenever I was near the Moda booth and caught a glimpse of this homemade mannequin, I got a little freaked out.  The photo would have been better but I didn’t want to get any closer.  I can only imagine what my mannequin-phobic cousin would have done had she been there.

At least there was the Moda home booth to distract us with it’s giganto learn to sew cards.  Watch out for that sword-sized needle, Mom.

More to come about market including a certain quilt I’m now obsessed with.

Everyone’s been all a buzz about Texture Magic, the stuff that shrinks your fabric to give it a gathered, puckered texture.  I experimented with it recently and every time I give it that first burst of steam and it starts to shrink it’s a bit of a thrill, especially if someone who hasn’t seen it before is there to shout in surprise when they watch it.

Out of the package, the Texture Magic feels like a synthetic satiny lining type material, but after the heat of the steam has shrunk it, it takes on a more plasticy feel, so you’d probably want a lining in whatever you’re making with your Texture  Magic.  Next we want to try putting batting between the layers to see how that feels.  On this piece I sewed the TM to the back of my fabric in a grid pattern, 3/4″ apart.

Based on the chart that comes with the TM, I calculated how big to cut my rectangle to get the finished size I wanted, but it didn’t shrink quite as much as it could have.  I sewed a second piece just like it but increased the stitch length to see what would happen and that one shrunk a little better.  I used those first textured pieces to make a handy little pouch (with fabrics from the Hushabye collection).  Haven’t decided yet whether it’s for lip glosses or pens.  This was just a quick little project to see what the TM looked like in something instead of just on a piece of fabric, but people are doing some really interesting things out there like using it as a substitute for smocking on the bodice of little girls’ dresses, or for visual and tactile interest in applique.

Here you can see a visual of the shrink rate. The piece on the right started out the same size as the piece on the left.  I sewed the Texture Magic to it with wavy lines that curve around the circles on the fabric.

You can create great effects depending on how you sew the Texture Magic and fabric together, for example straight lines can make it look similar to simple gathers.  Everyone around here thinks this one with stippling looks like brains. I’d like to try sewing it to a Kaffe Fassett print by following the design on the fabric and see how that looks.  Some have even tried quilting it into their entire quilt!  Surely there will be more Texture Magic experiments to follow.  Some of us started as skeptics but things are getting curiouser and curiouser.

Sometimes when people ask what on earth Quilt Market is, I like to say it is the Fashion Week of the independent sewing and quilting industry.  Basically, fabric designers debut their new collections in big, colorful fanfare. All day long we meet with our favorite fabric companies to choose the most exciting things to bring into the shop. Along the way there are so many new notions, patterns, doodads, and hoohaws to see that we can only stop if something really spectacular catches our eye. In the middle of the exhibit hall stands a quilt show where I had to stop and admire this quilt from Japan by Haruki Asada. I almost couldn’t get close enough.

The highlight of the day was the Moda boat party. We cruised up and down the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, catching views of the Heinz ketchup factory, a coal barge (remember how I am easily entertained?), a Pirates vs. Rockies game, and the convention center where we’ve been spending our long days. We enjoyed meeting shop owners from all over, including here in Pennsylvania and nearby Virginia. And we serendipitously sat next to the most darling ladies who, as it turned out, are from Seasons of Home in Midway, Utah, not so far from Suppose Preston!  We were so happy for their company.

There is just something about passing under a bridge on a boat. Am I the only one?

More exciting fabric related news tomorrow!