Today I’m very happy to have the chance to participate in the Threadbias Blog Tour. Threadbias is an online community built just for you – fabric lover, sewist and quilter. You can create a fabric library, browse and upload projects, participate in discussions and using the new, subscription based Quilt Design Tool…digitally design your next quilt!

This web-based tool is super easy to use. I spent some time over the weekend playing with it to mock up a quilt design. I’ve had flying geese on the mind, so I thought I’d try my hand at making a quilt top.

Creating a new project is very straightforward. I love how the program auto-saves as you are working so you don’t need to worry about losing your project if, say, your 4 year old decides to hit the on/off button on the power strip where your computer is plugged in. Not that THAT has ever happened around here…

Using the Line Tool, I easily created my first Flying Geese Block.

I quickly copied and pasted to create a column of 4 Flying Geese.

Then I filled in the geese with fabric that I had added to my “fabric stash” library, via the Threadbias website. This is my favorite part. I love to be able to see how the fabric will look in the design.

Once I had my set of 4 Flying Geese, I locked them together as 1 block. This made it easy to copy and paste them as a group, and create my quilt top quickly.

So have I gotten you excited? If you are looking for a new, convenient, affordable way to start designing your quilts, I highly encourage you to check out the Threadbias Quilt Design Tool.

Be sure to keep up with the rest of the tour – some stops have giveaways!

It’s just a happy coincidence that I finished my quilt using Anna Maria Horner’s Innocent Crush line just in time to post for Valentine’s Day. I am really excited about this quilt because I made it with a new pattern I developed and {shameless plug} am offering up in my pattern shop.

This quilt is a squares-in-squares pattern where the center square is off-centered in each block. There are 5 different block layouts and I used a combination of solids and prints. Again, I was drawn to the Kona Espresso which looks black in the photos, but in reality is a dark brown. The white is Kona Snow. These saturated colors really sit well with me for winter.

For the binding I almost picked Kona Espresso again…but at the last minute decided to go a bit crazy and use a red print from the Innocent Crush line. I really liked how the red popped in the quilt and decided to carry it to the edge.

The back is a combination of several Kona solids and some other blocks which were really meant for another quilt. But, I am trying to be realistic this year on what I can finish and that one wasn’t in the cards. I think they look nice here too.

I quilted this one free motion, using clear thread on the top and tan on the bottom. It measures 60″ x 72″.

And now a little more on the pattern. It is offered in my pattern shop for download and my Etsy shop. It is very detailed, 15 pages with 11+ color diagrams. It has fabric yardage requirements, cutting diagrams, assembly diagrams, final block placement diagram – the whole nine yards. Below is a graphic showing the quilt in optionally all-solid fabric. I am *really* excited about it and hope you are too!