Fig Tree DESIGNER SELECT SOLID BUNDLE… brought to you by MODA!

If you are new here today, welcome to my little corner of the world wide web! 

I know I have already talked just a wee bit about these this summer but today is a special day in blogland. It is MODA BELLA SOLIDS DAY! If you float around a little today, you might notice that several of us designers are talking about our bundle… all of them are quite yummy, each representing the colors in that designer's signature palette.

Ours is…. well, classic Fig Tree. Not pastel. Not primary. Not totally bright, not totally soft. Somewhere in-between. "Fresh Vintage" is how we have always called it. But this bundle can be best described as plain SHERBET… there is no two ways around it. SHERBETS all of them!

Our BELLA SOLID colors include the following: ivory, butterscotch, cantaloupe, coral, persimmon, light lime, chartreuse, mint, green apple, parchment, fig tree wheat and faded black.

MODA offers them DESIGNER SELECT SOLIDS BUDNLES in these yummy little stacks of fat quarters available at quilt shops worldwide and we also offer them in 1/2 yds. on our site HERE. 

When it came time to make some quilts with the bundles… well, we went a bit SHERBET crazy and created an entire book full of them. I guess I'm not nothing if not a bit obsessive… wait, did I say that out loud?

 

Introducing the SHERBETS & CREAMS book.

The book celebrates these lovely little sherbet bundles and all that you can create with them. It has 5 quilts that are all made with the FIG TREE SELECT BUNDLES and a variety of cream/low volume prints for the backgrounds. Each quilt uses either 1-2 of the fat quarter bundles or a single 1/2 yard version bundle, a variety of cream prints [we have cream print bundles too] and sometimes a bit extra of some of the solids for borders, etc. Each pattern in the book specifies exactly what you will need for each one, each one is a bit different.

 

 

Here are the quilts in the SHERBETS & CREAMS book. Click HERE for more info…

SLICES

 

 

  

 

POPSICLES

 

 

 

 

 

RIBBONS

 

 

 

...If you scroll back in the blog, you will find that we recently had a quilt along for this RIBBONS quilt. Feel free to jump in even now!

 

JELLO SQUARES

 

RETRO

Personally, I am loving every single one of these for the summer. Next up on my personal list… Jelly Squares!

Hope you enjoy a little FIG TREE SHERBET goodness this summer along with me!

Comment and let us know which one of the 5 quilts in the book is your favorite and you will be entered to win a SHERBET BUNDLE GIVEAWAY courtesy of the lovely folks at MODA.

Thanks for following and playing along!

Sherbet & Creams Quilt Along #3

Hello Friends!

Surely hope that you have been enjoying the process of our Sherbet & Creams Quilt Along. For those of you are just joining us, scroll back through a few posts to see the other posts and instructions and feel free to join us! This will not be a complicated or very involved quilt so everyone can join!

We have been buried under Market prep around here for what feels like forever… I know I exaggerate… but doesn't it kinda help sometimes to exaggerate? Just saying. 

We still have people receiving their solids bundles and grabbing up new cream/low volume bundles as fast as we can make them. So I have been trying to slow down my posts a little bit in the hopes that as many people have a chance to catch up as possible. If you have been wondering if "its too late", its not, its never too late so come on over and join us! Really!

We will also have to take a little Market break here soon so bear with me on the timing in the midst of May. I most certainly will not forget about you… and it will give many of you more time to catch up. I will definitely try to get one more step in before I leave for SLC so don't worry too much!

