Sara’s Appliqué Quilt with BloomBerry

Happy Spring, Makers! Sara from @SaraBQuilts here with my first finished (and very favorite) appliqué quilt! BloomBerry is Minki Kim’s new line for Riley Blake Designs and it is stunning! Mini Kim’s illustrations are beautifully detailed and coordinate so well with the plaid and dot blenders she chose to compliment them with. The moment I saw the gorgeous strawberries, flowers, and plaid, I knew I needed to make something super special with her fabric. To show off the gorgeous BloomBerry fabrics, I chose to design my very own appliqué pattern using Mini Kim’s illustrations! 

I chose Riley Blake Designs Peaches ’n Cream POParazzi as my background fabric, but the BloomBerry Cream Berry Sprouts or BloomBerry Gray Petite Flowers would have been my next choices! While BloomBerry has beautiful shades of yellow and orange in the collection, I chose to focus on the pinks, reds, whites, and navy prints. Peaches ’n Cream POParazzi was an unusual pick for me, but was a fun alternative to a neutral background color. 

For the appliqué blocks, I alternated between the strawberry, flower, and leaf designs found on the BloomBerry main print for the actual appliquéd pieces. I simply traced the design I wanted to use off of the fabric using a light table, blew up the image to the size I wanted, and cut out the pieces I printed on card stock paper. I used my standard method of appliqué preparation, which I talk about here, and love how the appliqué blocks turned out! 

Once I was finished with the appliqué blocks, I decided my quilt needed sashing for an extra pop of color. I used BloomBerry Midnight Main and Midnight Plaid to create a border to frame each block. I also used the BloomBerry Midnight Main as my binding fabric so that it blended in with the border and let the appliqué blocks shine!

Before sending it off to be quilted, I decided to add some chunky stitching using Size 8 Perle Cotton around the borders of the flowers and strawberries! Instead of quilting the chunky stitches at the end, I did the stitching while it was still a quilt top, so the chunky stitching did not show through to the back. I love how it turned out in the end.

For quilting my BloomBerry quilt, I sent it to my favorite longer quilter, Molly Kohler of Lovely Threads, to work her magic. I chose the Rosemary pantograph by Dastardly Quilt Studio to match the look of my quilt but to not make it “over” quilted and lose the daintiness of the appliqué and the hand stitching that I had already done. I love how it turned out.

A lot of time and love went into this quilt design and creation, but BloomBerry was a fabric worthy of such efforts. It is such a beautiful collection by Riley Blake Designs. I would like to make another version of this quilt using all of the colors from the collection next time! I hope you enjoyed learning about my BloomBerry appliqué quilt and this stunning new collection by Minki Kim. If you have any questions, always feel free to reach out to me at @SaraBQuilts!

-Sara Brown