Rose Window Quilt

Rose Window Quilt

Rose Window quilt by Sharon Holland

Earlier this year Elizabeth Chappell of Quilter’s Candy Membership asked me if I’d like to design a quilt for the November Quilter’s Candy Membership and the answer to that was…YES! It took me several months to figure out just want I wanted to make as a quilt pattern and I wanted it to be something very special. The result is my Rose Window quilt pattern.

Quilter’s Candy Membership is a subscriber membership that opens a few times a year and features a new quilt or sewing pattern each month. Registration will open again in the new year so check the website HERE for more information.

Right now the Rose Window quilt pattern is exclusive to QCM but after 6 months I’ll be releasing it as a stand alone PDF pattern and it’ll be available in my shop. This post will just be eye-candy to show you the two sizes I made and to show off the work of my quilt testers with their beautiful Rose Window makes.

As I said, the pattern offers the quilt in two sizes. The oversize throw shown above and a crib/wall size quilt. The pattern is a mix of traditional patchwork and foundation paper-piecing. Don’t be frightened off by foundation paper-piecing, it’s easier than you think and I’ve created a video to go along with the pattern so you’ll have that available to you once the pattern is published this spring.

For the oversize throw I used prints from my new Art Gallery Fabrics Kismet collection and AGF Pure Solids. The backing is a print from my Art Gallery Fabrics Bountiful collection and it always amazes me how easy it is to mix and match between AGF collections!

The quilting on the throw was done by Brooke Becker of Lady Belle Fabric and we selected the Abstract Butterfly panto which has become one of my favorite quilt designs.

I went with Hobbs Heirloom !00% Cotton Batting inside and the quilt has a lovely, traditional drape and feel to it.

The crib/wall sample I wanted to make something with a holiday feel and selected various red and green prints from a mix of my AGF collections. For this quilt I added a few hand stitched lines of quilting and mostly machine quilted it all in a diagonal cross hatch pattern, using the points on the blocks as a guide. This quilt also has Hobbs Heirloom Cotton batting inside.

This is the perfect crib size or would also make a lovely wallhanging.

Meet the Testers

I was fortunate to work the the most incredible group of ladies this year and have them test my quilt patterns. About half the Rose Window pattern testers had never done foundation paper-piecing before and were surprised how much they enjoyed the experience! I think they did an amazing job!

I hope you stop by their Instagram feeds, websites, and or shops to learn more about them.

Jennifer Cannon is an Etsy shop owner of the fun Piper Autumn Designs fabric shop and can also be found on Instagram as @piperautumndesigns.

Find Jennifer Monroe on Instagram and @sunshineselvage

Find Joyce Ulm of @evamaecustomquilts, Etsy shop, and on her Facebook blog HERE

See Renata Auld’s beautiful work on her Instagram feed @ciaomamaquilts

Find Sara Marie Gardner on Instagram @sewlucille and her blog at Sew Lucille Handmade and Etsy shop by the same name, HERE.

Victoria Newmyer has a wonderful online quilt shop Midlife Quilter and beautiful Instagram account @midlife_quilter that you’ll definitely will want to drop by and take a look.

Angela Porritt can be found on Instagram as @wildrose_quiltco as is one to follow for a fresh take on quilting.

I’m excited to remake this quilt again in spring for it’s second launch to everyone and am thinking of remaking it in my Lilliput fabric collection that comes out in February. You can see Lilliput as well as the rest of the Art Gallery Fabrics new 2021 Part 1 fabric collections by clicking on the video below.

Happy sewing,

Sharon

Sweet Home & Faux Chenille

Sweet Home & Faux Chenille

Sweet Home quilt by Sharon Holland

Last week I released my newest quilt pattern called Sweet Home and shared images of one of the two Sweet Home quilts I’ve made from this pattern.

This week I’ll be showing the second quilt in a completely different fabric pull and color palette plus I’ve an awesome Chenille-It Blooming Bias giveaway to tell you about at the end of this post.

I love these quilts so much that I knew my two grandkids would love them too and have fun snuggling and playing on them. The first quilt with the Boho-Chic vibe of pinks, blush, and aqua was made for my granddaughter and her baby brother needed an All-American boy version. At two years old, he’s already showing preferences and one of them is his love for stripes!

Art Gallery Fabrics Sweet Home quilt fabric pull

Since this pattern is made for digging into your stash and using lots of prints that’s exactly what I did! I pulled a mix of Art Gallery Fabrics from lines I’ve designed and added in AGF prints from other lines and designers to come up with this American Summer palette.

With all the fabric shortages right now I’m not sure all these prints will be easy to find but, if you’d like to duplicate the American Summer version I’ve made the pattern supplement into a PDF download. Simply click on the graphic above and print it out for your reference when using the Sweet Home pattern.

