Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Fabric Refresh - Berry Basket by April Rosenthal for Moda Fabrics

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click a link and make a purchase.  

The Fourth of July is just days away here in the United States which means it is the perfect time to sew with some red, white, and blue fabrics! Luckily, the amazing Berry Basket collection by April Rosenthal for Moda Fabrics recently started showing up in shops and this fabric is the perfect collection to feature for a Fabric Refresh blog post as we wrap up June and head into the thick of summer.

As soon as I saw this fabric in the Moda catalog, I knew I wanted to refresh my Log Jam pattern with it. Berry Basket has dark red and navy prints, plus lighter pink, aqua, gray, and white prints. It looked like there was about an even split between light and dark. Log Jam normally can be made with a print jelly roll and a solid jelly roll, but I wanted to see what it would look like if I used two Berry Basket jelly rolls and used the lighter prints in place of a solid jelly roll. It turned out as great as I was hoping it would! 

Log Jam quilt pattern in Berry Basket fabric by April Rosenthal for Moda Fabrics

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Tip for Sewing with White Tone-on-Tone Fabrics

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click a link and make a purchase.  

Do you like to sew with tone-on-tone fabrics, or more specifically, with white-on-white fabrics? Do you ever have trouble determining which side is the right side when sitting at your sewing machine? If so, you're not alone! Keep reading to discover my tip for making this a problem of the past!


Friday, June 9, 2023

Fabric Refresh - Sunbeam by Rashida Coleman-Hale for Ruby Star Society

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click a link and make a purchase. 

Happy Friday and welcome to the 5th and final day of Fabric Refresh Week! I've had a lot of fun sharing all of my refreshed quilts with you this week. To finish out the week, I'm sharing another Ruby Star Society collection, Sunbeam by Rashida Coleman-Hale

This collection wasn't even on my radar until a couple weeks ago when I happened to see a post on social media as it was beginning to arrive in shops. It immediately made me think of First Light, another Ruby Star Society collection from a couple of years ago. 

I missed out on that one but was playing around with it in EQ8 a few months ago for some reason. I used it to create a digital version of a future pattern and I thought about trying to track down enough fabric to make it. With the release of Sunbeam, I'm going to use that instead! I can't share that future quilt yet, but it would also look great in several of my current patterns. Let's jump right in (and be sure to look for today's coupon code somewhere in this post!)

My favorite quilt that I refreshed in Sunbeam is Scrappy Herringbone. I love this one so much that I got all the way to having all of the fabric needed in my cart before I stopped myself! I just don't have the time to add another quilt to my to-do list. Not to mention that I don't need to be spending money on remaking existing patterns right now considering I quit my job recently

Scrappy Herringbone is a layer cake pattern and this version is the larger size option (both the larger herringbone and larger overall quilt). It uses 80 squares so since layer cakes are 42 squares, you'll be able to leave out two pieces from each of two layer cakes. That means that even if the darkest black print in the collection is duplicated, you should be able to leave it out and still have enough to make this quilt. I did not use that print in this mock-up because I thought it looked out of place compared to the other fabrics.

Scrappy Herringbone quilt pattern in Sunbeam fabric from Ruby Star Society

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Fabric Refresh - Lil by Kimberly Kight for Ruby Star Society

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click a link and make a purchase.  

Welcome to Day 4 of Fabric Refresh Week here at Pieced Just Sew! I hope you've been enjoying the refreshed patterns in new fabrics as much as I've enjoyed creating and sharing them! Hopefully you've been enjoying the savings too with the limited-time coupon codes to my Etsy shop that I've been including with each post. Keep reading to find today's code!

Today I am featuring a recent Ruby Star Society release by Kimberly Kight called Lil. I'm currently getting ready to cut into this fabric myself to make a sample for what I think is going to be this year's jelly roll pattern release for National Jelly Roll Day. You'll have to wait until late August or early September to see that, but I have lots of patterns to share in Lil today to help you get your Ruby Star fix.

The first pattern I'm refreshing today is Easy Argyle, my only pattern that only uses yardage. It is very rare that I make a quilt with so few fabrics in it, but this is a great option if you want a really fast quilt without a bunch of different fabrics to worry about. 

I made two versions of Easy Argyle in Lil and the first is my favorite. I used the navy print with the apples and flowers and the dark gold/caramel colored print with the little white flowers as the two main fabrics. I used a pink print with a small scale print for the large diamonds and the white-on-white print with the small flowers for the small diamonds.

Easy Argle quilt pattern in Lil fabrics from Ruby Star Society

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Fabric Refresh - Sunnyside by Camille Roskelley for Moda Fabrics

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click a link and make a purchase.  

It's Day 3 of Fabric Refresh Week and I can hardly believe it's halfway over already! So far we've been inspired by Tula Pink's Everglow and AGF Studio's Spooky 'n Witchy. Have you been remembering to use the coupon codes to save on the featured patterns each day? They're only good for a couple of days so if you missed out on the first two, make sure to keep reading so that you don't miss today's code!

Today I'm featuring a collection with a much more traditional feel to it. You might know Camille Roskelley as one half of the mother-daughter team behind the super popular Bonnie and Camille fabrics from Moda Fabrics. Since Bonnie has retired, Camille has been continuing on her own and I fell in love with her Sunnyside collection as soon as she first debuted it (it was the burgundy prints that got me!) and then had to wait months for it be available!

Well, it's finally here and I already grabbed some for a couple of future pattern samples. You'll have to wait a while to see those but you should grab some Sunnyside fabric now and if you need some ideas of what to make with it, this is the blog post for you!

