comfortstitching

foxglove showcase gallery

I've really enjoyed putting together this showcase for you, I hope you are feeling inspired by what you've seen and have plenty of idea's of what you can make from this fabric range.

A big thank you to each of the artists who took part for sharing their time and talent with us all.  The imagination and eye for a good idea, each maker demonstrated, far exceeded what I had expected from this online event - I was blown away by the variety of idea's and techniques.   I  thoroughly enjoyed the collaboration (and hit the talent jackpot too).  

Below is a dreamy photo recap - you can click on the pictures or names to go see lots more pictures and pattern details.

Emily  (quilt pattern can be found here),

Ashley,

Pennie,

Stacy,

Kelly,

Nicole,

Sarah   (quilt pattern available here),

Michelle,

and finally Nicole! (pillow pattern is coming soon).

You can find stockists for the Foxglove fabric line here.

Thank you for following along, I hope you enjoyed the posts as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Foxglove selvedge

 

One of my favourite parts of putting together a new fabric line are the little details I get to create for the selvedge and logo.  This is usually done once the final selection of the fabric prints has been approved.  In essence it is just about putting together a few graphics that visually explain the line.  It's fun to pull out small elements from the prints to create a unifying text and image and to select fonts that work well with the imagery and create the right mood.  The image across the top, above was how I visualized the selvedge and this is exactly how the final selvedges were arranged.  For the fonts I chose one that looked modern and was sans serif (foxglove) and the other which looked retro and reminded me of fonts used in children's picture books (for the print names).  I like the contrast between the two chosen fonts.  There's a vintage versus modern vibe that echoes the feeling of the prints.  I also added in the two main visuals from the prints - this line is all about the foxes and the foxgloves.  As well as a couple of small floral graphics taken from the fabrics.

Today's maker for the Foxglove showcase is Nicole of Modern Handcraft.  You don't want to miss what she's made from Foxglove, you'll be dreaming for days..

Foxgloves colourways

One of the things I find hardest to do when designing a fabric line of prints is to limit my colour palette.  I always want to use about 9999 more colours than are really needed.  I guess you could say I'm distracted by colour.  When I handed my designs for Foxglove in to Cloud 9, I worked with Michelle, the design director to really tighten up the palette.  Michelle is amazing at editing things down to the crucial components and worked wonders, editing things down to just 8 colours.  The Foxgloves print is the lead print of the group and each of the two colourways use an almost identical palette, you can see this indicated in the thread spools below each print.  Even though the colour line up is so similar, the prints look very different.  This helps the prints in the line both co-ordiante and contrast together at the same time.  It sounds easy when I'm typing it all out here but in practice this is nowhere near as simple as it sounds!

Today's Foxglove showcase maker is Michelle of Chelles Quilts.  The picture above shows the first block for her project, catch up with what Michelle has been making over on her blog.

flutter

Remember the mini flutter quilt I showed you a few week's back?  Well, I've also written up a pattern for a full size quilt version too.  Because, I love to make ALL the quilts!  I've already made my first block and I'm itching to make more.  I'm planning on doing this over the summer so if you've picked up a bundle of Foxglove and are wondering what to do with it, why not join me for an informal kind of quilt a long?  

The best news about the Flutter pattern is, it's available as a free download and you can find it right here - Flutter quilt by aneela hoey

And of course, if you want to make the baby size, you can find that one here - Mini Flutter quilt by aneela hoey

Here's a look at the size difference of the blocks for comparison.  Kind of cute in both sizes don't you think.

p.s. I noticed the other day that Hawthorne Threads are selling a quilt kit for the Flutter quilt

You can find stockists for Foxglove fabric here.

For today's Foxglove showcase maker, we are taking a look at what Sarah of Sarah Quilts has been up to.  Sarah has been busy stitching up a Lawn Diamonds quilt and it is jaw dropping.  The picture above was taken at the start of the project.  Click on the link to go see the finished quilt.
 

