Welcome to my stop on the La Conner Blog Tour! I am so excited to share this fabric line with you! This line is just the sweetest mix of strawberries, florals, and ginghams–and several of the prints have little flecks of gold for an amazing accent. The color palette is so perfect as well, a sweet mix of red, greens, pinks, grays, and blues. Everything mixes and matches so wonderfully. I think the reds and greens are so perfect for Christmas sewing, without being over-the-top “holiday”, if you know what I mean.
I’m trying to remember when I first came across author and designer Jera Brandvig (aka Quilting in the Rain). I think it must have been when she released her first book, Quilt As-You-Go Made Modern–which is a fabulous book that I use over and over again. Since then she released her first fabric line, High Tea (which I blogged about here), and another book: Quilt As-You-Go Made Vintage, which I need to get my hands on!
Being the force of nature that Jera is, La Conner is her second fabric line with Lecien. This line is inspired on a quaint little town in northern Washington that Jera visited growing up. And coincidentally, we happened to be vacationing there this summer, so of course, I had to stop by to see the inspiration for myself. And what a charming little town it is!
La Conner is a big, 36 print line, so I had lots of fabric to play with. I’d been looking at Granny Square blocks, thinking that I wanted to try them out, and La Conner seemed to be a perfect fit for this block. There are a million Granny Square tutorials on the internet, but I used this one, which is a quick strip quilting method that makes two blocks at a time. They come together really quickly, and it was so much fun playing with each different color combo. I made this quilt leisurely over the summer, relishing in the process.
I love a fabric line that includes a bit of grey, and I couldn’t resist using this sweet strawberry print for the back, with some classic red binding.
This quilt is also a first for me because I quilted it on a longarm! I am a total longarm newbie, with only one lesson under my belt, but I thought that a nice large, loopy design seemed to be what this quilt called for–and so I just leaped and quilted up this whole quilt in an hour! Longarms are amazing like that. The large-scale design leaves the quilt so soft and drapey–a perfect snuggle up on the couch and read kind of quilt.
I also had the honor of making a quilt from one of Jera’s patterns, Tiny Tulips (so appropriate, since La Conner is known for tulips) for her booth at Quilt Market. Such a sweet fun pattern–and so perfect for the La Conner line! This quilt included her sweet coordinating lace on the inner border–such a fun touch!
I had so much fun working with this line–and I’m sure that you will too! Have you been following along the other stops on this blog tour? It is full of the sweetest projects that really bring La Conner to life!
