Recently, Quilt talked to Jackie Kunkel, who designed “Island Breeze,” the cover quilt for the June-July issue of Quilt magazine.

QUILT: How did you come up with this pattern?

JK: I have a love for piecing flying geese, so I knew I wanted to make a quilt with lots of them.   I just started playing and when I had a block that I liked, I went with it.  I also knew that I had to set it on point.  It just wouldn’t be the same with a straight set.  This quilt definitely said to me “no border”  and I think that works well in this case!

QUILT: How did you decide the color palette for this quilt?

JK: I also knew that I wanted to use colors of the summer.  All these colors scream fresh fruit to me and I love that!  Fresh blueberries, watermelon, and sunshine, it just doesn’t get better than that, except being on the beach of course!

QUILT: Did you design/make this quilt with anyone particular in mind?

JK: Funny, I didn’t really.  I guess I just went with what I really liked and it felt right.  When I first designed it, I showed it to a friend and she said…. “Ooooo, quick write it up, I have to make that one!”  That just confirmed that the choices I made were good.   I love it and it just makes my heart sing.

QUILT: How was the machine quilting chosen for this quilt?

JK: When I quilt a quilt, I look at them individually.  I knew I wanted to quilt this one special as I was in love with this quilt through the whole process.  Therefore, I chose to use special motifs in the blocks and geese, as well as the sashing.  I used a variegated thread that had a very pretty sheen to it.  The sheen really added another element to the quilt.

QUILT: Anything else you want to tell our readers about this quilt?

JK: If you have never worked with batiks, this is a great one to begin with, batiks are fabulous.  They hold a crease so well, they have fabulous saturated and varied color.  In this quilt they just seem to glow.

Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief

Recently, Quilt talked to Deanne Quill, who designed “Retro Picnic”, the cover quilt for the spring issue of Simple Quilts & Sewing magazine.

QUILT: How did you come up with this pattern?

DQ: I wanted to create a fast, fun, & fresh pattern that features a big, splashy print with great coordinates.

QUILT: How did you decide the color palette for this quilt, and what to use for the framed/stripes?

DQ: I love the clean and crisp combination of the blue and green in the Pillow & Maxfield “Ooh La La” line.  It seemed the perfect match for my pattern idea. Popping the red was an easy choice for me!  It gives the spark to the entire project.

QUILT: When you designed this quilt, did you originally think about having the focal fabric ”match” or continue on around the stripes?

DQ: Definitely!  I love using really big prints, and I like to play with ways of maintaining their continuity even as I’m cutting them apart and placing them in a pattern.

QUILT: How was the machine quilting chosen for this quilt?

DQ: My best friend Patricia designs machine quilting patterns, and her panto that I used (“New Delhi”) was the perfect combination of fresh and playful for this fabric line and quilt design.  I enlarged it on my digital quilter to compliment the scale of the prints, and love the result.

QUILT: What is your favorite thing about this quilt?

DQ: This quilt makes people smile, and quickly became known here as “The Happy Quilt.”  That’s my favorite thing about it! Also, the back of the quilt is a white Minkee with green, nickel-sized polka dots that match the green on front.  The Minkee back is an unexpected treat that brings on even more smiles.

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Deanne has been a quilt-shop owner in New Braunfels, Texas for nine years, and a quilt pattern designer for seven.  She has four kids at home, 9 to 17 years old, and loves interacting with children of all ages.  In her “former life,” she did biochemical research, and taught college chemistry and middle and high school math and science.  A graph paper spiral is her constant companion, since ideas and inspiration can come at the most unexpected times and places.

Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief

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Recently, Quilt talked to Mari Martin, who designed “Dutch Tulips”, the cover quilt for the April/May 2012 issue.

QUILT: How did you come up with this pattern?

MM: When I was young I saw a neighbor’s garden that I absolutely loved. Every year she planted a perimeter of flowers around it; rather like a fence. Hence, the tulip blocks to create a garden flower fence. Broken glass potting sheds in gardens are also a favorite as well as pinwheels, so I combined the two in the center of the Garden Patch quilt. Then, to delineate the two I threw in a literal fence with the piano key inner border. The triangle corners give the feeling that the whole quilt is a photograph taken from an aerial view of a well-loved garden gently placed in someone’s memory album.

QUILT: What made you decide to use the tulips in a border rather than the quilt center?

MM: The tulips are a flower fence. I think they look lovely framing in the geometric design of the pinwheel blocks in the center.