Foxglove nesting boxes

My Nesting Boxes pattern is one of my favourite things to make.  Not only is it super simple to put together, I can never seem to find enough uses for the ones I have.  The more I sew, the more storage problems I solve.  Win Win is a good outcome in anyone's book.

Amongst other things, I find them perfect for housing my ever increasing thread collection habit.  The set of spools above are the ones from my Foxglove thread set that I curated for Aurifil - don't they look pretty?  This thread set should be finding its way to quilt shops very soon, ask for it at your favourite quilt store.

My newest set was sewn up out of Foxglove prints, I used two of the coordinates and the small scale cowslips floral.  They make for a very pretty little set to have on my work desk.

Here, they are partnered with the All In One Box Pouch made from Foxglove I showed you last week.

For more detail photos from the pouch patterns, see my previous posts here and here.

They are perfect for organizing all those essential sewing notions.

You can find stockists for the Foxglove fabric line here.

Today's Foxglove showcase maker is Nicole of Lillyella.  Nicole does some pretty awe inspiring stuff, the project she created from Foxglove is both imaginative and useful and perfectly executed.  You need to go and see all her pretty pictures and details, you'll be swooning like I did :)

 

 

evening primrose

The Evening Primrose print is one of the coordinates from the Foxglove line.  This 3 colour print is medium size in scale and again has a simple looking repeat that is more complex than it first appears.  The inspiration for this floral came from the above page of very random looking flower doodles.  This was another sheet that I had pinned up above my design desk, I think I liked the unusual looking motifs on it. I used the little tulip shaped motif on the bottom half of the page and called this Evening Primrose when I was done because that is what it reminded me of.  Not sure what I was inspired by when I actually drew the doodle..

Today's Foxglove showcase maker is Kelly of Jeliquilts.  Kelly does amazing things with flying geese style blocks in teeny tiny pieces (you really need to check those out when you visit).  With Foxglove, Kelly created a travel set to show how the prints can work for these kinds of projects as well as quilt-making.  Go take a look and see!

stem dot

For today's look at the inspiration behind my Foxglove fabrics, here was the starting point for my Stem Dot print.  The doodles on this torn out sheet from my sketchbook were done a couple of years ago, I think I was casually doodling away listening to the radio when that design at in the top left corner popped up out of nowhere,  I loved it instantly.  The page had been pinned up on the pinboard above my design desk for at least a year with the intention of turning that mindlessly done doodle into a fabric.  Sometimes I labour over designs for weeks and they go nowhere and other times they land in my head, just like that.

I always like to add a few one colour prints to my collections.  I find these kinds of simple repeats work well for mixing with other prints as well as on their own.  For this group, I submitted three colourways for the stem dot print - pink, gold and aqua.  Michelle loved the print so much she added in the fourth option of a navy.  I love how this design turned out on fabric!

 

Today's maker for the Foxglove showcase is Stacy of Stacy Olsen Design.  Stacy is an inspiring quilter and pattern writer who just makes me want to drop everything and quilt.  She came up with a really lovely idea for a quilt made out of Foxglove.  Go take a look at what she made.

foxgloves and foxes

The two lead prints of the Foxglove line are unsurprisingly called Foxgloves and Fox In The Foxgloves.  It all started with the print above, I drew up a few of my favourite flowers in Illustrator and then set about laying them out in repeat.  I always work out my own repeats, its a fascinating extension of the basic print idea.  My only problem with working out the layout is that I want to play forever and don't know when to stop.  I still have countless variations of this design in differing repeats, all with a slightly different names such as 'half drop spray'.  It's all technical lingo so that I can remember what I was doing before the next layout idea distracted me.  Anyhow for my lead prints I've been working along the lines of a simple design that is more complex than it first appears.  This kind of repeat fascinates me because it works well as a design but it's not really that straight forward for someone to notice where the repeat starts and ends.  Take a look above and see how long it takes you to figure things out.  Clue, it looks like a half drop but isn't.