Okay so here't the next step:

1. Add a pumpkin seed shape to each 4-patch on the diagonal.
2. Here are some tips for doing that successfully:  for the lighter colors, or any of the colors for that matter, that seem to show the fabric through from the bottom, we created little cream "insets". What I mean by this is that if you have backgrounds that have stronger prints on them [in our case this was primarily true of the black dots and red twigs], those motifs might show right through your pumpkin seed shape. That will not make you happy when you are finished. So in order to avoid said unhappiness, we just traced and cut the pumpkin shape without a seam allowance onto plain ivory fabric. We then tucked that "inset" inside the turned shape and used a few dots of glue or your favorite glue stick [quickly falling in love with the Sewline Fabric Glue Pen but more on that later] to secure it. Its quite fast and we have found that sometimes with larger appliqué pieces that have fabric underneath, it is well worth the few extra minutes of work.
3. We then found our fabulous box of FIG TREE AURIFIL THREADS, found the color that most closely matched our pumpkin seed and used that thread to topstitch the pumpkin seed to the 4-patch.
4. As many of you have asked, you can of course also appliqué these seeds down. We just prefer the speed and durability of this method. We plan on picnicking with this quilt a lot this summer!
5. It just comes about 1/4" shy of each corner. Although remember that the corners are pretty much irrelevant as they will get completely covered up by the next  step. Normally we would worry about getting those corners perfectly but we aren't doing any worrying here at all!!

  

That's it for this step. If you are altering the size and not doing all 80 4-patches, you will need these in groupings of 4. Meaning that the final block will use four of these 4-patches. We will be using 80 of them for our quilt but if you are looking to make less, these are the increments that you could make:  64 blocks for a square quilt or 48 blocks for a smaller quilt altogether. 

NOW FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE STILL PANICKING BECAUSE THIS IS AN APPLIQUE SHAPE. A COUPLE THOUGHTS FOR YOU….

As you can see above, no actual appliqué is involved :-)) . Really you should try this…. are you buying it? Have I convinced you? Look at some of the comments of folks who are surprised at how easy it is….

Okay but moving on. Here is the alternative. We are not in love with it, but it will be along the same vein as what we are doing here… or at least as close as I can get it in my brain right now! It should be pretty cute although a bit more angular than the pumpkin seeds.

1. Instead of cutting pumpkin seeds, cut your SHERBET SOLIDS into 2 1/2" strips. Cut them up into 2 1/2" x 12" pieces. if you are making all 80 pieces, you will need 27 different strips since you can cut 3 pieces from each strip.
2. Cut your 4-patche apart in half on the diagonal.
3. Center and insert one of the 12" long pieces in the center and sew to one of the halves. Once you have done that, trim up the corners of the solid piece with the tip of your ruler so that each end comes to a corner of your block. Try as hard as you can to make sure that your trim is centered on the solid piece so that your block is even [but don't worry if you are a bit off]!
4. Add the other half of the 4-patch to the other side as shown, centering it on the solid piece that you just inserted into the center. Your finished block should be app. 7 1/2" but I would wait to trim up all your squares at once, when you are done with all of them. That way you can see what most of your blocks are turning out to be and make them work together.

 

… the actual center piece will be longer than this one, this was just all I had here in front of me LOL!

… I pieced one and then had to rip it apart to show you what it will look like so that is why the ends of the second half looked trimmed off.

We will post better/ more specific pics on this tomorrow. This is all I had right now and I wanted to get this post up here for those of you who have been patiently waiting for the next step! If this alternative doesn't make any sense, don't worry, more tomorrow.

If you are following along on INSTRAGRAM, use the hashtag #sherbetandcreamsquiltalong and #sherbetsandcreamquiltalong because people are using both!

Okay that's it for now.  Bye, Joanna

Happy Easter Yesterday!

Ooops, it looks like even though our Easter newsletter went out on time… the blog post got stuck somewhere in Easter never never land. So figured it was still good a day late :-)!

Happy Easter my Friends!

Hope your day was filled with loveliess, family, friends, wonderful food and lots of eggs... both the real and candy variety!

In the midst of all the festivities, I hope and pray that you had a moment to reflect on the meaning of the day. Happy Easter everyone!

In honor of Easter, we are releasing our brand new MODA BELLA Solids "SHERBET" Bundle today!

We couldn't resist releasing this perfect bundle of loveliness a little bit earlier than we had originally planned. A perfect combo of all of our favorite MODA BELLA Solids, this is the ultimate compliment to your favorite Fig Tree fabrics.

 

 

Tied up in a fabulous MODA tape measure bow, this bundle of (12) BELLA Solids is the perfect start to so many projects!

