South Paw Quilt

South Paw Quilt

It’s pattern release day and there’s a new quilt pattern in my SHOP called South Paw! I love writing a blog post for a new quilt pattern because it’s one continuous stream of pretty pictures and inspiration that pulls together the weeks of hard work and love that’s gone into making the quilt and pattern—all for you to see and enjoy.

The South Paw pattern name was some word play fun to celebrate all the lefties out there and is what I lovingly refer to as a block baby that would come from joining a Log Cabin and Bear Claw block. The South reference is to the Southwest-vibe of the quilt design and Paw is a nod to the Bear Claw block—South Paw.

This is a fast and easy block to make and a great quilt for beginners as well. The pattern is fat quarter-friendly and plenty of opportunities to use and show off your pretty prints. You’ll find the material list for this over-sized throw quilt in the Shop description image carousel.

For the cover quilt sample I used Art Gallery Fabrics and mixed prints from my upcoming Lilliput, Spirited, and the AGF Decostitch blender collections and used AGF Pure Solids in White Linen for the background. I’m loving the cool spring tones of these color of denim, carrot, pale pink, and violet.

Get the Kit

You won’t have to search around sourcing the fabric I used in my quilt because our friend Brooke Becker of Lady Belle Fabric is kitting this quilt! You can pre-order a kit and as soon as the Lilliput collection starts shipping the beginning of April, you’ll be one of the first ones making a South Paw quilt just like the one I’ve made. Pre-order your kit HERE.

As soon as I had designed this quilt my granddaughter claimed this one for herself! So, to make it extra snuggly for her I backed this quilt with Shannon Fabrics Cuddle 3 Extra Wide backing in Woodrose. The color was just perfect and it looks and feels like velvet!

The beautiful longarm quilting on my quilt was done by Brooke Becker at Lady Belle Fabric so not only can you buy your quilting cotton from Brooke but you can have your quilt quilted, too! It’s very subtle but we used a pale pink thread with the Bangkok pattern from her huge selection of quilting designs.

For batting I used my favorite Hobbs Batting Tuscany Silk Blend batting for the most luxurious drape and quality.

Spring is just showing it’s signs here in south-western Ohio and even in just the last few days the trees are starting to bud out a bit. Unfortunately, over the last weekend when I needed to snap pictures of the quilt we still looked in the grips of winter dreariness. Above, shot on Wednesday at home and below, shot on the Saturday before at a nearby park.

I’m fine with the bleak outdoor shots because frankly, this quilt looks good anywhere. It was just nice to take a hike and get outdoors a bit and make my husband hold up the quilt for me, teehee.

The dried grasses in the image below I picked from the park to use as photo props!

Meet the Testers

South Paw quilt by Sharon Holland

For this quilt release I had some extremely talented quilt testers making their own version of this pattern. All the testers used Art Gallery Fabrics but selected their own fabrics and colors based on their vision of this quilt. I’ve had Meet the Tester highlights for several of my most recent quilts of this year and last and always create a collage showcasing the tester and the quilt they made from my pattern but this time we’re mixing things up a bit. For this quilt we all stepped up our game and incorporated a few images each tester curated from Pinterest to create a South Paw Moodboard collage to show off their quilt make and tell a bigger story.

Above is my mood board that includes a photo I took on our last trip to Arizona where we traipsed around Sedona. Oh, how I wish I was there now, photographing this quilt in those surroundings and can just imagine my husband holding up the quilt amongst the cacti!

South Paw quilt by maker Victoria Newmyer

Victoria Newmyer of Midlife Quilter shop used various Art Gallery Fabrics prints that include some of my Kismet collection. I am in love with her color palette of olive green, harvest gold, pink, berry, and black. This will eventually be a kit available at her shop once Kismet prints are back in stock. Be sure to sign up for her newsletters so you don’t miss a thing!