QUILT: How did you come up with the idea for the tulip bloom? It’s different than a typical tulip quilt block.

MM: Well, that was difficult. I scoured all my block libraries for ideas but didn’t find a tulip block that really “flipped my trigger.” They were beautiful but square was not ideal in this case. Square meant fewer flowers so I experimented with a rectangle shape. I think tulips lend themselves to a rectangle anyway.

QUILT: Did you design this quilt with anyone particular in mind?

MM: Yes, my five year old granddaughter Sydney. She is my pink princess because her favorite color is pink and she really believes she’s a princess. Sydney would find this quilt much to her liking. She would lay in the center so the tulips surround her and cackle!

QUILT: What is your favorite thing about this quilt?

MM: I find the design structure to be intellectually stimulating and full of detail. It’s a quilter’s piecing delight! That’s the thing about multiple border quilts and especially pieced borders; you must be accurate in your piecing, as each border is dependent on the next and I love that challenge.

Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief

Format

Recently, Quilt talked to Mari Martin, who designed “Dutch Tulips”, the cover quilt for the April/May 2012 issue.

QUILT: How did you come up with this pattern?
MM: When I was young I saw a neighbor’s garden that I absolutely loved. Every year she planted a perimeter of flowers around it; rather like a fence. Hence, the tulip blocks to create a garden flower fence. Broken glass potting sheds in gardens are also a favorite as well as pinwheels, so I combined the two in the center of the Garden Patch quilt. Then, to delineate the two I threw in a literal fence with the piano key inner border. The triangle corners give the feeling that the whole quilt is a photograph taken from an aerial view of a well-loved garden gently placed in someone’s memory album.
QUILT: What made you decide to use the tulips in a border rather than the quilt center?
MM: The tulips are a flower fence. I think they look lovely framing in the geometric design of the pinwheel blocks in the center.
QUILT: How did you come up with the idea for the tulip bloom? It’s different than a typical tulip quilt block.
MM: Well, that was difficult. I scoured all my block libraries for ideas but didn’t find a tulip block that really “flipped my trigger.” They were beautiful but square was not ideal in this case. Square meant fewer flowers so I experimented with a rectangle shape. I think tulips lend themselves to a rectangle anyway.
QUILT: Did you design this quilt with anyone particular in mind?
MM: Yes, my five year old granddaughter Sydney. She is my pink princess because her favorite color is pink and she really believes she’s a princess. Sydney would find this quilt much to her liking. She would lay in the center so the tulips surround her and cackle!
QUILT: What is your favorite thing about this quilt?
MM: I find the design structure to be intellectually stimulating and full of detail. It’s a quilter’s piecing delight! That’s the thing about multiple border quilts and especially pieced borders; you must be accurate in your piecing, as each border is dependent on the next and I love that challenge.
Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief
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Recently, Quilt talked to Nancy Rink, who designed “Milky Way”, the cover quilt for the February/March 2012 issue.

QUILT: How did you come up with this pattern?

NR: Originally I designed this pattern as a sampler with nine different star blocks in the center.  To make things easier and speed up the assembly process, I picked the block that I thought would best show off the various fabrics.

QUILT: What made you decide to use multiple different star designs?

NR: I love star blocks and never seem to tire of making them in all their different variations. And I have always wanted to make a quilt with the star sashing technique used in the quilt and with the staggered star border.  It all just seemed to work together with one complementing the other.

QUILT: Why did you decide to add multiple borders to this quilt?

NR: One of my quilting friends tells me “You’ve never met a stripe you didn’t like.”  Although I’d never really thought about it, she was right.  I love stripes. They make great sashing, borders, and binding. They can add a lot of motion to a simple design. In the design and color workshops I teach, I try to convince quilters that they need to use more stripes. Then, when I saw the Cocheco III fabric samples, I thought—three stripe fabrics!?  Who puts three stripe fabrics in a single fabric collection?  That’s when I decided that whatever quilt I designed had to show off all three stripe fabrics; hence, the multiple borders.  It just seemed a natural fit.

QUILT: Did you design/make this quilt with anyone particular in mind?

NR: Me. I wanted to make a quilt that fit my style.  I have a big sleigh bed with a dark brown leather headboard in my master bedroom and a coral/pink chair and ottoman that sits next to it.  Perfection!

QUILT: Anything else you want to tell our readers about this quilt?

