Cuts: Linen Blends, Rich Romance and Cheerful Color
the GenQ Crew • August 12, 2011 • 2 Comments

Naturally, there’s nothing we love more than new fabric.  (Well, maybe our kids hold an edge over the latest cuts, but everything else is bottom-rung, baby!)  And given the opportunity, we’d probably bathe in cotton  if we could. Heck, we’re lucky enough that waxing rhapsodic about it is part of our job description. But these days, being a fiber junkie doesn’t just mean hoarding fabric—we can take it to a new level and become total designer groupies, too! Because the people behind the designs are often just as interesting and fun as the designs themselves (well, naturally!) and we love finding out about the folks behind the bolts. (Hmmm, wonder if anyone ever asks these quilterati for their autographs on a selvage?)

Here are three new collections that we’ve been sighing over here at GenQ HQ, and the fascinating designers who created them.

 


iHeart by Rashida Coleman-Hale (Timeless Treasures)

Do you love linen? Rashida Coleman-Hale does, too, and she loves it so much she named her blog i heart linen! Rashida, whose background is in both fashion design and graphic design, has been creating her own fabrics on Spoonflower for some time, but this is her first commercial line with Timeless Treasures. Called iHeart, these linen/cotton blends are a great way to bring a little linen into your next project. Rashida says her time in Tokyo, Japan, where she spent much of her childhood, has influenced her designs and we can totally see it in these adorable prints. (Robots! Squee!) iHeart comes in two colorways: a pink/orange (shown here) and a blue/green.

 

Lost and Found by Jen Allyson for My Mind’s Eye (Riley Blake)

The surging popularity of scrapbooking has created an abundance of designer papers and embellishments, and over the past couple of years, we’ve seen some of the stars of the scrapbooking world cross over into textile-land. Jen Allyson is a great example of this migration. She’s been a designer for the scrapbook company, My Mind’s Eye for more than eight years, and finally decided to jump on a bolt. Her new collection,  Lost and Found, brings one of her popular paper designs into the quilting world.  And we’re defnitely not sorry…we love its romantic floral flair! There are three palettes (grey, pink, and red) and in addition to the two prints you see here, there are dots, stripes, a coordinating blender, and a lovely print of old fashioned labels.

 

Super by Gudrun Erla (Red Rooster)

Gudrun Erla was born and raised in Iceland and created Iceland’s first online quilt shop. (How many people can say they created their country’s first anything?)  She also created original quilt patterns—in Icelandic—and soon after she began translating them into English to market in the U.S., her husband’s job brought the family over to Minnesota, where they currently reside. As designers go, Gudrun is pretty darned prolific. Super is her tenth line for Red Rooster Fabrics (an eleventh, Glow, is due out this fall). But she’s keeping it fresh, with this fun, cheery collection of flowers, pinwheels and dots with a contemporary twist.

2 Comments

  • Krista - Poppyprint • 13 years ago
    COMMENT #1

    I happen to have a wee smidgen of Rashida’s robots and they are definitely the bomb!!

  • Angela O. • 13 years ago
    COMMENT #2

    I am both a scrapbooker and a quilter and I often find myself looking at scrapbooking papers and thinking “that would make a great fabric” or vice versa, so I’m super excited to see the crossover between the two! Thanks for the fabric peeks! Love it!

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