South Paw quilt by maker Tracey Taber-Perry

Tracey Taber-Perry does amazing quilts and you can follow her feed @ttabes80 on Instagram. The spruce and pinks color palette of her quilt is stunning and I love how she photographed this elegant quilt in front of the rustic white barn! In her quilt I now see the quilt block design as spring tulips!

South Paw quilt by maker Megan Eckroth

Megan Eckroth of @cartellastudio on Instagram is a new member to my tester group and this is her second test quilt for me. Megan is amazing and her work is exceptional and creativity is boundless! The South Paw quilt made from Art Gallery Fabrics Serenity prints with the smokey-blue background has captured her inspiration images to a Tee. Follow Megan on Instagram, FB, and her Etsy Shop and see more of what this gifted maker has to share.

South Paw quilt by maker Joyce Ulm

Joyce Ulm is a quilting powerhouse! This exciting South Paw version was made with Art Gallery Fabric Terra Kotta prints and AGF Pure Solids background. I love the bold print backing and how the quilt relates to her inspiration images of shapes and colors. See more of Joyce’s work on Instagram @evamaecustomquilts, Etsy shop, and on her Facebook blog HERE, and does long arm quilting as well!

South Paw quilt by maker Marija Vujcic

The instant Marija Vujcic saw my South Paw quilt pattern it reminded her of her Serbian heritage and particularly Pirot kilim rugs. Marija’s mood board tells the story of her color inspiration, heritage, and color palette for this most amazing quilt. Follow this talented lady on Instagram Marija Vujcic and on her blog at Mara Quilt Designs. Her passion for sewing and life has no bounds and it’s wonderful to have her testing my patterns!

South Paw quilt by maker Mary Gove

Mary Gove amazes me with every quilt she makes. She has an eye for design that translates into quilts you want to use in every room in your house. For her South Paw make she chose to use only Art Gallery Fabrics solids, four plus the background for five total colors that is inspired by her turquoise earrings—stunning! See more of Mary’s work on her Instagram account @thecurlyquilter.

South Paw quilt by maker Amanda Bagin

This is the first quilt Amanda Bagin has tested for me as she just joined our group at the beginning of the year. It was a no-brainer to bring Amanda into our testers fold and you can see yourself from her Instagram feed @quiltsbycritter why I fell instantly in love with her work. Amanda has a clean, fresh style and you can see that in her crisp and graphic South Paw quilt in turquoise and terracotta. Along with AGF Pure Solids she also used prints from the AGF Studio Luna and Laurel collection.

South Paw quilt by maker Jennifer Cannon

Jennifer Cannon is owner of Piper Autumn Designs shop and the face behind this stunning all solids South Paw quilt. Jen used Art Gallery Fabrics Pure Solids in tropical sherbet colors that she’ll have available as bundles in her shop. The quilt design pops off the Nocturnal blue background—what a fun quilt! Visit Jen’s Etsy shop Piper Autumn Designs and see all her Quilty doings on Instagram at @piperautumndesigns.

South Paw quilt by maker Christine Trotta

Christine Trotta used AGF Smooth Denim Afternoon Sail for the background in her South Paw quilt as a nod to Ina Garten’s signature denim blouse then mixed in feminine AGF florals of spring-fresh colors adds a bit of boho flare to classic chambray. Visit Christines Etsy Shop and Blog as well as her Instagram account @serendipityinlovecreations.

Wasn’t that fun? Now, go grab your pattern from my SHOP and start planning your South Paw quilt today! If you are posting your South Paw quilt make to Instagram, be sure to tag me @sharonhollanddesigns and use the hashtag #SouthPawQuilt so I don’t miss seeing your inspired make!

And, for links to the products I used to make my quilt, see the affiliate Amazon links below.

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 or related items I think you may enjoy.

Charming Nine

Charming Nine

Charming Nine quilt designed by Maureen Cracknell and stitched by Sharon Holland

Scrap quilts and Nine Patch blocks hold a special place in my heart. Collecting fabrics and making quilts from a stash is the core reason for me making quilts in the first place and what started my love affair with prints, calicos, and becoming a surface pattern designer.

