Today on the Lisette blog, we have another useful PDF giveaway: a swatch card set.

You can see the details and download the file on the Lisette blog.

Well, this week is your chance to stock up on holiday treat recipes and interesting quilt block patterns, because the Moda designers are sharing their creations with you on their blogs all week long. And today is my turn.

The recipe I contributed is one of my favorite cookie recipies. I found  it in a Martha Stewart magazine years ago, and I’ve loved it ever since. Don’t let the title turn you off. The black pepper in these cookies actually helps to intensify the flavor of the chocolate. S will run screaming from any dish that contains a noticeable amount of pepper, but I can’t keep her away from these cookies.

Taking off from the country fair theme, I designed a block I called the Ferris Wheel.

You can download a printable PDF of the recipe and the quilt block by following this link.

Be sure to stop by the other designers’ blogs this week to see what’s going on in their kitchens and sewing rooms this season. Here’s the complete lineup.

December 5

• Minick & Simpson
• Bunny Hill
• Me & My Sister
• Deb Strain

December 6

• Kansas Troubles
• Fig Tree
• Cosmo Cricket
• Summersville
• Liz Scott

December 7

• Cotton Way
• French General
• Sweetwater
• The Long Thread

December 8

• Thimbleblossoms
• Kathy Schmitz Studios
• Laundry Basket Quilts
• Kate Spain
• Primitive Gatherings

December 9

• Basic Grey
• Brannock & Patek
• American Jane
• Pieces from My Heart

When I went to the Moda website to find the link to this free, downloadable quilt pattern (Be sure to look at the last page of the instructions where they put each swatch in a little dress shape. So cute!). I also noticed that the company offers darling little tags you can download for your Cape Ann projects. (To find and download them, click on this link and type in “Cape Ann.” Then click on the yellow scissors icon next to download the labels.)

You can also download and print clever informational sheets about the collection, taken directly from the big, hard-to-get-your-hands-on catalog, called the Playbook, that Moda produces for each Quilt Market. These pages are really well-designed and show off all the fabrics in addition to project ideas, coordinating patterns, etc. They’re a lot of fun, I think. Aren’t they clever over at Moda? Love them.

Ok, next. Here is a simple quilt kit from Fat Quarter Shop that shows off the prints nicely, especially the Virginia’s Closet print with all my little dress drawings. You can buy the kit here.

I’ve seen some other quilts popping up all over the place. I love this little one over at Pink Suede Shoe, which she made from the little 2 1/2″ square sample packs (we call them petit fours) we hand out at Market. No quilt pattern for this, but it doesn’t really require one, does it? Very quick and simple.

So where can you buy the fabrics? Well, a quick search brought up the following right away, with many more to follow as the fabrics arrive:

Fat Quarter Shop, obviously

Hancocks of Paducah

I can’t wait to see what you make with the fabrics! A few items have already shown up on the Cape Ann Flickr group. We hope you’ll join them and show off your projects, too.

I’m very excited to share these fabrics with you. Over the past few months you may have seen images of some of the prints, especially when we released our fall sewing patterns. But now that the fabrics are shipping to stores I can give you the whole treatment.

Cape Ann is inspired by the work of well-known illustrator Virginia Lee Burton. You’re probably most familiar with Ms. Burton’s work through her classic children’s books The Little House and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, which she both wrote and illustrated.

While I’ve always loved these books and her illustrations, it wasn’t actually her children’s books that inspired me to create this collection. Instead, a few years ago I found an article in a magazine about the Folly Cove Designers, which was a co-operative group of artisans in the Cape Ann area of Massachusetts that was founded and led by Ms. Burton. The artists in this group worked together to create hand-printed textiles which they sold themselves. The Folly Cove Designers grew out of  a renewed interest in the Arts and Crafts movement that began in England in the mid-1800s, and the group found inspiration in the environment of Cape Ann and its flora and fauna. They believed that their art should be both useful and creative.

