Trip down the Rabbit Hole

Adventures in Wonderland

54” x 66”
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