Macarons in Spring Bloom

Hello and welcome to the Spring Bloom Blog Hop!! I've only just met Amanda Caronia, the talented designer behind Spring Bloom, but already I know she's going to make a splash in fabric design. Her bright, colourful and fresh palette are a welcome sight for spring.  Read on to find out how you could win a FQ stack of Spring Bloom to play with!

In my quest to make every contributor's project in my book, I decided to sew up a delicious Macaron Quilt with Amanda's fabric. Christina's quilt design is really interesting; there are no blocks in this quilt. The macaron shapes are pieced right into a long strip of background fabric that has been cut like a hunk of swiss cheese. Once all the cutting prep was complete, I could not believe how fast this generous lap-sized quilt sewed up!  I didn't pin any of the curves. I don't do tons of curved piecing, but when I do, I follow this awesome video tutorial by my friend Leanne. It works like a charm for 1/4 circles and these 1/2 oval macaron shapes.

As my deadline for today was approaching, I needed to figure out quilting designs. I considered vertical wavy lines right across the quilt using my machine's triple zig zag stitch set wide and long. I considered an art-deco pattern that was a combination of straight lines up the middle of the macarons and curved back down around them, echoing the shapes in thread colours that matched the fabrics. Finally, I considered FMQ my recent standard of all-over looping meanders.  Then I had a little chat with myself that turned into a pep talk ( I'd been convincing myself I wasn't able to do all that negative space justice with my out-of-practice FMQ skills).

I had another look at Amanda's fabric to see if there were some shapes I could adopt for quilting. I grabbed some old practice quilt sandwiches from a previous class (and said, hey, you did a great job on these practice designs, just get busy and go for it!). Seriously, I did have to pull on my big girl panties and just GO!

The flowers in this print inspired my petalled paisley quilting.

The first thing I did was define the vertical columns between the macarons with a stitch in the ditch of the seam and then a line 1/4" away. Between these lines, I did a loopy back and forth thingy that I've always liked - I think it looks great in a long narrow space and on this quilt, sort of like the delicious cream filling for the macarons!  Everywhere else in the negative space I quilted a sort of petalled paisley shape.  In spots where I needed to fill to the edges, I went around with a second row of petals here and there. For now the macarons are not quilted. I'm contemplating a handstitch with coordinating perle cotton about 1/2" inside each macaron (what do you think about that?).

All of the quilting was done in one long day at Quilt By the Bay on Saturday. I think my Pfaff was running for about 8 hours!  I'm so glad I went for it. It's just been ages since I filled so much negative space with FMQ and to be honest, I've seen so much incredible work from talented long-armers, that I had psyched myself out.  I'm happy to say that this finish has renewed my confidence, so yay!

Amanda's fabric makes the prettiest macaron's don't you think? Strawberry, lemon, blueberry, pistachio and raspberry flavours come to mind.  There have been so many pretty makes with this line already. Check out the other stops on the tour to see some adorable little dresses, colourful quilts, pillows and bags. I'm excited to see Felicity's quilt tomorrow and was super impressed by Cindy's cool idea from yesterday!

If you'd like a chance to win a FQ stack of Spring Bloom, leave ONE comment here (your comment must contain your email address, or link to your email to win). I'll choose a random winner  on Thursday at 10:00 p.m. PST. Good luck!!  ETA: Comments are now closed. Congratulations Janet of WhatComesNext, you've won a FQ set of Spring Bloom!

Thank you so much for sharing your lovely fabric, Amanda and Windham!


SPRING BLOOM MAKERS BLOG HOP SCHEDULE

April 20 Windham Fabrics Snip-its, Bella Caronia Blog

April 21 Leah and Bea Koch – Wintergreen and the Bee

April 22 Nell Timmer - Nell’s Notions

April 23 Jessica Darling

April 24 Kristy Daum - St. Louis Folk Victorian  

April 25 Sherri Sylvester - Thread Riding Hood

April 26 Cindy Wiens - Live a Colorful Life

April 27 Krista Hennebury - Poppyprint  

April 28 Felicity Ronaghan - Felicity Quilts

April 29 Casey York - The Studiolo

April 30 Janice Ryan - Better Off Thread

May 1 Deborah Moebes - Whipstitch

May 2 Bella Caronia Blog That’s a Wrap