 

Not only that but we are working on several special projects that will use this bundle along with a variety of some of our favorite low-volume ivory prints.

 

 

Do you want to join us? 

If so then be sure to stock up on (1) solids bundle and any (1) of the ivory low- volume bundles we have in the shop.

Stay tuned next week to receive your first set of instructions on how to get started on the project!

 

More info HERE.

 

ALSO STAY TUNED TO A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT LATER TODAY! Hint: It has something to do with a little green box!

 

Happy Sewing,

 

Joanna

Finally… MODA'S MODERN BUILDING BLOCKS FIG TREE STYLE FINISH!

I know that this one was a really long time in coming!

First it took us a while to get the finished blocks put together into 2 lap size quilts [that was what we decided to do instead of the one really large quilt that was a little bit too much for us]. We decided to redo a few of the pink blocks once I decided that the quilts were going to be for my boys. One can "hang with" a bit of pink. The other one… not so much :-)!

Then it took a while to get it on Diana's long list of quilts to quilt. Then it took a while to decide what to quilt on it. Baptist Fan seemed like the perfect choice as soon as we thought of it!

Then it took quite a while for me to get it to the top of the list of TO DO'S and bind them both. The week I got back from THE EPIC ADVENTURE when I was waking up at 3:00 am with jet lag… that seemed like a perfect time to finally get binding!

But now they are both done, quilted and bound. The back is yummy SNUGGLE and each one is for one of my boys. The oldest will take tone with him to college next year and the next one, well we still have a few more years for him to wear it in!

Quilt #1

 

 

 

 

 

Quilt #2

 

 

 

 

So happy with these!! Hope you are all done with yours or at least I hope it is on the top of your TO DO list. It really is a wonderful grouping of blocks… even if some of them are a bit large!

Limited Edition Kits

We have been able to make up some limited kits of 2 of our brand new patterns. Made from current fabrics, the kits are for our TWIRL and our HOMESTEAD patterns, in the "vintage version". Let me explain.

Each of our brand new patterns has been done/shown in two different way on the pattern: in either current or scrappy colors in order to showcase the quilt and to show off its vintage roots AND also in our upcoming Somerset collection. These kits are for those "vintage" versions.

This kit for the TWIRL quilt is made as shown in the pictures, with a mix of our favorite florals from Tapestry, Avalon, California Girl and Honeysweet. I think its a glorious little combination!

The kit for the HOMESTEAD pattern is the "row by row" version done with Bella Solids, MODA Weave and a bit of Honeysweet. It is an awesome, classic quilt that would be perfect for any house collection!

As usual, we will also offer several of our patterns as kits in the Somerset fabrics and the kits will need to be pre ordered on a layaway system of sorts with monthly payments until September. Those kits will become available on Monday and will ship at the end of September/beginning of October.

Here are today's kits....

 

 

 

 

 

AND HOMESTEAD...

  

 

 

 

 

 

Click HERE for more info on the kits.

In love with my BELLAS

 A few weeks back, my friend Sherri asked me if she could interview me about some of my favorite MODA BELLA SOLIDS and how I use them. As I talked to her about a few of my favorite colors, the ones that I have in the studio by the bolt, I remembered how much I really loved these fabrics and colors!

She posted some wonderful info about it HERE and explored more than just my own favorites but those of some of my friends so you should really check it out.

As for me, after talking to Sherri I felt the need to make up a yummy little bundle of our Spring feeling favorites around here. I mean these colors are just the inspiration you would need to create some beautiful Springtime goodies. They make me think of creamsicles in every flavor- strawberries & cream, pistachio & cream, mint julip & cream, bananas & cream [I do know that creamsicles don't come in some of those flavors but I think they should!]. As for the blues, they make me dream of sea glass in every tone. Just think of it!

I think it would be just the perfect addition to your solids stash and at this amazing price... I don't think you can go wrong. If you make something fabulous with it, be sure to send us a picture and we'll post it on FACEBOOK if we can!

Click HERE for more info.