Yellow Diamond Strings : :

Yesterday I finished up another Diamond Strings quilt top using my favorites yet again - April Rhodes' Wanderer and Pat Bravo's Indie, along with my Wild & Free fabrics!



The last one was made in a hurry for a local quilt raffle that turned out to be a huge success, hooray for that! It made it much easier to let that quilt go but, here I am just a couple weeks later already making another! This time I am changing up the design just a little. It's much more scrappy for one! I didn't use a single strip wider than 2."





I also didn't start and finish with blocks including the larger cuts to create the sharp angles you'll see at the tops and bottoms of my other Diamond String quilts. Instead, this time I began and ended each of my qayg blocks with a few strips of the warm, golden yellow that all three of these collections include.



Choosing that one color to begin and end with really makes all the wonderful diamonds that are created within this pattern pop!





I'm always so amazed at how the slightest change in a pattern can create something so new and different, even when using the very same colors and prints. These three collections just speak to me, I can't seem to get enough of them! Hopefully you all don't mind!



I'll be sending this one off to be photographed and shared along with an article I'm writing on quilt-as-you-go for a magazine due out this Fall, and then I have plans to make it our porch swing quilt!



♡ Maureen

Oh, and if you love these fabrics together as much as I do, the Intrepid Thread still has some of their custom bundles available that were inspired by these quilts right HERE!! XX

Natalie's Wild & Free Quilt : :

This past weekend I was thrilled to have Natalie of Green Leaf Goods here for a visit! We met each other a few years ago through a quilting bee we both had joined. Her distinct modern improv style caught my eye right away! I was new to quilting then and was so inspired by her color, fabric, and block style choice when her turn to choose the bee quilt design would come around every few months. The Improv Chevron block pattern that she introduced to me is still a favorite of mine! Being just a newbie then, making these bee blocks was one of my first enjoyable experiences with quilting, and no doubt influenced my own style!



Over the years Natalie and I have kept in touch through social media and had made a few different attempts to get together that just never worked out. A few months ago I sent her a bundle of my Wild & Free fabrics to have some fun with, I love her style and knew she'd make something to inspire us all! I was so excited on Saturday when our plans to get together finally worked out, we had such a great time, and I was overjoyed to see her beautiful quilt work in person! My husband snapped this photo of us together with her Wild & Free quilt right in our backyard, what a surreal & special moment!



And then, we decided to have ourselves a Potter County quilt photo shoot at the park nearby, how could we not!!



Isn't her quilt beautiful?! I've been combining Wild & free with mostly other Art Gallery Fabric collections, so I especially loved seeing my collection used with so many different prints, by so many different designers!



Natalie's work is complete perfection! From her color & print selections, to the balance she created in her quilt design, to her wood grain quilting. It's all such flawless work!



I especially love these little red nine patch blocks and the green Lizzy House print binding!



I have to showoff her quilt back, too! The combination of prints and colors she chose is too amazing not to share!



I'm so grateful for this chance to share Natalie's quilt today, I hope you're feeling as inspired as I am!!

I wish you all a beautiful day! ♡ Maureen

A Wild & Free Quilt

Yesterday my husband and I celebrated our 13th Wedding Anniversary!! Since Mondays are always so busy and today is all about celebrating our son Jacob who turns ELEVEN, we decided to honor the occasion with a quick breakfast date, stopping after at a few of our favorite spots along the road back home, to finally photograph my Wild & Free Quilt!



This quilt was made for my Wild & Free fabric Quilt Market booth, it's the very first idea I ever dreamed up for my Limited Edition collection with Art Gallery Fabrics. I started it weeks before my strike-offs even arrived, beginning with a pile of Pure Element solids that coordinated nicely with the colors in my collection which I turned into dozens of HST's, until I could fill in the center squares of my design with those first fabric samples.



Of all the quilt patterns I've dreamed up for Wild & Free, to me, this one's the most fitting. For sentimental reasons, it's become one of my very favorites, and the pattern is one I would love to take the time to try again. It's on this Summer's to-make list and I'm hopeful!





As much as I love each little piece of it, one of my favorite parts is the finished quilting, a beautiful wildflower pattern longarm quilted by Sew Shabby Quilting! The sweet flowers were the perfect choice to add a little touch of femininity and to accent the wildflower prints!





Since it was returned to me after being photographed for the Wild & Free lookbook, it's been in constant use! For weeks now I've been meaning to take it out, to finally have the chance to share it photographed in the same place that inspired my collection. It feels really, really special to be able to do so today!



Thank you so much for stopping by to see! ♡ Maureen