Adventures
in Wonderland
54”
x 66”
Designed by Heidi Pridemore
Designed by Heidi Pridemore
Take a trip down the
rabbit hole! This month I used the new GO! Qube Mix & Match 6” Block Set, to create a quilt using “Adventures in Wonderland” fabric
collection from Windham Fabrics. This group is based on the original artwork
from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland story. Which happens to be one of my
favorite stories. I was drawn to this magical world full of whimsical
characters. When I saw the line at quilt market, I knew I had to have it. So I
bought the collection and was waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it.
For this month’s project I designed a quilt using my 6” Go!Qube and this lovely collection. Now I have a
throw quilt snuggle up under when I go on my literary adventures. Make sure to
download the free pattern here.
This month I am sharing
with you the thought process of designing a quilt from a collection and the GO! Qube Mix & Match 6” Block Set . Here at the Whimsical
Workshop Studios this is my daily job. Every week fabric companies send me
their newest fabric collections and I create a quilt projects that showcases
the fabric for their sales material. For
this month’s project I used my design skills to create a quilt for me!
First thing I do is I
take a look at the fabrics and decide what is what. Is there a focus fabric? Is
there a mixture of scale across prints? Are there lights, mediums and darks in
the group? The answers to these questions help me decide what kind of blocks
and quilt I am going to design. In this case “Adventures in Wonderland”. The
group has a beautiful focus fabric that has large images from the story that I
did not want to cut up and really wanted to showcase in my quilt. The other
large print was the black fabric with the tossed characters, again I did not
want to cut it up. So these two pieces are the stars of the show and this is
what the quilt design will be built around. The rest of the prints are smaller
and will take on the roll of supporting cast in the quilt.
Next thing to consider is
that the goal of this project is to showcase the GO! Qube Mix & Match 6” Block Set and how these dies work together to create lovely quilt blocks.
Since I am working with the 6” set, the shapes will be smaller. That means the
die set will work well with the smaller prints in the collection for the pieced
blocks.
So I now know that the
quilt will be larger to accomadate the large focus print blocks and that the
secondary block will be pieced with smaller pieces. I have two prints I would
like to use for borders, the cream words and the black tossed characters. I know
they will need a solid color border in between them, so it looks like the quilt
will have three borders. Now onto the design….
They are also very busy.
This means I need to frame each scene with a quiet fabric to create a resting
place before adding another busy print. You can see I added a darker blue solid
frame to add back some of the blue that was lost when I fussy cut the scenes. Next,
I added the whimsical black and white checkerboard border. I also used the
black cornerstones to help break up the checkerboard print and again to create
a resting place. When designing, the balance between calm and busy prints is one
of the biggest consideration that can help or hinder a design.
Next up the secondary
block- for this block I used the small prints in the group and designed a block
with a traditional old-fashioned feel. I
used the assorted dies from the Go! Qube to make this block out a breeze. I
broke up the very busy prints with the same blue as the first block so they
compliment each other. I added in some solid red to help the red that appears
in the assorted busy prints pop. The combo of red, white and blue can become
very patriotic looking, so to avoid that in this quilt I added black.
I added the solid color
frames to calm down the busy prints in the middle. Also the frame on the first
block is a checkerboard, so when the two blocks are next to each other the
border on the second block will be the resting area for the border on the first
block as you can see below.
For the borders I wanted
to use the cream words as the first border, so I cut the fabric length of
fabric so the words wrap around the quilt. Since I wanted to use the Black
fabric with the characters as my outer border and wanted that to pop as well, I
separated the two prints with a skinny red border. The red border acts as a
resting strip between the two prints and pulls the red from the center of the
quilt into the border. I continued to add red accents by making it the binding.
And finally, I am ready
to take a trip down the rabbit hole. I cannot wait to use my quilt this winter when
it is finally cold here again in AZ
Make sure to visit my
blog each month where I will share with you some tips and tricks on cutting and
assembling of the project of the month along with posting the free pattern on
our website The Whimsical Workshop You
can also see our pattern and post at www.accuquilt.com
Until next time…..
Heidi