The first pattern that I refreshed in Sunnyside was Americana. I love star quilts and while the pattern was named for the reds and blues used in the original cover quilt, this pattern looks great in a variety of fabrics and I love it in Sunnyside. These colors together make me think of a beautiful garden. This pattern uses 18 fat quarters so you can pick a wide variety of colors and prints to make a very colorful and scrappy-looking quilt.

Americana quilt pattern in Sunnyside fabric by Camille Roskelley for Moda Fabrics

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Fabric Refresh - Spooky 'n Witchy by Art Gallery Fabrics

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click a link and make a purchase.  

Welcome to day 2 of Fabric Refresh Week here at Pieced Just Sew! If you're just joining me, you can see yesterday's post here. Fabric Refresh Week is pretty much like my usual Fabric Refresh blog posts where I refresh some of my patterns in new fabrics. The difference is that I'm sharing a new post every day this week and there is a special limited-time coupon code hidden in each post that can be used to save on that day's featured patterns!

Today I'm sharing one of my favorite Halloween collections of the year, Spooky 'n Witchy by AGF Studio of Art Gallery Fabrics. It might feel early to be thinking about Halloween with summer just getting underway, but it will be here before you know it and this is the time of year that holiday fabrics are typically released. If you wait until October to start planning, the fabric you want might be sold out!

Art Gallery has released similar Halloween collections for the past few years. I used Spooky 'n Sweeter two years ago to make a Stay Square quilt (I still need to take more photos and blog about it!) and I even featured it in a Fabric Refresh post. If you loved those fabrics but thought you missed out, be sure to check out Spooky 'n Witchy. Some of the prints are the same! 

Let's jump right in with the first refreshed pattern, Ophelia. This jelly-roll friendly pattern also has instructions for fat quarters which is what you'll need to make this in Spooky 'n Witchy since Art Gallery doesn't have precut strips. Grab a fat quarter bundle, pick your favorite 12 prints in a variety of colors, and get sewing!

Ophelia quilt pattern in Spooky 'n Witchy fabrics by Art Gallery Fabrics

Monday, June 5, 2023

Fabric Refresh - Everglow by Tula Pink for Free Spirit Fabrics

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click a link and make a purchase. 

Welcome to Fabric Refresh Week here at Pieced Just Sew! There are so many great fabric collections coming out lately and I've been spending a lot of time playing around in my Electric Quilt software refreshing my patterns with these fabrics. I have so many to share that I decided to feature a new fabric collection every day this week. 

To make the week even more fun, there will be a special coupon code to my Etsy shop somewhere in each day's blog post. Each day's code will be different, will only be valid for a couple of days, and will only apply to the patterns featured in that day's blog post. Some patterns will show up on multiple days, but some will not, so if you see something you like, don't wait! (The discount amount will be the same each day).

Let's kick things off with Tula Pink's Everglow collection for Free Spirit Fabrics. I'm not sure I've ever sewn with Tula Pink fabric myself, but I keep hearing about this collection, so I decided to check it out. I like how it's bright and colorful, but yet has a bit of a pastel feel to it. Maybe it's bright pastels? Is that a thing? Or an oxymoron?

Either way, I had a lot of fun playing with this collection in EQ8. The main prints are large scale and may not be fabrics that you want to cut into little pieces so I stuck with patterns that use bigger pieces.

Before I jump into the mock-ups, there is one thing I want to mention about this collection. Like I said, I haven't really sewn with Tula Pink and I'm not very familiar with her fabric collections. When I went to the Free Spirit website to look for the digital fabric swatches, there were only eight prints listed under Everglow. However, when I look for the fabric in shops online, such as Fat Quarter Shop or Etsy, many of the bundles include a lot more than eight fabrics. It appears that the Everglow bundles also include what Free Spirit is showing separately as Neon True Colors. 

I'm not sure if that's normal for Tula Pink or Free Spirit. Maybe that makes perfect sense to you if you're a Tula fan. I'm using both in these mock-ups. The main Everglow prints seem to be the busiest fabrics with the largest scale designs on them. The Neon True Colors are the stripes, polka dots, and the fabrics that have a lot of solid background showing with hearts, suns, and birds on them in a single color.

All right, let's get to what you're really here for! The first pattern that I refreshed was Town Hall. This is probably my best pattern for showcasing large scale fabrics due to the large squares. This pattern was made to be layer cake friendly but there are instructions for fat quarters as well.

Town Hall quilt pattern in Everglow by Tula Pink for Free Spirit Fabrics

Thursday, June 1, 2023

Fabric Refresh - Christmas Eve by Lella Boutique for Moda Fabrics

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click a link and make a purchase.  

Are you ready for Christmas? It may only be the beginning of June, but I'm sure the rest of the year is going to fly by. I swear it was just January yesterday! 

This time of year is when the Christmas fabric collections start showing up in shops. One recent release is Christmas Eve by Vanessa Goertzen of Lella Boutique for Moda Fabrics. It has a classic Christmas feel with deep reds and evergreen greens plus a variety of grays and snowy whites. If you loved her Christmas Morning collection from two years ago, you'll love this one too! It's very similar.

Today I'm sharing several of my patterns refreshed with Christmas Eve fabric. I probably could have refreshed all of my patterns but I finally made myself stop after nine (though some of those nine have multiple versions!)

Ophelia was the first quilt I was itching to refresh in Christmas Eve. Since Ophelia is my most recent pattern (well, recent as in I haven't released one since; it's been available since last September), I haven't had a chance to refresh it in traditional Christmas colors until now. And I love it as much as I knew I would!

Ophelia quilt pattern in Christmas Eve fabric by Lella Boutique