Nightingale Quilt - using the Botanist collection
Hello and happy (almost) New Year! Today I'm sharing our last make of 2022! If you saw the Botanist fabric collection Lookbook by Art Gallery fabrics (found here), then you already know about this quilt! It's a stunner and the perfect "enchanted forest" type collection. This is actually my first time creating something using Katarina Roccella's beautiful fabrics, and gosh, I'm not sure why I waited so long! Aren't they gorgeous?
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I should actually clarify, I didn't personally make this quilt, but it was more of a collective approach between myself and Elizabeth (@elizabethboltenstudio). We were chatting one day about how much we absolutely loved these prints, one thing led to another and the next thing I knew she had a finished Nightingale quilt!
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One of the things I love about Katarina Roccella's fabrics is that she incorporates different textures into her prints. All of these fabrics are traditional quilting cottons, so you get the look of using a more complex fabric while using something that is easy to work with. I could be mistaken, but I think she does this with all of her collections and I really think it's one of the great things about her style that sets her apart. I love it!
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I've mentioned this before, but this pattern is my all time favorite for fat quarters and collections of prints. There are 5 sizes in the pattern: Baby (9 blocks), Small Throw (12 blocks), Square Throw (16 blocks), Large Throw (20 blocks) and Queen (42 blocks). Each block requires one fat quarter, so since the Botanist collection has 16 different fabrics, the Square Throw (60" x 60") was perfect! I love a good square quilt. :)
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We went with Forest Night, a deep earthy green for the Background fabric. You might remember my "Wild Forgotten" Heirloom Hearts quilt, in which I used Dried Moss, another AGF green as a Background fabric. Forest night is a smidge darker than Dried Moss, so much so that it reads almost like a green/brown, but both fabrics are equally stunning.
We have kits for this exact quilt top in our shop!
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One of my favorite prints from the collection is Festoon Umber, so it made sense to use that as the backing. There something about those little white flowers and berries (is that what they are??) against the darker background with touches of pink and pecan that just makes my heart giddy. It serves as a floral...but in a different kind of way, which is fun! We have 4.5 yard cuts of this fabric in our shop as well!
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Then for the binding, I was thinking that it needed a little contrast between the darker background and backing fabrics. We went with Crossing Paths Rose, which is a really gorgeous dusty pink with a subtle geometric print. Just enough to frame in the quilt and add a bit of interest. You know we have this binding fabric in the shop as well. :)
Elizabeth is so good at quilting her own quilts. I always love the ways that she incorporates geometric designs into simple straight stitch quilting. For this quilt, she did sort of a chevron pattern with motifs overlapping in the negative space of the blocks. BRILLIANT!
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This feels like a calming and magical quilt to kick off 2023. :)
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