The Havanna Collection evokes colors from the deep jungle with it's exotic birds, vegetation and flowers. Think of the heat, the smells, the food, the people, the culture, the conversations, the memories of Havanna...
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Karla has not been to Havanna (yet!) but was inspired by another piece of fabric. This is often the case - a random fat quarter in her stash got her thinking about a new color story. This time it was Kaffe Fasset:
The interesting, warm brown reminded her of cigars and is a not-expected base. The light purple is also unexpected, and we added two shades to make it more interesting. Instead of a gradation of greens that are all in the yellow-green family, Karla added a blue-green which offsets the purples.
The collection is available by yardage color, or as 2 different 8-step collections
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CANOPY
The new Canopy pattern is based on a Monstera plant leaf and named after the layer of leaves in teh jungle that enclose the world below. Karla played with the graceful curves of the leaf, as well at an interesting pantogram to make the leaves relate to each other, rather than just repeating. The arrangement creates a circle or "wreath" from the central veins. A layout sheet is provided in the pattern to get these circles to come out just right!
When choosing a quilting design, Karla and Kate (Patchy Cat Quilting) decided that the quilts should be divided into quadrants. The thread color used is from the DIAGONAL quadrant. For example, the upper left quadrant of green and brown leaf veins are quilted in purple thread: chosen from the lower right quadrant.
Also the quilting DESIGN is broken into quadrants. A rocky background was used in 2 quadrants...
...while a swirly, watery design was quilted into the other 2 quadrants.
The leaves are fused on using Mistyfuse (comes in the fabric kit) and the edges were tacked down in the quilting process.
BIRD OF PARADISE
Next, Karla designed the Bird of Paradise pattern. The warm reds and oranges, offset with purples are found in the flower itself, and needed to be set off on the dark greens in the collection. Karla played with simplified shapes to create an easy, graceful interpretation of the petals. Instead of being spiky, these petals bend with the wind.
A transparency effect is created by careful color placement and using the gradation of colors to your advantage. This is the prototype of the quilt (can you spot the mistake?):
Karla wanted to offset the grace blossom with a spiky background, so she used half-yards of 3 different greens. She was going to vague stems and leaves. This gave the blossoms something to attach to visually. However, it is quite hard to write a pattern for an improve piece after the fact (!), so she also designed a straightforward background for those who do not want to improvise:
The kit is VERY generous (fat quarter of each flower color), so you can make as many blossoms as you like and experiment with color placement. We like the way the top flower seems to be twisted gracefully around the light green "stem." What will yours look like??
POP GARDEN
A chance booth placement at a quilt show brought Karla and Mariana of "Sew Mariana" together. Mutual admiration of each other's work created this collaboration. Mariana was sent home with the Paradise bundle, and made this little wallhanging for a class sample:
Isn't it just delightful? Can you imaging a whole, happy quilt with these sparkling colors?
Get out your Create Grids 4-in-1 Hexie template, you use the paper templates included in the pattern.
And if you ever get a chance to take a class from Mariana - DO IT! She is a spitfire!
www.sewmariana.com
THREAD by AURIFIL
A new thing we are testing out is a small hand-selected collection of 50wt. thread that coordinates with our seasonal bundles. Just five small spools to round out the color story. What do you think?
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