The Nine Patch quilt block is especially meaningful to me because it was the second quilt I’d ever made and the first quilt I hand quilted. The first ‘quilt’ was actually a Nine Patch variation with sashing and tied, so technically it doesn’t count as a quilt because of the way it was finished.

To see my first quilt of a red and white Single Irish Chain quilt on my @sharonhollanddesigns Instagram post swipe through to the second slide to see a fun stop motion video.

Last week Maureen Cracknell posted images on her Instagram account of a Nine Patch quilt she was making that used 34 different fabrics from combining her 16 piece Art Gallery Fabrics Homebody collection with my 16 piece Kismet collection and 2 prints from Bonnie Christine’s Lambkin collection.

AGF Nine Patch bundle and photo courtesy of Lady Belle Fabric

I instantly fell in love with Maureen’s quilt and had to make one, too! Because I had written the free pattern for my Charming One quilt last fall, I thought it would be fun to continue the beginner-friendly series of easy quilts and dubbed this quilt pattern Charming Nine because of it’s inherent scrappy nature. Find both the patterns on my Free Projects page.

This fabric pull is a partial look at the fabrics that went into my Nine Patch version. I had just a few scraps of my upcoming Lilliput collection left and because they were light prints I decided to keep the lights and darks of the Nine Patches in the same place on each block, opposed to Maureen’s quilt that she mixed up the light and dark positions in the blocks.

By my using the light prints in the 4-patch positions on the Nine patch I could conserve my little bit of fabric and use the 5-patch darker fabrics in solids and blenders that I had more materials of. I ended up supplementing this pull with Homebody, Kismet, Spirited, Pure Solids, Decostitch, and AGF denim to get enough for my scrap quilt. I also kept the background squares of my quilt light to create a Single Irish Chain affect with the diagonal dark squares as a nod to my first quilt make.

I’m calling my quilt a Controlled Scrappy quilt because even though I used 16 different fabrics there’s an order to the light and dark placement to create an obvious pattern to the quilt design.

You will want visit Maureen’s blog to read about her quilt and see her beautiful photos. I like to think of our two versions as sister quilts, Town and Country quilts, or Controlled Scrappy and Super Scrappy quilts but however you name them they’re uniquely beautiful and so much fun to make!

Like I mentioned earlier, this scrap quilt pattern is fat quarter friendly and written using Strip Sets rather than cutting a bunch of squares. You can use as many or few of prints as you like and in whatever way to reach the total yardage required (see PDF pattern). I used a mix of scraps, fat quarters and width of fabric cuts to get the number of blocks needed. Jelly Roll strips will also be great to use on this project.

I could’ve evenly distributed the Nine Patch blocks across my top like Maureen had done but to accentuate the difference between our versions and keep more control over the look of my quilt I placed the Nine Patch blocks in diagonal lines by color or close enough color if I ran out of fabric for an exact match.

With the low volume spring-inspired palette and playful nature-based prints I was smitten by the cottage-style of my quilt and wanted to play off the vintage feeling to it’s fullest. So, to give some added texture and comfort to the quilt I used two layers of Hobbs Tuscany Silk batting! Doubling up the batting makes the quilt heavier and stiffer but has an incredible, vintage heft and feel! The machine quilt has lovely definition and the binding edge is thick and wonderful.

This quilt needed to be made and finished quickly because there was also a pattern to be written and photographs to be taken before posting a week later. I started cutting pieces on a Thursday and by following Tuesday morning put the last hand stitches in to the binding. I didn’t have time to send this quilt out to be professionally long arm quilted so I did the free motion quilting myself. Yes, it’s irregular and very organic (a pleasant word for wonky) but I’m very happy with the results and it fits the true utility scrap quilt tradition.