The print used as the backing on both my Sweet Homes quilt is Lillium from my very first Art Gallery Fabrics collection. I used each of the color ways and in the fabric pull photo, I’ve listed the sku info for the color way used in this American Summer version.

The geometric quilting design on this quilt was long arm quilted by Brooke Becker of Lady Belle Fabric. Brooke did the quilting on both of my Sweet Home quilts and has a large selection of quilting designs and styles to choose from. I highly recommend her long arm services and as a fabric shop. Brooke’s quilting is perfection and the service incredible!

Sweet Home quilt kits available at Lady Belle Fabric

Find Sweet Home quilt kits at Lady Belle Fabric in a beautiful Art Gallery Fabrics fabrics curated by Brooke. Don’t delay, she sold out of kits last week but has reordered and restocked—they’re sure to go fast!

How to Apply Faux Chenille

The number one comment or question I’ve had about this quilt is about the chenille binding. So, this week it’s all about adding faux chenille to a quilt! I’ve put together a You Tube video to show you just how easy it is to attach Chenille-It Blooming Bias to a quilt to get this amazing faux chenille finish to the edges. Click video below to watch!

Easy-peasy, right!??! I’ve already ordered more Chenille-It 5/8’’-wide binding for my next new quilt pattern! Visit the Chenille-It Faux Chenille website and check out all the beautiful colors and project ideas! Keep reading till the end for a chance to win Blooming Bias tape for you and a friend!

I no longer have the Sweet Home quilts here and as soon as I took as many photos as I thought I’d need, I shipped both quilts out to my grandkids. This little guy set right to work servicing the town!

The quilts couldn’t have been made at a better time because my daughter and her family just this week closed on their new house and can get out of the rental they’ve been in since the beginning of the year. The kids have been sharing this room in a janky little turn-of-the-century house. My daughter painted the room and although it’s not got one straight wall, it was still a fun room to get these “in use” photos of the quilts. They’ll all be happier once settled into a house they can call their own.

Enter for a chance to win some Chenille-It Blooming Bias!

This week’s giveaway will be held over on Instagram. Visit my Instagram feed @sharonhollanddesigns for a chance for you and a tagged friend to win faux chenille Blooming Bias from Chenille-It. Follow the easy entry steps given in my Friday, May 22, 2020 Instagram post. Thanks to my sponsor, Chenille-It there’ll be 3 winning comments chosen! The randomly selected comments (with a tagged friend) will be picked at random around 4pm Eastern on Monday, May 25th. Winners IG handles will be posted on the IG giveaway post.

Spirited Look Book - The Quilts

Spirited Look Book - The Quilts

This week, Art Gallery Fabrics released the Spirited fabric collection Look Book and I can’t wait for you to see how my new fabric collection comes to life in this virtual magazine.

Because I contributed many different projects to the Look Book and took many of the images used in it I thought it would be nice to break it down into subjects over a few blog posts and give you a personal tour of this virtual magazine. Go take a look at the entire catalog HERE and then come back for more views that didn’t make it into the magazine.

The Quilts

Blossom

Blossom by Sharon Holland

The largest quilt of the Spirited Look Book is my Blossom quilt of 72’’ square. This is my newest pattern release and now available in my SHOP. I labeled this quilt a Confident Beginner because it uses A/B blocks to achieve the overall design. What you get is the perfect canvas for showing off your selected prints and a lovely chain effect that connects the blocks. I even added a Controlling Directional Prints video to my You Tube channel especially for this quilt so you can tame those directional prints and be the boss of how they go together.

My beautiful daughter is the clothing model and quilt wrangler in these images. I’m not sure if it shows at all in the photos but it was a cold day. I draped the quilt over her shoulders to keep her warm between shoots and it was so pretty—I had the capture this scene! It’s one of my many favorite shots from the photography shoot.

Normally I machine quilt my quilts but because I had a heavy sew-list of makes and not much sew time I decided to make things simple for myself and send this quilt out to be long armed. I’m sure glad I did farm out the quilting to Brooke Becker of Lady Belle Fabrics. She did a beautiful job and with a quick turn around!

Brooke is wonderful to work with and she has a wide variety of super cool quilt designs to choose from. She helped me pick out this Garden Trellis pattern and I love how it echos the shape of the quilt blocks.

Lady Belle Fabrics is also a fabric shop and Brooke is carrying my Spirited collection along with many of your favorite AGF collections. She sells by the bundle and fabric by the yard—all at great prices!

Giveaway Alert!

For those of you that follow me @sharonhollanddesigns or Lady Belle Fabrics on Instagram we have a heads up for you that on Friday, December 6 Brooke and I are collaborating on a Spirited fabrics giveaway! Be sure to stop by IG on Friday and enter on my Instagram giveaway post.

Inside my quilt I used my favorite Hobbs Tuscany Silk batting. Silk handles much like traditional cotton batting but has a blend of 10% Polyester to help keep it from shrinking and the combination blend is light weight yet warm. The drape is wonderful as well with beautiful stitch definition.

