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Frolic - A Michael Miller Project

Kimberlee Tanner

We are nearing the end of our year as Michael Miller Ambassadors, but still have a few projects left to share!

This month, we were so excited when we opened the box of fabric. We absolutely love this line and had such a fun time creating with it. We have some fabric leftover and have ideas for a few other little projects we are working on as well. You'll want to keep an eye on our social media to see when they are finished up.

The fabric we received is called A Bushel and a Peck by Alicia Dujets. The prints are a little bigger scale and oh so happy. We knew we definitely wanted a design that allowed big enough piecing to see the prints. This design will be awesome for other fabric collections with similar scale!

The fabrics we used are:

  • My Main Squeeze in Multi
  • Melonberry in Pink
  • Through the Grapevine in Purple
  • Fruit Pun(ch) in Aqua
  • Picnic Blanket Plaid in Multi
  • Cotton Couture White
  • Cotton Couture Pluto

You know we love curves and after a short hiatus, they are back. We don't intend to design with all sorts of curves when starting on a new project, they just flow naturally. I've accepted it and embraced it! Don't worry though, we have lots of tutorials on all sorts of different ways to piece curves. They really are much simpler than you might think, it just takes a little bit of practice.

For this quilt, we used the no pin curves technique and the blocks went together very quickly. I had them all done up in weekend and ready to piece into rows. Whenever we piece curves for our quilts, we like to iron the seam to the outer curve. This helps the block to lay flatter.

Frolic is a single block design and the final pattern is made by rotating the blocks in different directions. We also alternated where the background fabric and main fabric go to create the final design. It does take a little pre planning, but with a simple coloring sheet, it was easy to grab the right fabrics for the right corners and we chain pieced everything.

We also opted to use a nice white border to outline each of the blocks from the background. We love how it makes the fabrics stand out and really defines the fun shape. It also provided areas for more custom quilting.

While deciding on a quilting plan for this quilt, I knew I wanted to keep it fairly simple. The quilt felt more whimsical to me and didn't really require super fancy quilting. I opted for a fun ribbon candy in the white borders and swirls in the prints. For the background, I first broke it up by outlining the large shapes. This was easy to do using the blocks as guides. To really define the outlines, I left a small channel and echoed each of the lines. After that, a straight line fill finished off the design.

Now that it was quilted, all that was left was the binding. We intentionally saved some of the plaid for the binding, we've decided we really like the fun ways that stripes and plaids work in bindings. It's a fun little pop in the frame at the end. 

We will be making this pattern available for purchase, so watch in the next couple months for more information! 

Happy Quilting!

Kimie and Missy


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