Hey wait, are you sensing a theme here? Modern Workshop, my last collection, was inspired by the Wiener Werkstatte and its emphasis on hand-crafted homewares and other objects that were both useful and beautiful.  That concept of usefulness and quality seems to be striking a chord with my designs lately, hasn’t it? Must be my practical Midwest upbringing.

Anyway, back to the Cape Ann collection. I love Ms. Burton’s charming textile designs and illustrative work  and wanted to try something like this myself. So although I don’t think of myself as an illustrator, a few of my illustrations sneakily made their way into this collection. For example, this print is called Indian Summer, which is my version of a toile and features drawings of children playing. If you look closely, you’ll even see S and Bear! (She loves it that her favorite dress has a drawing of her on it.) My favorite drawing in this print is the boy and girl playing dress up. He’s wearing scuba flippers and she’s got butterfly wings and an over-sized hat. The images are sweet and a little quirky, to keep the feeling of the print a bit lighthearted.

The Virginia’s Closet print is taken more or less directly from my sketchbooks and includes many Oliver + S pattern designs. When we introduced Cape Ann at Quilt Market last spring (was it really that long ago?) I drew some of these clothing designs directly onto the chalkboard walls of our booth, just for the fun of it. (Sorry they’re a bit hard to see in the photograph below. Click on the image if you want to enlarge it.)

Like the Folly Cove designers, I was also inspired by a lot of the flora and fauna of our own neighborhood, right here in New York’s East Village. Last fall when I was designing this collection we walked by loads of chrysanthemums plants on our way to S’s school every day. Those autumn flowers inspired two chrysanthemum prints, Chrysanthemum Swirl and Starburst Mums. We also pass some gingko trees on our way to the library every weekend, and the fallen leaves inspired the Gingko Toss print. As far as the rest of the prints go, you know I like a good stripe. This one is reminiscent of a classic ticking stripe (but hand-drawn in this case, to give it a little charm and character). It is great for boys, too.

And of course the collection includes a polka dot. I’m a sucker for polka dots. You too? I think this one turned out really fun and versatile. I added a surprise along the selvedges of the polka dots. They’re little labels you can sew into your finished projects to personalize them a bit. I’ve been sewing them into samples, and they add a sweet little personalized detail to the clothing. S likes them because they’re soft and they help her to identify the back of her pants. They’d be a nice addition to anything you sew, really.

Here are the colorways and all the prints for the collection together:

The Cape Ann prints work nicely together for quilts as well as for apparel. Like the Folly Cove Designers, the fabrics are sort of a co-operative of designs, I guess? I’ll show you some quilts soon, but here are a few examples of Oliver + S patterns that combine multiple prints, just to show you what I mean. Nothing overpowering in these print combinations. Instead, they play nicely together. They’re a little like a well-behaved playdate where the parent doesn’t have to constantly intervene and can let the kids play nicely on their own. You know what I mean.

And there’s one more special aspect to this collection: all the prints are also available in a brushed cotton! This is a fabric that’s similar to flannel; it’s so soft and cozy. I think you’re really going to like it. Quilters have been telling me how much they prefer brushed cotton over flannel because it doesn’t pill and shrink like flannel. I wasn’t aware that you could tell that much of a different, but I just like it because it feels amazing.

So there you have it! Cape Ann starts shipping this week. Of course I started a Flickr group for it, and one of these days we’ll get around to adding buttons for Flickr groups to the sidebar here so you can easily find them.

I can’t wait to see what you make with these fabrics. I hope you’ll enjoy them!

To receive the discount, use coupon code MW40 at checkout. Please note that supplies are limited, and the discount is only available on remaining in-stock items.

You can view a short video of Liesl introducing the Modern Workshop line here.

In fact, it looks even better in the pool with all that blue surrounding it. (I took its place on this air mattress shortly after shooting this photo.)

Maybe I like it there because the lining reminds me of water.

You can find the free instructions for making this bag right here. We call it the Mother-Daughter Tote because it’s great for grown-ups to carry along just a few essentials (it’s big enough for a book but small enough to work more like a handbag) and because children like it too. Maybe because they want to be like their moms? I don’t know, but S certainly manages to find all sorts of uses for hers.

