Hold Tight Quilt

Hold Tight Quilt

Hold Tight Baby Quilt by Sharon Holland Designs

I’m so excited to bring you this new PDF quilt pattern! I swear this is has been the most fun I’ve ever had designing and making of a quilt.

My niece is having their first baby and is decorating the nursery in an Up theme from the movie by that name. Balloons are an important part of the movie and I certainly had a challenge on my hands to create a special quilt that carried (pardon the pun) that fun and colorful aspect of the storyline.

I knew right away this would be an all solids quilt and since I sew with nothing else but Art Gallery Fabrics I got out all my Pure Solids and made some fabric choices. The image above was an early fabric pull and you’ll notice some colors changed in the final quilt design.

This baby quilt is purposely over-sized as it will be a great design for baby to grow into. I envision blanket forts, snuggles at story time, and naps out on the sofa well past toddler years.

Gender-neutral, colorful balloons are given an extra layer of fun with playful transparency overlapping colors. This quilt uses 20 different Art Gallery Fabrics Pure Solids (that number includes the background) and the possibilities are endless for creating looks and nursery color matching. Playing with color is the so much fun that I’ve included a coloring page in the PDF pattern so you can test out different options.

Since this quilt will surely be laundered a lot and I wanted it snuggly warm I used Hobbs Tuscany Collection 100% Premium Polyester batting for extra loft, durability, and warmth.

As if this quilt wasn’t fun enough I added some chunky hand stitching in Aurifloss 6-strand thread to make “strings” for the balloons after it was machine quilted and before binding.

This pattern is available to purchase as a PDF download on my SHOP page. Because of the curved piecing I am labeling this an Intermediate level quilt pattern but I feel a confident beginner will also achieve great results.

Included in the that PDF pattern is a block squaring template for perfect results every time. I highly suggest using Dritz brand Heavy Duty Template Plastic for making your templates from the PDF templates and a 28 mm rotary cutter for cutting curved pieces. See full materials list on the listing for the pattern and affiliate links at the end of this post for my Amazon picks.

I can’t wait to see your Hold Tight quilt make for your special little someone. Be sure to tag me @sharonhollanddesigns and use the hashtag #HoldTightQuilt and #SharonHollandQuilts when posting to social media and if you’re using Art Gallery Fabric Pure Solids don’t forget to tag @ArtGalleryFabrics and use the hashtags #AGFPureSolids and #PureSolids so they can also see your beautiful sewing!

Color Master Designer's Palette Bundles

Color Master Designer’s Palette Bundles

There’s so many reasons why I love designing fabrics for Art Gallery Fabrics and the NEW Color Master Designer’s Palette bundles are another exciting addition to that long list of AGF awesomeness!

You’re probably familiar with the Color Master boxes and bundles by color where prints by the different Art Gallery Fabrics designers are curated to build your stash by color, well…

The new Color Master Designer’s Palette bundles are color palettes curated by designer! It’s like getting a Sharon Holland 10-piece sampler bundle of perfectly coordinating prints from across my different AGF fabric lines all in a pretty bundle or box of fat quarters or half yard pieces of fabric! Both the fat quarter and 1/2 yard bundles contain the same ten beautiful prints.

Learn more about the AGF designers and these new curated bundles HERE on the Art Gallery Fabrics blog.

I was so excited about these Designer’s Palette bundles that I immediately began work designing a free quilt pattern specifically made for use with the ten prints in my Sharon Holland #1 edition. Yes, there’ll be new Designer’s Palette bundle editions in the future!

I’m swooning over the gorgeous color palette AGF has put together with prints from my Signature, Coastline, and Sketchbook fabric collections. This is definitely my color palette!

Feathered Nest Quilt

If you know anything about me and my quilt patterns by now, you know I like to make scrap quilts but I also like to be very efficient with cutting and fabric requirements.

The Feathered Nest quilt is a 58-inch square throw quilt that uses every bit of a Sharon Holland Designer’s Palette #1 fat quarter bundle. See PDF download for full materials list.

With the addition of three Pure Elements solids to the 10-piece fat quarter bundle I’ve come up with easy cutting instructions for a no-fail quilt design. The prints are a beautiful mix of just the right amount of light and dark, large and small scale prints, as well as visual texture. I even used the left-over scraps for a fun, scrappy binding.

This quilt is beginner-friendly, fun, fast, and rewarding to make! You could easily make this over a weekend. Even though this is a throw-size quilt, I love how it looks on top of a double bed.

I used Hobb’s Tuscany Polyester batting for the first time when making this quilt and OMG, I’m in love!!!! I’ve been so impressed with all the Hobb’s battings I’ve tried so far but honestly wasn’t sure I’d like the synthetic batting until I took it out of the wrapper. It’s the most luxurious poly batting I’ve ever handled and quilted like a dream! The high loft was just perfect for this quilt and gives it an eiderdown-look to the quilt—especially as a bed topper like in this photo.

Maybe it’s the recent cold snap that made me want something extra warm and snuggly but I’m thrilled with my choice of batting on this project. The wonderful bonus of Hobb’s Tuscany Polyester batting is that one, it doesn’t shrink and two, it can be quilted up to 4” apart which was exactly perfect for the minimal machine quilting I used when following the diagonal lines of the half-square triangles. Easy peasy and oh, so snuggly!

More and more shops will be adding these bundle/boxes to their listings but at the time of writing this blog post I’ve found the following fabric shops carrying the Sharon Holland Designer’s Palette bundles:

Dinkydoo Fabrics

Threaded Lines

Fat Quarter Shop

Red Thread Studio

Needle and Foot

Download the free Feathered Nest quilt pattern HERE.

