Wildabon Quilt with Leah Duncan.

Want to know one of the most fun things I did in 2016? Easy. It’d have to be my new Wildabon quilt–a collaboration with Leah Duncan. Everything about it was such a delight. To start, I’m a massive Leah Duncan fan. She has a beautiful and distinct style that is all her own. I’ve loved sewing with her fabrics, collecting her goods and just following her work and business as she continues to put out really lovely things. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s a kind and thoughtful person too. (Win win win).

It all started while sewing with some of Leah’s fabric one weekend. The Willow tank on the right is made with fabric from Leah’s Lore collection with Cloud9. (The fabric on the left is some Nani Iro in case you’re wondering.) While sewing along, I started to wonder what it would be like to appliqué some of those shapes, and I kind of became a little obsessed with the idea. Next, I reached out to Leah to see if she was interested in working together, and she was. Hoo-rah!

From working with Leah and her designs in the beginning, to making this project a reality, Wildabon was satisfying from all angles. In terms of the appliqué itself, the 7 different design motifs, all of which range in terms of skill level, shape and size, are really fun to tackle on any sized project. If you’ve appliquéd before (or not), there is enough variety of shape to keep you entertained and challenged.

In terms of fabric and composition, I’ll happily reuse the word satisfying here too, because it fits. While I’m not at all opposed to projects with limited uses of fabric and color–they can be a great challenge–I also love a project where you can use it all.

This is a project where you can build out as big of a fabric and color palette as you like–or it works with a small one too–and you can mix and match the shapes in as many ways as you can think of. Think of this project as one where you can play with fabric and shape all day…which I happily did. Or, if you’ve just got a few minutes at the end of each day, you can totally spend those minutes composing, cutting and playing with this on your design wall until you get it to where you want it. (I really like that idea…and might need to do that…)

From the beginning, I knew that I wanted to use my new lawns–all of them–plus the coordinating lawn solids. This is a good project for using little bits of many things, and I wanted to be able to see all of my fabrics in one place and in a loose color order that would be as engaging to compose and it would be to see in finished form.

Lawn is one of my favorite things to appliqué with (see two of my Hesperides projects here and here), especially when there is a lot of shape variation and precision. The fineness of the lawn makes creating that edge distinction and combination of shape much easier, plus it’s just so darn soft to sew with.

You’ll notice that the background fabric is not a lawn, instead it is a piece from Euclid. I love appliquéing with linen too, and here, it makes the perfect backing. The sturdiness of the linen/cotton blend makes it a very supportive backing, and the natural color allows both light and dark fabrics to pop.

So yeah. That’s my Wildabon quilt. If you like color, fabric and shape, then there’s a good chance you can have some fun with this one too. Since I had such a good time making this one, it’s no surprise that I’ve made more Wildabon things, but you’ll have to stay tuned for those in future posts.

Huge thanks to Leah for working with me on this project!

I’m excited to see what you all do with it too.

Pattern : Wildabon Quilt Pattern

Fabrics : Friedlander Lawn and coordinating Cambridge solids (which are Lipstick, Peach, Gold, Smoke, Aqua, Charcoal, Blue, Lagoon) for the appliqué, Euclid for the background, Friedlander for the binding

(BTW, I’m seeing some lovely kits popping up in lots of places like here, here, here, here, and here–for any Aussies)