Knitted Blooms quilt - the Tangerine version
If you’ve seen the new Tangerine Lookbook from Art Gallery Fabrics, you might have spied a familiar pattern in its pages. We sewed up another Knitted Blooms for the lookbook…and I’m excited to tell you all about this special quilt!
Knitted Blooms then…and now
I released the Knitted Blooms quilt pattern six months ago, in November 2024. Since then, we’ve featured five other Knitted Blooms quilts on the blog…making this one number six! As you can probably tell, I love this pattern. And I love how each quilt I’ve made has a totally different look and feel.
When I first introduced Knitted Blooms back in November, I told you about how the pattern was delayed by Hurricane Helene…and all the feelings I had afterward. At first, I could barely bring myself to sew. It was hard to plan for a quilt pattern release when our community was just getting by one day at a time. But making those early Knitted Blooms samples became such a therapeutic experience. It was a joy, even when things looked dark. The pattern came to symbolize hope and healing for me.
We’ve come a long way in the last (almost) 8 months! Our home in Black Mountain is bursting with wildflowers and birds…things we weren’t sure we’d see again after Helene. In the Lo & Behold studio, we’re gearing up for our next pattern release (June 12th!). Summer is almost here, and we’ve got so many great things planned for y’all. I am so thankful for all of the goodness, especially after the dark times last year.
All of that was on my mind as we dreamed up this new Knitted Blooms quilt. I remember first seeing this collection a few days before the Hurricane happened, and I quickly forgot about it the following weeks and months. When Art Gallery Fabrics asked if we wanted to participate in this lookbook to debut the collection, it felt like an easy "YES." Those bright blooms, the gorgeous florals and fruits, the fun variety of prints... it’s everything I wasn’t feeling eight months ago.
And that makes it the perfect quilt to take us into summer…and to represent how far we’ve come since that first Knitted Blooms sample!
Making the Tangerine version
This quilt uses the new Tangerine collection from AGF studio. I loved this collection as soon as I saw it. I always love orange and purple in my quilts (just look back through the blog for the proof!), so I was immediately drawn to the orange and lavender palette. Not to mention, the retro-inspired motifs are just the sweetest and perfect for my vintage-loving self.
I made the large throw size of Knitted Blooms so I could use all 15 fat quarters from the Tangerine collection + 1 extra for a total of 16 FQ's. So the quilt ended up at 76” square.
THE FABRICS
For the blooms, I used an entire Tangerine fat quarter bundle. That gave me 15 blooms, so I added an extra fat quarter from the collection. Here’s the list of fabrics:
- Bloom Burst Moonlit
- Bloom Burst Sunlit
- Floral Zest
- Fruit Laden Branches
- Growing Centerpiece
- Petalled Stamp
- Retro Summer
- Striped Field
- Sweet & Charming
- Sweet Tangerines
- Wind Dance Blaze
- Wind Dance Haze
- Zesty Wedges Dew
- Zesty Wedges Raw
- Zesty Wedges Tang (so nice I used it twice!)
As you can see, there’s a great mix of small prints (some that even read as solid from a distance) next to big, bold prints. This is actually my second time using prints for a Knitted Blooms quilt! I used them in the Driftwood version recently, so I knew they’d work beautifully here.
As I noted with the Driftwood version, though, the Knitted Blooms pattern will chop up your prints a bit. I’m okay with that, and I love the way it turned out. (But if you want to let your big prints shine, patterns like Summer Pop and Celtic Crossing make it easy!)
All the fat quarters except one are 100% cotton; Wind Dance Haze, also in the collection is actually a linen blend, and it has such a gorgeous texture. I think this fabric would make such a beautiful tote bag or dress!
I always like to use lots of starch and pins with AGF prints, but it’s even more helpful when working with a linen blend…especially since the scant ¼” seam is so important for Knitted Blooms.
I thought a darker background would be great to set off the bright prints, so we went with Balsam Fir from AGF Pure Solids.
It really brings everything together, doesn’t it?
You can get all these fabrics in our Knitted Blooms Tangerine kit!
THE QUILTING
When it came time to make the quilt sandwich, I decided to stick with the same fabrics we’d used for the blooms. So I used Floral Zest as the backing.
With so many great prints on the quilt top, I decided to keep the quilting itself pretty simple. We quilted this one at the studio, using straight lines at a 45 degree angle. Check out my straight-line quilting tutorial if you want to try it yourself. It’s simple, but the end result always looks great!
Then for the binding, I used Wind Dance Blaze. It’s a large-scale print, which I don’t usually use for binding. I tend to stick to solids or sometimes small-scale prints... but I love the way it looks here! The big print really draws attention to the binding, making it a fun feature of the quilt.
Make your own Knitted Blooms Quilt
With six Knitted Blooms under my belt, I can promise you this pattern is a real pleasure to sew! It's so fun to watch each block come together, then see the overall effect in the finished quilt! It's the perfect mix of a bold impact with little details. I loveeee making this pattern...if I do say so myself!
We’ve already wrapped up our Knitted Blooms Quilt-along, but you can still access the videos and hear all my advice on the pattern. My number one tip for this quilt: take the time to perfect your seam allowance! I say this every time we talk about Knitted Blooms, but that’s because it really matters on this one. Do that, and you’ll have smooth sailing the rest of the way.
QUILT KITS
You can make this quilt yourself with our Tangerine Knitted Blooms kit! Your kit will have all the fabrics you need to make a quilt top…and you can choose to add on backing and that amazing binding too.
Plus we have five other Knitted Blooms quilt kits in the shop…so whether you want prints, solids, or a classic two-color quilt, there’s a Knitted Blooms kit for you!
DESIGN YOUR OWN
If you want to get creative and design your own quilt, I suggest coloring your Knitted Blooms on PreQuilt! Or you can print out our free quilt coloring pages for a more hands-on design process.
Knitted Blooms has been such a meaningful, joyful pattern for me…and I hope it is for you too! I can’t wait to see what you sew up.
In case you missed it…