At first I was tempted to do diagonal straight line quilting but thought that would be pretty boring and maybe I could do something just a little better than that. I ended up with this not-so-perfect Orange Peel design that I will share with you just how easy it is to do—without even marking your quilt or using templates or rulers!

Orange Peel Quilting

1. Working on the diagonal, and eye-balling down the center of the blocks, start needle at the corner of a block and stitch an arching half circle or shallow curve that returns to the center of the block. Repeat that same arching curve, ending at the opposite corner of the block. Continue repeating the two arching curves on each block until you reach the end of the diagonal block row.

2. Turn the quilt around and repeat Step 1, arching the curves to reflect the curves made on the first pass down the quilt.

3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 creating parallel diagonal arching stitches down and back up each Nine Patch and Square diagonal rows creating loops as show in illustration 3.

4. Repeat Steps 1 through 3 in the diagonally opposite direction to create Orange Peel quilting. Note that the quilting on my quilt has shallow loops compared to the nice computer generated example. If you’d like your quilting design to be more regular and closer to perfect, you may want to mark the top first or use a curved ruler when stitching.

For the backing of my quilt I used Ikat Diamond Posh from my Art Gallery Fabrics Kismet collection. My labels are made by the Dutch Label Shop and I hand stitched the binding with a running stitch for a little extra special touch.

I hope you make yourself a Charming Nine quilt and get your quilt friend involved too. You could have a Nine Patch block exchange or a virtual Sew In—a good excuse to play with fabrics and sew!

Fabric carrots by Sharon Holland

While we’re talking about scraps, I wanted to share a fast and fun project I had posted on my Instagram account—Fabric Carrots. This was inspired by burlap carrots I saw at Target and thought, “Heck, I could make those and there’s some prints in my Lilliput collection that would make the cutest carrots!”

The project is so easy I felt it didn’t need any more than a silent stop motion video to explain how to make them. You can use scraps, make them any size or length you’d like, and there’s only two seams to sew! I took my carrots and made a door decoration from hanging them with raffia. Use the link and slide through the photo like the one shown above to see the tutorial video HERE. See the door decoration post HERE.

If you’ve been wondering about this Lilliput collection I’ve been talking about in this post and the few prints you’ve seen used in my Charming Nine quilt, I’m talking about the next fabric line I designed. Lilliput is my first ever children’s collection but it’s not just for kids and has prints the whole family will love. Take a look at the collection on the AGF website, HERE.

Lilliput is my 10th collection for Art Gallery Fabrics and is slightly delayed because of all the shipping hassles happening world wide but due in any day and it wont be long before this collection starts showing up in your local quilt shop and favorite on line shops!

I’ve started a stock list for online shops carrying Lilliput and you’ll find link on my Fabrics page. Some of these shops are taking pre-orders for the collection to if you’re one who likes to have collections as they first come out and before shops sell out you’ll want to get your name on the list!

Trust me, there’ll be much more to share about Lilliput and new quilt patterns in the weeks ahead. Until then, 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 or related items I think you may enjoy.

Sweet Home Quilt Along Giveaway Week 4

Sweet Home Quilt Along Giveaway Week 4

Each Friday, throughout the Sweet Home Quilt Along, there’ll be a Giveaway. Your QAL hosts, Maureen Cracknell , Jennifer Jones, and myself have coordinated special giveaway prizes with our amazing participating sponsors for each and every week! If you've happened to miss the first Sweet Home QAL post, take a look back and read about it HERE then follow the posts in chronological order until you get caught up.

These Friday blog posts will highlight the Sponsor and awesome giveaway prize offered for this week’s QAL giveaway. The randomly drawn winners will be selected from the growing Instagram hashtag pool the following Monday around 4 pm Eastern with the winner(s) announced on Instagram.

Recent #SweetHomeQAL posts in the Instagram hashtag pool

Is your Instagram post featured in this #SweetHomeQAL hashtag pool snapshot for this week???

