Welcome to the the Running Stitch Quilts Color Inspiration blog series! In this new series, I'll be diving into the world of color and bringing you practical color palettes. Every month, I'll pick a set of 3 or 4 foundational colors to use in building out fun and expressive color palettes that you can apply to my quilt patterns or any future quilts. Keeping reading for some quilty inspiration!
My May color inspiration came from the cover quilt colors of my May Pattern of the Month - Weavers Cottage. (In case you missed it, all Pattern of the Month items are on sale through the end of May!)
The colors of my Weavers Cottage cover quilt are all from the Michael Miller Cotton Couture collection. If you've been around here for a little bit, you'll know that I absolutely love using Cotton Couture fabrics! I talked all about this cover quilt on my blog if you want to read more about it.
These deep jewel tones have been so inspiring recently. And in the spirit of Weavers Cottage being the Pattern of the Month, I wanted to expand upon these four colors (Blue, Boy, Peony, and Rose) and show you how you can turn them into three different full and dynamic color palettes!
For the first color palette, I wanted to squeeze in as many colors as I could to achieve a nice pink to blue gradient. If you've noticed my past color inspiration blogs, you'll see that I kind of love working with color gradients. So you'll probably be seeing a lot more in the future too!
This color palette has a well-balanced feel to it with the deep colors like Royal, Midnight, and Jewel and the lighter colors like Breeze, Flower, and Blossom included. You can see in both Weavers Cottage and Mod Top (quilt pattern coming soon!) that the distribution of these colors plays well with each other in this scattered form and in the true gradient shown above!
In this next color palette, I added purples and teals into the mix to give it an ocean-y, mermaid vibe that my daughter would LOVE. This color palette still has some deeper colors like Sweet Lily and Lagoon in it, but overall, it feels a lot lighter and breezier. This palette does a great job of lending itself to a scrappy feel like in the Weavers Cottage and Square Burst quilt pattern mock-ups below.
In the final color palette, I added in various shades of purple that really gives it a true jewel tone look! Having Opal and Lilac included here brings in the pink side of this palette while the Grape and Hyacinth brings in the blue side. These deeper colors pop again the white background in the Weavers Cottage and Autumn Garden quilt pattern mock-ups below!
Playing with color is one of my absolute favorite things to do! Being able to blend colors together to create such dynamic color palettes for my handmade quilts makes my creative soul so happy. I invite you to try out one of my May Color Inspiration color palettes in your next quilt! Whether you use the exact fabrics or use them as a jumping-off point for your own palette, I'd love to see! Share your quilts made with my color palettes on Instagram using the hashtag #RSQColorInspo or tag me in your photo. :)
Stay tuned for next month's Color Inspiration. Until then, happy sewing!
It's very rare now that I make a quilt that isn't part of a quilt pattern release. But when my friend, Ashley, gave birth to - who I'm calling - my new best friend 3 weeks ago, I knew I had to drop everything and make them their first handmade quilt!
When I was thinking about what quilt pattern I wanted to use for the baby quilt, I couldn't stop coming back to my Weavers Cottage quilt pattern. While this quilt pattern only calls for four fat quarters, I wanted to make it extra scrappy by adding a few extra fat quarters into the mix. I actually asked for some help from Peony Pedal Quilts to get the right mix of fabrics perfected. I showed her my inspiration photo and she put together the fabrics I used in the quilt.
I think my favorite part about this quilt is the sashing details between each block. In the Weavers Cottage quilt pattern, I have it written so that the sashing details are all the same color. But in the spirit of scrappiness, I decided these details needed to be part of the fun too. I LOVE how it looks and might be making all my future Weavers Cottage quilts like this too.
I finished this baby quilt version of Weavers Cottage off with some Mammoth Flannel fabric by Robert Kaufman on the back to make it extra snuggly. If you've never used a flannel on the back of your quilt - I'm here to tell you that it will change your life and you'll never want to back your quilt with anything else ever again. It's seriously so good!
I went with some classic straight-line quilting to keep the drape of the quilt feeling good and added some gray gingham fabric as the binding. I'm so happy with how this turned out. And if my 3-week-old best friend wasn't so dang cute, I might have kept this quilt for myself!
Welcome to the the Running Stitch Quilts Color Inspiration blog series! In this new series, I'll be diving into the world of color and bringing you practical color palettes. Every month, I'll pick a set of 3 or 4 foundational colors to use in building out fun and expressive color palettes that you can apply to my quilt patterns or any future quilts. Keeping reading for some quilty inspiration!
My April color inspiration came from the cover quilt colors of my April Pattern of the Month - Desert Charm. (In case you missed it, all Pattern of the Month items are on sale through the end of April!)
