textured | Spoonflower Blog

This is the twelfth in our series of staff project posts created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilt Challenge. Voting on this contest opens Thursday, 3/14.

Danielle, Kim and I (Kate) weren’t really sure where to start with this year's staff challenge. A quilt? Made with Spoonflower fabric? What limitless possibilities! All avid crafters, it was a little difficult to begin to narrow down the focus, so we ruminated on our ideas for a few days before our first meeting.

Several years ago, I'd got my hands on a lovely book, The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff. I had since hoped to have the time and focus to sit down and try out some of the phenomenal grids and patterns she suggests for pleating, tucking, smocking and more. This quilt project seemed to be the perfect time to try it out and when I suggested this idea, Danielle and Kim were both enthusiastic. As a matter of fact, Kim had a copy of the same book on her bookshelf!

Danielle and I each took a gander at reproducing some of the patterns that served as guides for assorted types of fabric manipulation in the book. Printing those patterns onto Spoonflower fabric enabled us to bypass the usual time-consuming task of manually measuring and marking grids, which allowed us a lot more time for sewing exploration. Danielle started with designing simple grids of dots, each spaced in different increments, using different colors, and printed onto different fabrics so that we could explore several different methods of manipulating fabric to create textures.