We’re using Instagram as a Sweet Home QAL community share spot where we can follow along and comment on each others quilt progress and share beautiful photos of our work.

Every time you share a post to your public instagram account and use the official #SweetHomeQAL hashtag in your post caption your post is automatically entered into the giveaway hashtag pool! That’s right—it’s as easy as that—just do what you’d do anyway! So, to up your chances, post a lot of of progress shots of your fabric pull, cut pieces, blocks, sashing, assembly, tops, and ultimately, finished quilts.

You may notice I keep saying you need a public Instagram account to be entered into the giveaway drawings. That’s because if you have your IG account set as a private account, Instagram does not add any hashtags to hashtag pools from private accounts—it’s just the way they roll. So, you may want to go into your IG settings and turn your account to public for the QAL or if not, and I totally get the need for privacy in this strange world we live in, just know that you won’t be eligible for the giveaways.

SWEET HOME QAL SPONSORS

TODAY'S FEATURED SWEET HOME QAL SPONSOR IS Hobbs Batting!

Hobbs Quilt Batting has manufactured high-quality batting for hobbyist, commercial, art and show quilters since 1978. They're proud to come from a family of quilters and are committed to providing the same quality Hobbs batting that provide to their own family of quilters. At Hobbs Batting, they never forget that quilts are gifts from the heart - an expression of love, commitment and caring for a specific recipient - or an expression of artistry and skill- artistry and that's submitted and judged in quilt shows and events around the word - or both! At Hobbs they're committed to doing their part to enhance our #JoyofQuilting!

Hobbsbatting.com  *  Blog  *  Instagram  *  Facebook  *  We hope you visiting Hobbs Quilt Batting!

For this week's Sweet Home QAL Giveaway, Hobbs Batting is offering two lucky winners a Hobbs Tuscany Silk blend batting that measures 72” x 96” (twin size) in the size needed for the Sweet Home quilt. International entries are welcome for this giveaway and winners outside the US will only pay the difference in postage between domestic and international shipping.

Hobbs Tuscany Collection Silk Batting photo courtesy of Hobbs Batting

This is my personal favorite choice for batting. Hobbs Tuscany Silk Batting is soft and supple, quilts magnificently by hand or machine, and drapes like no other batting. The luxurious feel and lightweight nature of this batting is ideal for both quilts and garments.

Hobbs Tuscany Silk Batting breathes naturally, making it an excellent choice for airy, lightweight quilts and coverlets, and while it’s a ‘cool’ quilt, it can also provide excellent warmth.

Hobbs Tuscany Silk Batting is a blend of 90% very fine imported silk filaments and 10% fine polyester, ingredients which are carded and bonded to help retard bearding and fiber migration.

The quilt in the photo above has Hobbs Tuscany Silk inside and it gives lovely definition to the machine quilting. The long arm quilting for my Vista quilt was done by Brooke Becker of Lady Belle Fabric. I’m also using Tuscany Silk Batting in my Sweet Home quilt for this quilt along.

Don’t forget to share your Sweet Home quilt makes with your fellow quilt along makers over on Instagram and you’ll automatically be entered into this week’s drawing if you have a public IG account. Two winners will be drawn from the growing hashtag pool on Monday, October 5th around 4 pm Eastern and the winners will be tagged and notified on Instagram on the original giveaway post.

Be sure to follow along on all three host’s blogs as well as our Instagram accounts: Me @sharonhollanddesigns , Maureen @maureencracknell , and Jennifer @penelopehandmade

I also want to let you know that during the QAL Jennifer and I plan to have impromptu IGTV live videos to give you tips and tricks for sewing your Sweet Home Quilt.

View my IGTV Sweet Home QAL series

View Jennifer’s IGTV story

Next Wednesday for week 5, we’ll talk about sandwiching your top, batting, and backing, quilting, and binding.

—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 or related items I think you may enjoy.