NR: One funny story:  The quilt was hanging in the QUILT Magazine booth at Quilt Market and my booth was sort of catty-corner from it.  I had a little wall-hanging made from the same fabric collection in my booth.  More than one shop-owner told me, “Don’t take this wrong– your little quilt is cute, but I really like that quilt over there much better.”  I just smiled and said, “That’s okay, I won’t take it wrong.”

Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief

Recently, Quilt talked to Pam Dinndorf, who designed Gone Fishin’, the cover quilt for the Simple Quilts & Sewing Fall 2011 issue.

QUILT: How did you come up with this pattern?

PD: The pattern was inspired by a skyview of platte lines or a street grids.  One title consideration was Neighborhoods.

QUILT: How did you decide the color palette and then the color placement for the blocks in this quilt?

PD: I was visualizing a very broad color palette on this particular version of this quilt while picking from vintage and reproduction printed stripes like civil war shirtings.

QUILT: What do you like best about the fabrics you used and why did they work well for this quilt?

PD: What I like best is the great variety I was able to find in value, hue, and stripe pattern, such as width and rhythm.  This creates the illusion of many different dimensions.

QUILT: Did you design/make this quilt with anyone particular in mind?

PD: I didn’t have a particular person in mind, but I did envision it being used at a ball game to cuddle up in to ward off the evening breezes.

QUILT: How was the machine quilting chosen for this quilt?

PD: I chose the machine quilting (quilting “next to the ditch”) to merely enhance the piecing since the fabrics are graphic enough on their own.

QUILT: What is your favorite thing about this quilt?

PD: The way that it says,”Reach out and touch me.”

QUILT: How did you get started with quilting or designing?

PD: I have been fascinated with color and fabrics ever since I can remember.  My first memories of quilting are pre-kindergarten.  I have worked with design in fashion and interior design, and now quilting since 2003.

Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief

Lisa Swenson Ruble, Managing Editor

Recently, Quilt talked to Pam Dinndorf, who designed Autumn Blaze, the cover quilt for the October-November issue.

QUILT: How did you come up with this pattern?

PD: I have always been obsessed with stripes and their limitless potential. I wanted to create a quilt using nothing but stripes exploiting that potential. I collected stripes with as much variety as possible, i.e., various widths, evenly spaced stripes, two-colored stripes, multi-colored stripes, bold stripes, subtle stripes, etc., and played around with the dynamic combinations.

QUILT: How did you decide the color palette and then the color placement for the blocks in this quilt?

PD: It was a 2-step process. The color palette was very broad and simply any colors that I was drawn to. The individual block palette was determined by auditioning different hues and seeing how well they read together. Sometimes I combined like or analogous hues, while other times I was exploring unexpected partners. Once all blocks were completed, I laid the blocks out on a design wall and tweaked them until I achieved a “selective random” arrangement that considered value, hue, and pattern of stripe to create the illusion of various planes near and far away.

QUILT: What do you like best about the stripes you used and why did they work well for this quilt?

PD: All of the striped fabric is by Kaffe Fassett from Westminster Fibers. I was drawn to the rich colors and the great variety and rhythm in the pattern of the stripes.

QUILT: How was the machine quilting chosen for this quilt?

PD: Due to the highly graphic nature of the fabrics, the quilt didn’t need the quilting to be an additional design element so I chose to enhance the piecing only by quilting “next to the ditch.”

QUILT: What is your favorite thing about this quilt?

PD: That would have to be the illusion of different planes created by the placement of value and hue.

Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief

Recently, Quilt talked to Nancy Rink, who designed “Fruit Slices”, the cover quilt for the August-September issue.

QUILT: How did you come up with this pattern?

NR: I began knowing that I was going to be designing a pattern for Art Gallery Fabrics. Because I’d previously designed several patterns for Patricia Bravo, the creative force behind Art Gallery Fabrics, I knew that her fabrics often feature large-scale prints and florals.  With that in mind, I began tinkering with designs that had large pieces that would show off Pat’s fabrics.

QUILT: How did you decide the color palette and then the color placement for the blocks in this quilt?

NR: The color palette came directly from Patricia.  She envisioned something “scrappy in pinks and greens.”  She encouraged me to pull from multiple collections, which I did.  And I went beyond the pink boundary, pushing some of the colors toward orange and others toward red.  I played around with mixing the two color families.  But when I saw the swatch of the multicolor stripe, I knew immediately that it would be the unifying element.  Once, I’d settled on using the stripe, the design just seemed to fall in place and it seemed right to separate the greens from the pink/coral/peach/fuchsia fabrics.

