You will too after you experience the luscious blue-green quilts offered up this month by indie quilt designers from the Yahoo Quilt Designers Collective.  Get advice from and see the quilts of Pat Sloan, Barbara Campbell, Sarah Whitney, Helen Stubbings, Marilyn Foreman, and Marcy Horswill. To view the show in Full Screen mode or to embed this slideshow in your blog, just click the Menu link.

August’s featured color is blue-green, the hottest color of 2010.  Petite Pineapples combines tradition with trend, juxtaposing 19th century-style hand applique with trendy blue-greens of 2010.  This sweet runner uses a clean color palette of teal, aqua, brown, and cream, and bids a fond farewell to summer.  Not a hand-applique fan?  Happy for you, this project is machine-applique friendly.

Petite Pineapples also shows you how easy it is to get a completely different look by changing just one color.  This runner uses exactly the same fabrics as July’s Christmas Cabin, only I’ve exchanged teal for red.  By making one small change, I completely transformed this color scheme, and you can too.  I show you how.

The dogtooth border is a classic hand-applique treatment, and I show you an easy way to cut and applique it, getting perfectly sharp points without any worries.  Subscribers to the pattern series get exclusive access to a video on how make this border, so you can follow along with me.   The freemotion wavy echo quilting design is simple to execute but impressive in the final runner, and I outline exactly how to do it.

Petite Pineapples Pattern Update:  $5.95 (delivered early and automatically to pattern series subscribers – keep reading!)  Add to Cart

If you can’t get to the quilt shop to select your own fabrics, no worries.  I’m offering a Petite Pineapples kit as well.  It’s best to choose your own fabrics for your color palettes, but we all have those times when life gets too busy and we just can’t get to it.  I’d rather you be able to do the lesson with a kit than not at all.

Petite Pineapples Kit: $21.95 Add to Cart

Learn by Doing

In addition to learning how to applique the Petite Pineapples block and coordinate a fresh color palette, you’ll also discover how to:

• cut and place applique motifs improvisationally, 19th century-style
• make the applique process effortless with my Applique Checklist
• make an impressive dogtooth border with my step-by-step instructions and video
• quilt a freemotion wavy echo design for stunning results

So not only do you get a sophisticated and new original design, you update your skills as well.

Learn New Techniques

Improvisational cutting and placement are new to many quilters who rely on 21-century techniques that focus on precision, precision, precision.  This approach allows you the freedom and flexibility to give each block it’s own unique charm and eccentricities.

If you’ve only relied on freezer paper or fabric glue, let me introduce you to the world of needle turn applique by eye.  It’s a wonderfully relaxing technique that gives each applique motif an exceptional look while harmonizing with the project as a whole.

If you’ve been intimidated by dogtooth borders in the past, or always wanted to try one, this is your chance.  I give you a no-fail technique that details the process, step-by-step.

Subscribe to the Enhanced Pattern Series

The Petite Pineapples pattern update is $5.95, and includes all instructions for making the table runner blocks, border, backing, and binding.

If you’d like to subscribe to the table runner enhanced pattern series for the entire year, I’m offering a special price of $$18.95.  Here’s what’s included:

• save 55% off the full price
• get 12 original table runner designs
• learn a new color palette and quilting technique each month
• receive early access to the patterns, automatically delivered to your inbox, before I publish it on my website
• get member’s-only access to a special forum where we’ll chat online about color and the pattern series
• video tutorials you can watch of Maria demonstrating how to do new techniques

The subscription will be available for a short time only, as these runners will be in an upcoming book!

Color-of-the-Month Pattern Series:  $18.95 Add to Cart

May’s featured color is yellow, which so many quilters find to be challenging and avoid using.  No more!  Sunflower Summer shows you how to make yellow play well with others, giving yellow a chance to mingle and be social with its friends from around the color wheel without overwhelming the quilt and giving it that “oh no!” look.  Yellow can be overwhelming in any project, and Sunflower Summer reveals how you can coordinate yellow in any quilting project.

Sunflower Summer Pattern Update:  $5.95 (free to subscribers – keep reading!) Add to Cart

If you can’t get to the quilt shop to select your own fabrics, no worries.  I’m offering a Sunflower kit as well.  It’s best to choose your own fabrics for your color palettes, but we all have those times when life gets too busy and we just can’t get to it.  I’d rather you be able to do the lesson with a kit than not at all.

Sunflower Summer Kit: $21.95 Add to Cart

Learn by Doing

Yellow is the brightest color in any quilt shop, and using it in your quilt’s color palette takes special care and handling.  Without savvy color skills, your quilt can have an off look, even if you use limited amounts of yellow.  I show you the why behind yellow’s glare and how to avoid yellow overload.

Learn New Techniques

May’s Sunflower Summer pattern uses a modified Dresden Plate block, and you’ll learn how to make perfect points without having to turn them under using hand applique.  All of the sunflower petals are done on the sewing machine!  I also demonstrate how different backgrounds can make a color completely disappear or look too strong, and how you know when your colors have achieve a wonderful harmony.

Forget quilt as desired!  I’ve included quilting designs, the very ones I used in my own project, that make Sunflower Summer really shine.  I created wonderful textures throughout the quilt, and you can too!

Subscribe to the Pattern Series

The Sunflower Summer pattern update is $5.95, and includes all instructions for making both of the table runner blocks.  You’ll need the master January Winter Bird pattern for instructions and dimensions on making the border, backing, and binding.

If you’d like to subscribe to the table runner pattern series for the entire year, I’m offering a special price of $$18.95.  Here’s what’s included:

• save 55% off the full price
• get 12 original table runner designs
• learn a new color palette and quilting technique each month
• receive early access to the patterns, automatically delivered to your inbox, before I publish it on my website
• get member’s-only access to a special forum where we’ll chat online and by video about color and the pattern series

This is a special introductory price, so buy today!

Color-of-the-Month Pattern Series:  $18.95 Add to Cart

The Spring Tulips table runner uses a lot of half-square triangles (HSTs) in the pieced tulips blocks.  In fact, every table runner I’ve designed so far uses them.  For much of my early years as a quilter, cutting and piecing accurate HSTs was a mystery to me.  I followed all of the instructions, tried the triangle paper, triangles on a roll, and just didn’t find a way that suited me.  I even did Debbie Caffrey’s method of cutting bias strips, seaming them, and then cutting the HSTs.  It was accurate, but a headache too.

I needed something simpler.  I like simplicity:  clean, accurate, easy, no weird tools, just the basics on how to do it right.  I finally figured out the secrets of accurate HSTs, and now I’m sharing them with you in this checklist.  I’ve become a huge fan of checklists after reading Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto.  It’s a fascinating look at how pilots, surgeons, architects, and other creative and technical people nail down a procedure so there are no mistakes.  So here’s my gift to you:  a HST Checklist for getting them right.  Every. Time.

To view this full-size and print it out, click here for the link.  I suggest putting it next to your sewing machine or cutting table:  someplace visible so you don’t miss it!