Prairie Flower Quilt

Prairie Flower Quilt

Prairie Flower Quilt by Sharon Holland

There’s a new pattern in my SHOP called Prairie Flower! This 80” x 88” quilt is made with prints from my Art Gallery Fabrics Spirited collection and AGF Pure Solid in Chocolate for the little pinwheels and border strips. What I love about this quilt is it can fit a double (full) size bed if the border strips are at the head and foot of the bed or if rotated 90 degrees and the border strips run the sides of the bed it’ll fit a queen bed—it’s like getting two for one!

This quilt design’s celebrating it’s nine year anniversary with me. It was the companion quilt pattern for my very first fabric line when I first started designing and licensed my prints to Paintbrush Studio in 2010 (the quilt was finished in January 2011). Now, in 2020, I’ve given the quilt a fresh new look and added the pinwheels blocks and border strips in the all new updated pattern.

I almost hate to post the pictures from the first quilt because the quality of my photos were so poor back then—I didn’t know nearly as much as I do now about photography and file size. But, in all fairness, I’ll show you so you can see how far I and my quilts have come in nine years.

Original Prairie Flower quilt in Blue Skies collection by Sharon Holland for Paintbrush Studio

You can just detect the same furniture and furniture placement in my bedroom! Yeah, I really have no time for decorating, lol, only the bedding, lamps, and bench (at foot of the bed) have been replaced.

The original quilt had smaller Prairie Flower blocks that were set next to each other. The new and improved quilt has a little larger blocks to show off the prints better, sashing, and small pinwheel blocks.

Pinwheel blocks by Sharon Holland

I like how this new layout opens up the field of flowers (blocks) and the scale change between the big and little blocks has movement and energy just like a field of wildflowers blowing in the wind.

Prairie Flower blocks in Spirited by Sharon Holland

The incredible quilting on the updated Prairie Flower quilt was done by the talented Brooke Becker of Lady Belle Fabric. Brooke has numerous pantograph designs to choose from and I had about five I was considering until I saw this Abstract Rose design and new immediately it was the one for my quilt. I selected cream thread because it blended beautifully with the Spirited - Bright Star Washed print used for the background.

The batting used in my quilt is my all-time favorite, Hobbs Tuscany Silk blend batting. The excellent drape, warmth, and light-weight property of this batting also has beautiful stitch definition for machine or hand quilting—I love it! For the backing I selected Spirited - Delicate Balance Sienna and am obsessed with how beautiful it is!

To celebrate the homecoming of the Prairie Flower quilt I’m having a PDF pattern giveaway here on the blog and on my Instagram feed @sharonhollanddesigns! See how to enter below…

Giveaway now closed

Congratulations to Cindy G, Linda S. Zlogar, and Rita Dowd!!!!

* Note * This giveaway is open to EVERYONE! If you're a "no reply" or anonymous commenter, please remember to include your email address in your comment--you can't win if I can't get a hold of you!

1. Simply leave a comment here under this post! (First comment entry).

2. My followers get a third entry! If you follow via subscribing to my posts, through Bloglovin (or other service), or on Instagram, just let me know by making a separate comment here to record that entry. (Separate comment counts as second entry). Note: I'm no longer on Facebook.

3. Help spread the word!! I know that many of you already do, so I thought it would be nice to add that as another way to enter! Spread the word about this giveaway on YOUR instagram, facebook, tweet, pin, blog post, etc... (separate comment counts as a third entry). 

That’s THREE possible entries! Enter now through Friday, March 6, 2020. I’ll be drawing names for three winners. The winning comments will be picked at random around 4pm Eastern. I’ll post the name of the winners on this post once they've been notified and responded to my email.

Be sure to visit my Instagram feed @sharonhollanddesigns for a chance for you and a tagged friend to win PDF patterns from my SHOP. Winners can pick a substitute PDF pattern if desired for the blog and IG giveaways.

Happy sewing,

Sharon

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 or related items I think you may enjoy.