There are some lovely summery florals around at the moment and it’s a good time of year to take advantage of these and maybe make a quilt that will look perfectly at home outside in the garden nestled amongst all the flowers.
Rowan florals
If you don’t already have a supply of light summery florals then you can’t go wrong checking out the range of Rowan florals. They have enough variety in colour and design to allow you to easily put together a colour scheme. The quilt featured in the picture above was made using 20 different prints all from the Rowan collections, including some designs by Kaffe Fassett and Martha Negley.
Choosing the fabrics wasn’t so difficult as you’ll tend to find that a lot of the Rowan designs work well together. You just has to be a little bit brave and believe that so many medium to large scale fabrics can really work together - and then dive in!
Kaffe Fassett and 'kaleidoscope of quilts'
The next thing you’ll have to do is choose a pattern and, when working with this number of designs, something simple is usually the best choice and something which will show off the larger scale designs well. The pattern used to make the quilt shown is inspired by and based on one found in Kaffe Fassett’s ‘kaleidoscope of quilts’ where it is shown in 2 colourways - Morning Garden Quilt (p60), and Tapestry Garden Quilt, (p62).
We chose blues, pinks and lilacs as the main colour scheme for our quilt and it worked perfectly with the pattern. The pattern simply combines 3 differently sized squares - 9 inch, 6 inch and 3 inch - and a quilt assembly diagram is included in the book. The pattern suggests adding a plain border but we chose to use up all the left-over squares to make a ‘scrappy’ border which added to the random nature of the design.
Use Japanese or Bright Batiks
If florals aren’t your cup of tea then you can easily apply the same idea to a collection of brightly-coloured batiks or rich ornate Japanese fabrics, whatever most inspires you.