Spoonflower Fabrics

Back in March, following Sue Reno's lead, I decided to take the plunge and order some fabric from Spoonflower. These are the two fabric designs I ordered:

This is derived from the background of my quilt The Gathering.

This is derived from the background of a quilt design I'm still working on.

Overall I'm very pleased with the fabrics - the quality is good, and there's an impressive amount of detail. There was some banding, particularly on the top fabric, that probably only I would notice. I'm fairly certain this was a hiccup in the printing process, because there was no banding on other areas of the fabric with the same design elements and colors. For my purposes this wasn't a showstopper.

I ordered the fabrics on a whim, so did not order swatches to make sure the colors would be exactly as expected. I was OK knowing that this would result in some serendipity, but if you want your colors to match something you really should order a swatch.

Does this mean I'll stop printing fabric for my quilts on my own printer? No, but it's a nice alternative if I want yardage of a special design.

Miss May!

A number of months ago I was very honored to find out that "The Gathering" is going to be included in Martingale's 2010 Award Winning Quilts Calendar. I peeked over at their website the other day, and they have some preview images up. I do believe I'm going to be Miss May! I don't know how long that link will stay good, but it sure was fun to see the layout they've put together. I can't wait to see the final product.

(Edited to add: You need to click on the right arrow by View Gallery - my quilt is the first one after the cover image.)

Quilting Arts Article

I'm delighted to have an article in the latest (June/July 2009) issue of Quilting Arts. It's called "Digital Playtime" and discusses some of the steps I use to create the fabric for my quilts. I hope you like it!

I'm also looking forward to the next issue of Quilting Arts Gifts, where I'll have two projects.