New Zen Chic Quilt Patterns featuring Barcelona

Hi, this is me again. Christine of www.grapes-heart.blogspot.com. Last week I promised to come back for a reveal of Brigitte’s new patterns for Zen Chic.

During the last four weeks, almost all of our MQG Bielefeld members have been helping Brigitte to prepare for Spring Quilt Market 2013 in Portland. Along with her new fabric line for MODA,“Barcelona”, she designed seven brand new patterns. As these new fabrics arrive only shortly before quilt market, there’s not much time to get those quilts for her booth done. So we volunteered to piece some quilt tops. She still had to piece the backing, baste, quilt and bind all those quilts…

Last Saturday was our monthly MQGB-Sew-In and we had a big Show & Tell with all the quilts WE MADE FOR PORTLAND (o;
(Can you tell we are a tiny little bit proud to be part of this Quilt Market Crazyness…?!)

This is Brigitte with an appliqué quilt named “Clarity”

… details of her beautiful quilting:

…and the final pattern cover (available just in time for Quilt Market):

Evelyne made this cute Baby Quilt Top – the first Baby Quilt Pattern Brigitte designed for a fabric line):

Brigitte chose this boy-ish quilt design that features cars and arrows.

And this is the cover of “Child’s Play”, a beginner friendly quilt pattern.

This is Brigitte explaining “Thirtythree”, a quilt that uses the “Street Map” Prints of her fabric line “Barcelona”. She added the “magical number” 33 to the quilt as another hommage to Antoni Gaudí, who referred to #33 in his buildings repeatedly.

A close-up of her longarm machine quilting:

And the final booklet cover of her pattern:

Ulrike made this gorgeous quilt top titled “Pure”:

Brigitte (and her partner Martin) added this stunning zig zag quilting…

… that shows best on the backing…

… and the cover is to die for, isn’t it?!

There is a second Ulrike in our MQG who made this beautiful quilt (but could not be there on Saturday):

Brigitte added a spiraling quilting design and machine-bound this green beauty using a decorative stitch of her sewing machine.

The Booklet Cover for “Quiet Haven”:

This rather straight line quilt top was made by me. Brigitte designed it as a wall hanging for a clearly structured office space.

To soften those straight lines and bold color contrasts, she chose a curvy-kidney-kind-of-quilting.

And here is how she designed the final pattern cover photo:

Last but not least, this is Brigitte again with another quilt: “Shine Through”, that was designed as an homage to Gaudí’s famous mosaics.

…she quilted it with a straight barcode design…

… and made this stunning cover (my favorite…).

That’s the seven quilts we helped making for Spring Quilt Market. There were two more for US based Quilting Magazines that we can’t show you right now. For those two Christa (who wasn’t at the Saturday’s meeting either, so we have no picture of her) was the helping angel. As soon as these both quilts are published and at newsstands, we can catch up on showing them. That a grand total of nine quilts in 4 weeks. And although we helped piecing and appliqueing, Brigitte still had to make backings, baste them, quilt them on her longarm machine and bind them. I am totally impressed by all the efforts she puts into each new fabric and pattern line and the perseverance to get everything done in time. I love each and every pattern she designed (but then, I am biased, I guess…).

Which one is your favorite?!

Brigitte, have a nice and safe trip to Portland and back!
And don’t forget to bring back many memories and photos to share during our next monthly Quilt Talk!

Christine

P.S. Did you enter Brigitte’s Giveaway? There’s still time (until she gets back from Portland)…

 

Note from Brigitte: Thank you, thank you and did I already say THANK YOU my dear friends!!!! You know – I wouldn’t have managed everything in time without your help, and I’m very grateful I can rely on you all, your support and your skills. XOXOXO

All my bags are packed…

again, I’m waving to you all, standing in front of my door with four suitcases. Martin and I are heading off to our flight to Portland, and we are going to give our best to make a great show! YEAH! Wish me luck and I’m glad you like what I brought you this time ;-)

Talk to you soon when I’m back with a Quilt Market report…

Barcelona, the new fabric line for Moda

From guest blogger Christine Traub

Hi, I am Christine, I blog (irregularly) at www.grapes-hearts.blogspot.com. Two years ago I read about Brigitte’s first booth at Quilt Market and soon discovered that she lives only 30 minutes away from me. Some months later we met in real life and she has since become a real friend. Together we founded a local Modern Quilt Guild and every now and then I enjoy helping her prepare for Quilt Market.

She is quilting up a storm for Spring Quilt Market right now and I’m honored that she asked me to introduce to you her new fabric line for Moda.

So without much further ado here is “Barcelona”:

Brigitte’s third fabric line for Moda is a homage to the city of Barcelona and one of it’s most famous citizens, Antoni Gaudí i Cornet (1852-1926). The great architect Gaudí found his main inspiration in nature and in geometric forms. He is considered as one of the masters of Catalan Modernism.