If you’re a shop that carries my bundles and would like to use this quilt pattern for a shop sample, please direct your customers to this blog to download a copy of the pattern for use with their Sharon Holland Designer’s Palette fabrics. Additionally, if you’re a shop that carries my bundles and you didn’t see your shop listed above please contact me so I can add you to the Fabrics page on my site.

Happy sewing,

Sharon

Signature Baby Room Part 2

Signature Baby Room Part 2

Sometimes my life gets moving so fast, I'm onto the next project like a machine, forgetting to slow down, enjoy, and post about all my accomplishments. My new Signature fabric collection has been such a joy and with each project comes little surprises and great photo ops that I've taken lots of beautiful photos. I thought I'd spend more time with each of these makes and post some additional stories about what I sewed in June for the Art Gallery Fabrics Signature Look Book. I hope you'll enjoy these between the projects posts.

It was so much fun to put together a baby room of Signature fabric projects! Signature is my newest fabric collection for Art Gallery Fabrics and came out this May. Ask your local shop for this line or shop the many online stores that carry it. See my Fabrics page for online stock lists. 

Last week in Part 1, I showed you behind the Look Book projects in a bit more depth and links to the tutorials for the pretty projects. I'll wrap up this week with Part 2 plus a fun stuffed turtle make I stitched up last week as a gift for my granddaughter. 

Possibly to two easiest projects stitched for my Signature Baby Room were the crib sheet and the knit blanket. Find a tutorial for my Ruching Rose pillow HERE.

I wish I'd known how easy it was to make crib sheets when my kids were little! Dana Willard, friend and also an Art Gallery Fabrics designer sister has a fun You Tube video for how to make a fitted crib sheet. AGF fabric is so soft and the perfect designer prints to customize the look for baby's room.

The knit blanket not only is cuddly soft with AGF knits but is another easy make. You wouldn't even have to finish the edges if you didn't want too because knit doesn't fray but to dress it up a bit I added some pre-made bias tape with a crochet edge for a sweet little touch. A nice tutorial for making a knit blanket can be found at Kitchen Table Quilting.

Earlier, in June, I blogged about my free Star Light baby quilt pattern. The inspiration for this quilt came when I was making the Cactus block for the Community Sampler. This shows how you can take a block you love and run with it to make a completely new quilt. Find the free pattern HERE.

Even though my Signature Baby Room was intended as a gender neutral room I still couldn't help seeing it through my granddaughter's eyes. Because she loves butterflies and this fabric collection is about nature and includes butterflies in some of the prints I made several fabric butterflies and used them in various decor projects. Read more about how I created these HERE and learn how to make them. 

There are so many Signature makes I'm obsessed about but maybe the one that brings on the biggest smile is the turtle footstool I wrote about in my Part 1 post. Since this guy is staying at my house for the grandchildren to visit I thought I'd make my granddaughter a turtle of her own. 

I found the cutest free softie pattern on the Make it and Love it blog and of course had to make a version in Signature fabrics!

To add just a little extra to my turtle I stitched some Dritz Make Your Own Chenille to the shell before adding the feet and added a fabric heart outlined with chenille to it's tummy before assembling the body. 

Turtle, as he's called, now has an honorary spot in her bed and she love's her new friend!

Because every turtle needs a home, I painted an old basket up to give it a fresh new look (that coordinates, of course with my fabrics) and made the turtle his own blanket. I had as much fun making this as she's having playing with him!

And, way too much fun photographing this turtle. 

Don't forget to check out the Art Gallery Fabrics Look Books that come out with every new fabric line and all the oodles of free quilting and sewing patterns like the Sunflower quilt I designed for this collection and the AGF Studio Butterfly pillow pattern. 

Have a wonderful summer!

Love,

Sharon

Star Light Quilt

Star Light Quilt

The very first time I made this star block was for the Community Sampler Cactus block and knew then and there I wanted to eventually make a quilt using just this block.

When sewing for my new Art Gallery Fabrics collection called Signature I designed projects around themed rooms and one of the rooms was to be a baby room which would be the perfect look for the Star Light quilt born from the Cactus block!

This gender-neutral design is perfect for any baby and is a generous 50'' square finished size. I consider this an intermediate project but with my tutorial on piecing the star block and other tutorials of Quarter-Square Triangle Units and working with directional prints, I feel even a beginner could make this quilt with a little extra attention paid to accurate seam allowances and cutting and a care with the trickier aspects of this design.

For my nature-loving baby I selected Signature prints and Pure Elements solids in a green, teal, and golden yellow palette that made me think of being outdoors on a summer's evening, chasing fireflies and looking at the stars. 

This week Art Gallery Fabrics will be virtually publishing the Signature fabrics Look Book and it will be packed full of beautiful projects made with my Signature collection. To celebrate the Look Book and collection I've added this Star Light baby quilt pattern to my Free Patterns page. 

Download the free PDF pattern for full instructions and illustrations for piecing this large baby quilt. I've also included a Quilting Diagram for how I machine quilting my quilt. This is a nice size for quilting on a domestic machine. 

I used Hobb's Tuscany Silk Batting to fill my quilt and I love the lightweight, sumptuous drape it gives a quilt. Silk batting handles and launders just like cotton with very little shrinkage. 

Tip for machine quilting like I've done is to stitch all the stitch-in-the-ditch diagonal, vertical, and horizontal lines first then go back in and stitch the oval leaf shapes last.

Be watching later this week for the Art Gallery Fabrics release of the Signature Look Book! If you're sewing with Signature and posting to Instagram, be sure to tag me @sharonhollanddesigns and use the hashtags #artgalleryfabrics #Signaturefabrics and #agfsignature so I don't miss any of your makes!