Improv Fabric Blog Tour

I was so happy to be asked to join this Blog Tour promoting Amy Friend’s FIRST fabric line of modern blenders, Improv! You can read more about it and also a great interview with Amy on the Bernatex blog.

When I first looked at these fabrics and the delicate colors of peach and citron stood out to me. The delicate colors made me think of the wispiness of hydrangeas in a summer garden. Hydrangeas are one of my favorite flowers and were even the base of my wedding bouquet (only the more fall colors of a dried hydrangea…plums, golds, olives)! My husband, an avid gardener, has planted more varieties in our garden than I even realized existed!

With hydrangeas on my mind, I chose to work with several of the white fabrics for the hydrangea flower, with the leaves in Citron and background in Peach, both in the same print.

The citron green of this fabric against the greens of nature feels almost electric, doesn’t it?! That shade is one of my very favorite green colors!

Once I created my pattern, I began to cut out flowers, leaves and a stem from the fabric, as you can see here:

And after appliquéing, embroidering and embellishing, here is my finished project!

This is a large 14″ hoop that I painted a pale grey to match the grey in the white fabrics.

Looking even closer, you can see the various stitches that I used. I also added a smattering of champagne sequins between the hydrangea petals to further emphasize the wispiness of the flower.