Creating with Carrie's Paint Fabric

Hey there! If you are on the blog hop welcome! I am Tia Curtis, a long arm quilter and quilt designer. I am also a friend of Carrie's. I pretty much dig her. We met at quilt market a couple years ago and what struck me first about her was this her kindness and a special thrum of intense creative energy just below the surface. Well, when she asked me if I wanted to sew for her again for quilt market I said YES! She sent me her awesome PAINT fabric and each print was better than the last. I wanted to do justice to each print and many of them screamed APPLIQUÉ ME!!!! So I did.

First up we have this wonderful Paint brush case. My best friend Sharon Smith had one like it that was old and torn. She found at a yard sale about 20 years ago. She brought it to me and wanted to know if I could use it to draft a pattern for another one. I have made several over the years and the pattern has developed a bit. Now that I have it the way I like it best I have been meaning to do something with the pattern, besides just making paint brush cases for friends and my daughter. When I saw Carrie's fabric I knew Paint was the perfect collection for this design.

I did a bit of hand quilting while my husband was making dinner and used one of my old Camp Follower Bag business tags in the binding. This is a great design. If it doesn't get picked up at quilt market I will release a PDF pattern for purchase.

The next project was a little needle turn appliqué wall hanging. At first I thought I was going to make a BIG 4 block appliqué  (like the beautiful antique ones I saw at the quilt study center in Lincoln, Nebraska) but even I couldn't make that happen in time. I will make one later though. I thoroughly LOVED working on this project. There is something magical about doing hand appliqué in a quiet house. It really helps focus my mind. I think I had menus planned for the next 5 weeks! I designed this quilt to be pretty simple and approachable for a new appliqué quilter...someone just wishing to dip their toes into simple shapes.

Here it is all finished. I custom quilted this one. It is so hard to pick my favorite print! I love the color wheels for fussy cutting, the text is great because it is just awesome and the new colors are fabulous.

Last but not least I made this big Cross and Crown quilt. This was actually all I was going to make but I got swept up in Carrie's wonderful Paint fabric! I couldn't help it! I used the Weave print for the big parts of the tulips (or crown I guess, but I always think they look like tulips) and I added an appliqué  vine in the center cross portion. All but the bias vine is fusible appliqué. WAY faster than needle turn. If this pattern isn't picked up at Quilt market I will write it up as a PDF for here as well. I love the idea of blowing up a classic quilt block into a large bed sized quilt. It is fast and fairly simple, you just need bigger cuts of fabric.

For the quilting on this one I used an edge to edge. I couldn't narrow down what I wanted to do to it with the time I had left, so and edge to edge worked well but still looked naked. My daughter sketched out some leaves and I quilted them on the vines and viola! It was ready.

Here is a better shot of the leaves! Umm. I love them.

OK, so I know you are here to win some fabric right? Well, leave a comment below about which print  form Paint you think you will do the most with. The paint brush print is perfect for fussy cutting too by the way! I will choose a winner Saturday and Carrie will send you an Charm pack! Start saving your fabric allowance folks. This collection of fabric it fabulous!

xo,
Tia Curtis

Don't miss the rest of the blog tour!

April 9 April Rhodes
April 10 Sally Keller + Julie Goldin
April 11 Shea Henderson
April 12 Ramona Burke + Jenny Kelly
April 13 Sam Hunter + A Vintage Fairytale (Staci Barrett)
April 14 Rachael Gander + Erica Sage
April 15 Karen LePage + Tia Curtis
April 16 Shelly Figueroa + Fabrications2b (Bonnie Bobman)