The cover quilt of Desert Charm featured colors pulled from my baby size Desert Charm quilt in the Modern Solids layout. I used fabrics from the Mayfair fabric collection designed by Amy Sinibaldi for Art Gallery Fabrics for this quilt sample.
I loved this color palette so much that I used these colors throughout the pattern in the diagrams! I knew I had to revisit this palette again for this April Color Inspiration. Turns out I love this palette ever more now! Keep reading to watch how I turn these four colors into three different full and dynamic color palettes!
In the first color palette, I took us to a moody place by adding in grays like Charcoal and Pewter and some dark purples like Aubergine and Eggplant. Adding in these darker colors really helps balance out the inclusion of Burgandy in this color palette - having one dark tone can make it feel a little out of place. These dark colors give the quilts some good depth while allowing the lighter colors like Love and Honey POP! Just look at those yellow tones in the Desert Charm quilt mock-up below!
For color palette number two, I went against the current season and channeled my favorite autumn colors! The addition of the orange colors like Pumpkin and Brick with a bit of peachy goodness like Peach and Geranium makes this color palette almost pumpkin-scented, huh? But in all seriousness, these warm tones ground out this color palette to feel balanced and welcoming. Plus look how good it looks in a gradient in the Deltille quilt mock-up!
For the third color palette, I figured I would play around with colors that are more reflective of the spring season since we are well on our way into the heart of it! I played around with more yellows and greens, because I've been dreaming of spring gardening recently. Adding in Marigold and Candlelight for the yellows and Evergreen and Asparagus for the greens makes this the perfect garden color palette. I saved this one for last, because it looks sooo good in the mock-up of my upcoming quilt pattern, Mod Tops!
Playing with color is one of my absolute favorite things to do! Being able to blend colors together to create such dynamic color palettes for my handmade quilts makes my creative soul so happy. I invite you to try out one of my April Color Inspiration color palettes in your next quilt! Whether you use the exact fabrics or use them as a jumping-off point for your own palette, I'd love to see! Share your quilts made with my color palettes on Instagram using the hashtag #RSQColorInspo or tag me in your photo. :)
Stay tuned for next month's Color Inspiration. Until then, happy sewing!
You guys, I am so excited to get this one out into the world! I've been working on Weavers Cottage behind the scenes since QuiltCon in February. I ended up making the quilt a few times in the testing phase to work out the best construction method. I might have even changed the construction of the pattern halfway through making another version of Weavers Cottage... more on that in a different blog post. :)
Because I can't seem to help myself, this pattern includes two design options - the Weaver and the Cottage layouts! Almost all of my patterns include multiple design variations. I guess I just like having options! Weaver includes the dotted sashing while Cottage does not. Because of the lack of sashing, Cottage is definitely the more beginner friendly layout option of the two.
The Weavers Cottage quilt pattern is perfect for an intermediate level quilter. This pattern is rated as intermediate because the skills needed to make this quilt include a scant 1/4" seam, strip piecing, and being comfortable with an on point setting.
Did I also mention that Weavers Cottage is yardage and fat quarter friendly too? Ahh! I get so excited about making patterns that let me play around with precut fabrics. It's like a more controlled version of a truly scrappy quilt. Plus, it gives me all the more reason to pick up those really cute FQs when they catch my eye in a shop!
For my all-solids Weavers Cottage Quilt, I decided to go with the Weavers layout. The solids in this quilt are from the Michael Miller Cotton Couture line in the colors Peacock, Electric, Wave, Breeze, Jewel, Orchid, Peony, Rose, and Iris. For the dotted sashing accent color, I used the solids fabric Nickel.
So I've been really loving non-white/darker backgrounds lately! The background I used here is Graphite by Michael Miller Cotton Couture - it's a dark gray that isn't quite the harshness of black that works nicely with these colors. But, the white background really brightens the whole look. It was a tough choice! Ultimately, I'm super happy with the way this turned out. Will you all start to see more non-white/darker backgrounds from me in the future??
My solids Weavers Cottage quilt sample was quilted by the ever-so-lovely Katie Hanson of Modern Textiles. She used the pantograph Floral Lattice. We went back and forth on thread color, and ultimately opted for a light gray thread that matched the sashing accent. It ended up being the right call. It stands out a bit, but doesn't overpower the quilt.
On the back of this quilt, I went with this print from the A Woodland Christmas fabric collection from Liberty London. I picked this one because it has a lot of the same colors from the quilt top in it. Plus, getting a head start on holiday and Christmas quilts isn't a bad thing. ;)
I really hope you all enjoy this quilt pattern as much as I do. Check out my blog for information about other Weavers Cottage Quilts I made! If you'd like to purchase the pattern, you can do so using the links below!