Like the cowslips I showed you the other day, foxgloves are another plant that I love to draw endlessly. I have grown it in my garden many times, mostly from seed and watched it self seed all over the place.  One thing I found fascinating several years ago was that it would even self seed and grow in small cracks in the paving.  Not only grow but flower too!  The above page from one of my sketchbooks is a watercolour done probably at least 15 years ago.  It was one of the points of reference I used when creating this print.

Once I had this print almost worked out, I reduced the size of the image in Illustrator and thought it would work well as a second print much smaller in scale.  At first I thought about mixing in some other flowers and then whilst doing the housework I had the idea of adding foxes.  Seriously, some of my best ideas come to me whilst washing the dishes..

To add a little interest I started thinking of Fantastic Mr Fox and had my little fox acting all sly and up to things.  I drew up a few quick pencil sketches of him in different poses then drew them up in Illustrator.  And once I had these two prints done, I knew I had the basics of a new collection.  And there we have it.  If you look closely, it's just the same foxglove in the large scale print above with some leaves added.  The two colourways I submitted of the fox print (as above) also formed the basis of the colour selection for the entire group. 

Our Foxglove Showcase maker today is Pennie of Tuppence Ha'penny Quilts.  Pennie has been a personal friend of mine for the past few years.  She is an amazing quilter and super fast with it and also just an all round nice person.  You really should go meet her and find out what she's been sewing up at lightening speed! 

cowslips

I seem to have been sketching cowslips for years, its fair to say that I am enchanted by this little wildflower.  I've planted variations of it in my garden over the years, it never loves me back but I'm still besotted.  If you look very closely at my Meadow print (the one with the girls reading) from my Posy fabric line, you'll see some tiny cowslips in amongst the other flowers.

I always knew I wanted to do a fabric printed entirely with cowslips, so here it is!  In an ideal world, I would have loved to have done several different colourways of this print but industry is so much more limited than artistry.  Maybe one day.

In the meantime, if you like your florals pretty but want something a little out of the ordinary, this is the fabric print for you!

You can find stockists for the Foxglove fabric line here.

 

For today's Foxglove showcase maker, we are visiting the talented Ashley of Mommy By Day Crafter By Night.  Ashley first came to my attention when I saw a bag that she'd made from my Posy line on Pinterest.  I've been a huge fan of hers ever since, everything she makes makes me sigh.  For the showcase she's been busy working on something involving paper piecing, go take a look at what she created using Foxglove.

Foxglove showcase

This week sees the start of the Foxglove showcase.  This online event will take place over two weeks and each day I'll be showcasing something new I've made from my Foxglove fabric line or showing you the inspiration behind some of the prints.  I'll also be introducing you to a talented team of makers for the duration of the event.  Each day, I'll be linking up to a different maker and they'll be showing what they have been busy sewing up with Foxglove.  I've seen a few sneak peeks and I think we are all in for an inspirational treat.  Hopefully you'll discover a few new people along the way too.

For today's make I sewed up a new All In One Box Pouch.  This pouch is just so handy, it's impossible to have too many!    I used three colours of my Stem Dot print for the pouch - navy for the main pouch, pink for the vinyl pocket and aqua for the lining.

The pocket front uses the Fox In The Foxgloves print in navy and I used some Robert Kaufman Essex Linen in silver to bind the pocket, it contrasts with the prints perfectly.

I also used a little of the Foxes in the aqua colourway to make up a new mini foldover pouch.  Again these are too handy not to have around.  For the zippers I used my go to zipper colour - mustard.  If you haven't discovered the magic of the mustard zipper yet, you need to give it a try, trust me it goes with all my favourite colours and prints.

You can find stockists for the Foxglove fabric line here.

You can see more photos of the pouch pattern in my previous post here.

Today's maker for the Foxglove showcase is Emily from Quilty Love.  The quilt Emily has been making involves the triangles above and is looking so pretty!  I'm really excited today to see it in it's entirety for the first time.  

Click over to see the finished quilt.