We still have some fabric packs available if you’d like to sew your own bag with Modern Workshop.

And as long as I’m on the topic of Modern Workshop, I thought I would give you a little background on the collection that I don’t think I’ve shared to date.

I always tell myself stories when I’m designing. I think stories are what keep me interested in what I’m doing and help me to create a coherent collection, whether it’s fabric or apparel. And I love to hear the stories that other artists and designers tell themselves. (I’ve been reading the catalog from the spectacular Alexander McQueen show at the Metropolitan Museum and have been mesmerized by the stories Lee McQueen told in his collections.)

In the case of Modern Workshop, my stories focused on the culture of the Viennese artists and craftspeople of the Wiener Werkstatte. For the most part, they were an affluent, culturally sophisticated group. So when I was working on the prints, I talked to myself about what their lives were like. I envisioned them gathering to discuss their work at salons, meeting at museums and galleries, and going to Viennese cafes and clubs.

So somehow during the course of my stories, the color palette began to focus on what they were drinking at those cafes. The prints took on names like French Curve, Studio Stripe, and Artisan Floral, while the colors became Coffee, Orange Fizz, Citron, Frothy Pink, and Artisan Aqua. Moda assures me that these names don’t get seen by anyone once the collection is finished, but I think they help to keep the group together. And I think you’ll be able to match the colorway names to the groups below without too much trouble now that you know the names.

And if you’re not able to find Modern Workshop in a fabric store near you, we still have a small number of fabric packs from the line available for sale in the fabric section of our website.

It’s the new Hugs & Kisses quilt pattern from Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts. The cover image for the pattern features the latest Oliver + S fabric collection, Modern Workshop.

Click here to see where you can purchase the pattern.

I had lots of fun designing it, and it’s a good project for someone who is new to quilting or wants a pattern that doesn’t take a lot of time. By staggering the pieced strips, the over-all pattern has an ombre effect, as you can see in the photo.

The quilt requires one Modern Workshop Jelly Roll and additional fabric for the background and the backing. You can download the free project sheet for this quilt from either the Moda website or from our website. I hope you enjoy making it.

As I mentioned earlier, Modern Workshop was inspired by the Wiener Werkstatte, a circle of artists and craftspeople based in Vienna at the turn into the twentieth century. I’ve long admired the aesthetic that this group pioneered. As I’ve said many times on my personal blog, one of my favorite places in New York is the Neue Galerie, a museum devoted to modernist Austrian art which often features exhibitions related to this movement.

I have a particular affinity for the philosophy behind the Wiener Werkstatte. These artisans were living during the height of the industrial revolution, which for the first time in history made mass produced items widely available at low prices. Contemporary society is experiencing a similar situation (a second industrial revolution?) with the rise of the Chinese economy and the proliferation of extremely low-cost imported items that were not available even a decade ago.

In response to their economic environment, the members of the Wiener Werkstatte created hand-crafted homewares and other objects that were beautiful and that are noted today for their enduring quality and their design sensibility. As you can imagine, I have a strong admiration for this philosophy, and I highly value today’s unique, hand-crafted items that stand in opposition to the cheap, mass-produced objects that flood our store shelves.

For Modern Workshop, I re-interpreted the aesthetic pioneered by the Wiener Werkstatte for the contemporary, twenty-first-century crafting community. This collection includes 32 prints in both floral and geometric motifs that make use of a fresh, twenty-first-century color palette. The collection includes small scale and large scale prints which makes it ideal for both garment sewing and quilting. You can preview all the prints included in the collection by viewing the line list on the Modern Workshop page in the Fabric section of our website.

We showed Modern Workshop to fabric shop buyers at the last International Quilt Market. Here’s a little video that Moda filmed during Market that highlights some of the prints and base fabrics (wovens, interlock knits, and waterproof coated fabrics) included in the line.

Modern Workshop should begin arriving on store shelves in your area next week. But if you can’t wait to try the fabric, we still have some pre-cut fabric packs available right now in our web store.

I’ll be back next week to show you some of the things we’ve been making at the studio with the collection.