QUILT: How was the machine quilting chosen for this quilt?

NR: I think it chose me!  The quilt seemed to call for an all-over contemporary design.  I doodled a couple of ideas on my white board, and the design you see was one of them.  I played with it a little, just to see how I’d move from one motif to the next.  Then I fired up the longarm and got down to business!

QUILT: What is your favorite thing about this quilt?

NR: The stripe—it was THE perfect find.  And doesn’t it look great as a binding?  I love using stripes as bindings, and often use them on the bias.  I thought about a bias binding for this quilt, but it fought against the stripe in the body of the quilt.

QUILT: Anything else you want to tell our readers about this quilt?

NR: I want to thank my dear friend, Eve Hall, who helped me out with this quilt.  I was vending at a show and had brought all the fabric and my quilt plan with me to work on.  But the show was so busy, I never had any time to work on it.  Eve stopped by my booth to see if I needed anything before she left.  I jokingly said, “Yes, how about making a quilt?”  The next thing I knew, the box of fabric was in her hand and she was out the door.  She did all of the cutting, and most of the sewing.  What a kind friend!

Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief

Recently, Quilt magazine spoke with designer Kaye England, whose ”Star Light” quilt graces the cover of our June-July issue.

QUILT: How did you decide to use this star/log cabin pattern?

KE: When you have this many light prints, a Log Cabin design always seems to work well. I thought putting the stars in the middle would help to showcase the fabrics better.

QUILT: What do you like best about the Basically Kaye Shirtings collection?

KE: I like the variety of values in the lights and the characters they bring to any quilt.

QUILT: Why does the Basically Kaye Shirtings fabric work well for this pattern?

KE: The pattern and texture of this collection is a win-win with this style of quilt because the small prints work well with the small pieces.

QUILT: How was the machine quilting chosen for ”Star Light”?

KE: My long arm quilter, Cathy Franks, always chooses what she feels is the best pattern for the quilt.

QUILT: What is your favorite thing about ”Star Light”?

KE: I just like the overall appearance of the quilt as it reminds me of the early quiltmakers’ style.

Deb Hearn, Editor-in-Chief

Because of a move and building a home, we’ve been in transition the last two years with many of our belongings in storage.  As we pulled out the Christmas tree this year, it was missing a critical piece…the very top. I’m glad to tell you that it was found in a box with our beach gear.  How it got there, who knows! Another misplaced item was the tree skirt, but being one who loves to solve problems, I used an old quilt to place at the base of our tree….and it looks beautiful!

Debbie

Read and see all the details of the challenge.  Enjoy your indoor flower show!

Debbie

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“If I Were A Flower” Challenge

“Flowers are a girl’s best friend”.  It may have once been diamonds, but as members of the Country Piecemakers Quilt Guild in Powhatan, Virginia will attest, flowers have now replaced diamonds as their “new best friends.”

“If I Were A Flower” challenged its members on several fronts. Project coordinator, Donna Rubis, asked the membership: “if you were a flower, what would you be?” In order for everyone to answer that question, they had to go in search of 1. A flower design that represented their vision. 2. A visit to their local paint store for paint chips whose names began with the same letters as the members’ first, middle, and last name initials. 3. Fabric from their nearby quilt shop whose colors matched those paint chips. The fabrics could be prints, solids, stripes, plaids, or any pattern in between. 4. A unique way to incorporate the mandatory quarter yard of black and white floral fabric (given to each participant) into their design. All this was to be limited to a quilt no larger than 45 inches in width and length.

Eight months later, eighteen participants showed their quilts to the rest of the membership. At this show, they told why they chose that design and how it represented them. The quilts then went on to be exhibited in three area counties that summer.

A couple of the ideas came from the “Paint Can Challenge” in the August/September, 2007 issue of QUILT Magazine. After reading the magazine article, the rest of the ideas seemed to fall into place. “The quilts began as a two-dimensional creation, but their explanations, some using poetry, some using quotes from other sources, brought these quilts to life. As I was organizing this exhibit, I couldn’t help but think of the book, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT,  with each quilt having been loved to life”, said Donna.

This project was a way for each participant to express themselves – through design, through color, and through words. Although several members were, at first, reluctant to write anything, it seemed their choice of words ended up giving added depth and meaning to their creations.