This quilt looks right at home on the prairie as it does inside on a bed. If you love this quilt as much as I do, Lady Belle Fabrics will be exclusively carrying quilt kits to make a Blossom quilt just like the one you see here.

Free Range

Free Range quilt by Sharon Holland

With every Art Gallery Fabrics collection there’s an accompanying free quilt pattern. The Free Range quilt was designed by me (Sharon Holland) and made and machine quilted by the AGF Studio. This is the perfect size for a baby quilt at 42’’ square. I love how you can use a lot of your favorite prints in the half-square triangles and still have the large areas of hour glass blocks to break up the busyness. I even have you use the left over scraps for a scrappy binding—it all adds to the boho vibe of the collection.

Peppermint Twist

Peppermint Twist by Sharon Holland

The Peppermint Twist pattern could be my most popular design and you can find the pattern on my SHOP page. As you can tell by it’s name, I’ve always shown it in Christmas prints and the pattern comes in a table runner and large throw size.

I’ve been wanting to remake this quilt for some time now in non-holiday prints. I love the dramatic look of the dark Pure PE-482 Forest Night solid to pop the Spirited prints. I made less blocks than called for in the large throw and added some half blocks to the top and bottom edges (which were later cut off for a straight edge) and came up with a baby quilt size. The pattern does not reflect this baby size quilt but rather I’m showing you how to make a variation on the existing pattern and customize to the size you’d like.

Another change I made to this baby quilt was to keep the pinwheels all one print rather than two prints as in the original pattern. I love the movement of this quilt block and it shows off the prints really well.

Because of the small size I decided to hand quilt this quilt and used DMC Perlé Cotton thread in size 8. I backed it with the Tender Arrangement print from my Art Gallery Fabrics Signature collection. I love that there’s so many of my past collection prints that coordinate well with Spirited. If you already have some of my fabrics in your collection then you’ll love adding Spirited in the mix!

More Quilts

The stunning quilts in the above collage are made and designed by: AGF Studio (Dream Catcher and Izel Blocks), Harvest Star by Elaine Bergman, and Blooming Prairie Quilt by Marija Vujcic. See more of these beauties in the Look Book and on their blogs.

Spirited quilting cottons, knits, and rayons are shipping to quilt shops everywhere. I’ve started a stock lists of online shops for this collection on my FABRICS page and will continue to add links as more shops get their listings up. If your local quilt shop hasn’t ordered it yet, let them know you’d like to sew with these prints and feel the AGF difference for yourself at your favorite shop.

When you do make a project with my fabrics, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @sharonhollanddesigns because I love to see what you’re sewing! And tag the Spirited collection as well with #AGFSpirited.

—Happy sewing!

I am an Amazon Associate site and earn from qualifying purchases on the products I’ve linked below. The helpful products selected are the same or similar to materials used to make the project(s) in this blog post. Thank you!

That Handmade Touch Book Hop

That Handmade Touch Book Hop

That Handmade Touch by Svetlana Sotak

I’ve been following the work of Svetlana Sotak for years now and am in love with her clean, practical, handmade aesthetic. When I heard she had a new book out I was excited to get my hands on a copy and be part of her book blog hop! Follow along on the hop via her Instagram feed at: @sotakhandmade

Soft Storage Bucket from That Handmade Touch by Svetlana Sotak

The book is called That Handmade Touch and is a Lucky Spool publication. It was so hard to pick just one project to make because honestly, I want to sew everything in this book but I needed to leave projects for the other blog hop makers to sew so I decided to sew the Soft Storage Bucket because:

1. It’s so darn cool

2. I can always use more pretty storage baskets

3. I’ve always wanted to work with leather handles and try adding rivets

That Handmade Touch by Svetlana Sotak

Never having added rivets to a project before was the only part of this project that made me nervous. Sewing up the bag was a snap and the instructions and illustrations were easy to follow. I think it took all of a half hour to make the bag and another 4 days to get the nerve to add the rivets!

Turns out, it was really no big deal to use the pre-cut leather and rivets—look for the affiliate product links at end of post. For the fabrics, I used the Sand Bar canvas from my Art Gallery Fabrics Coastline collection on the exterior of the bag and AGF Crosshatched Textured Denim for the lining.

This bag is just the perfect size and there’s so many uses for a bucket bag like this; toys, throw blankets, craft supplies, shopping, and the list goes on. I also like the fun option of rolling the top edge down to reveal the interior print or having it up for a taller bucket bag or easy-carry tote.

Don’t you just love the antique gold rivets with the leather!!!??? The leather adds the perfect accent for the coastal-look of this bag. I plan to make more of these to use as gifts for the upcoming holiday season—their roomy enough to fill with fun items and useful beyond just being the wrapping.