Brigitte’s fabric line features colorful cathedral windows or tiles like Gaudi used so often in the Parc Güell

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…street maps…

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…mosaics…

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… multicolored stripes…

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… bicolor dots and

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…some prints that read like solids but that are slightly structured, called “rain in Spain”.

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The colors range from black, gray, dark green, apple-ish green, blue, orange to off-white. Sparkled with hints of red and yellow. Perfect for quilt patterns that show off graduated colors.

In the last couple of weeks our modern quilt guild has become a group of little elves. Almost every one with a slightly advanced skill level helped piecing quilt tops following Brigitte’s newest pattern collection. Tune in next week for an overview of her brand new Zen Chic patterns that will be available just in time for Spring Quilt Market.

Here’s a little teaser:

 

So what do you think? We would love to hear what you think of “Barcelona”. What projects would you like to make from Brigitte’s newest fabric collection? Leave us a comment and we will draw a random winner of a bag full of scrap strips of “Barcelona” (by the end of May, when Brigitte will be back from Quilt Market). Brand new and months before Barcelona will be available at quilt stores (due Fall 2013).

See you next week for a reveal of Brigitte’s new patterns!

Happy Sewing!
Christine

I had a wonderful class of students

For the last couple of days I visited Barcelona where I was invited to teach a class.

Maria Jose Conde of the popular Club de la Aguja in the heart of Barcelona offered the opportunity for her already experienced community of quilters to explore color and aspects of creating modern quilts. All pictures here are of courtesy of the Club de la Aguja and Maria Jose.

My interested, very friendly and open minded students took three days to stretch their skills. The first day we had a lot of color theory and exercises, but you wouldn’t belief what a progress you could already see after the first day of studying color rules.

The course had the motto “Master the London Tube with only solids”. The Zen Chic quilt was our inspiration to translate this look in different color schemes following rules like split-complimentary or triade.

And you can see that the students found all kind of interpretations for the newly learned color rules.

Our exercises on paper were translated to fabric choices.

That was a nice atmosphere and we really had fun!

Everyone of the students found her special and individual expression of her modern quilt, which we enhanced on the third day with modern quilting designs sewn on a domestic machine.

I’m happy with what everyone has achieved and the great atmosphere during our course!

And if this alone wouldn’t have been great, Maria Jose is a very generous hostess and invited us for some extra days of sightseeing. We were impressed by all the fantastic architectur, especially from Antoni Gaudi. You must see the Familia Sagrada, which is still under construction and expected to be finished in 2026.

and the magic fountains at Placa espanya

A stunning Travel Duffle bag, modern pillows, CROSS IT variation and more

I’m so happy to see people using the Comma fabric for all kind of inspiring projects. For a fabric designer it’s a satisfying feeling to see what people are making from your prints, what different things – quilts, bags, pillows and so on – they make from it, how it all looks, new ideas of how to use some prints – just wonderful!

One of my big, big favorite of projects I have seen with Comma is this STUNNING Travel Duffle bag my friend Diane has made. I am soooooo jealous (yes, I could make one my own, please send me some extra time over), I’d really, really love to fill in all my weekend travel stuff (or I could use it as a tool bag when attending the sewing time of my quilt guild. Rulers, iron, fabric, small mat and notions all packed up cool). This Travel Duffle has plenty of room - who don’t want have such a kind of bag her own?

Hop over to her blog post to learn more about the sewing process.

Of course Comma is also nice to use for all kind of pillows. Susanne used one of my Comma scrap bags at etsy and sorted them by color.

Yellow, orange and white made a cute pillow

while the other colors are right now in progress for an upcoming project

Speaking of pillows – Casey is working on her newest contribution for modabakeshop and has designed some cool pillows from the newest lines. Comma was one of the groups she used for the easy to sew pattern. Stay tuned to get the free project.

Not only the fabrics pop up here and there, I found also a cool variation of one of the newest patterns, CROSS IT.

Karie from the Aurora Sewing Center, which offers the pattern, used Vanessas fresh fabric line and got a fresh rainbow colored variation – looks beautiful, doesn’t it? She did an awsome pepple quilting on her home sewing machine, read more on her blog.

BTW: The pattern asks for a Jelly Roll, actually you need only half of a Jelly Roll to make the quilt. It’s just that a Jelly Roll gives you such a variation of fabrics. But you can make two quilts out of one Jelly Roll or use the left overs for the backing or make matching pillows like the ones from Casey. You could even use the scrap bag from etsy, to get enough strips to make this quilt.

Enjoy all the ideas from these creative people and show me what you were inspired to sew!

Happy sewing!

picture courtesy of www.freshmoderfabric.com