Big news, I am now a Brand Ambassador for Springs Creative! I have used their fabrics for years. Mainly the licensed character fabrics from Joann’s, but this new line is something special! Springs Creative has teamed with the legendary Mary Fons to create her new fabric line, Small Wonders! I am signed up to hear her lecture at QuiltCon next February so this is a fun insight to another side of her work. Now I know as a quilter hearing of Springs Creative you might question why I wanted to do this. Most quilters know there fabric for the licensed characters but not as quilt shop quality fabric.  I will admit I had concerns, too.  But when I received this fabric, trust me, this fabric is fantastic! The feel of the fabric is quite soft, not what I remember from Joanns. I took my finished quilt to the Tampa Modern Quilt Guild meeting and our members too, were quite impressed on the feel of the fabric. And guess what, her line is exclusive for independent retailers. That will tell you right there the quality of this fabric!

The full collection called ‘World Piece”, you can take a trip around the world with fabulous prints.  I was given a choice to work with Germany, Japan, or Brazil. Being my last name is Ault, my husband’s family being German, there was no question which fabric line I chose!

I am very excited to be part of this ambassador program. Looking at showcasing Mary Fon’s fabric I decided to work with Jaybird Quilt’s pattern Northern Lights.  I know many people use this pattern in a solid colorway.  I saw a quilt done once in prints and thought it looked great.  And the half hexagons are so large I thought it would work really well to show off her prints.  I did have one concern with the fabric once I received it.  The majority of the prints in the Germany collection are darks. It had very little value changes beyond the two prints of neutral cream background.  So creating a layout with the fabrics was a little difficult.  I needed to find an arrangement that balanced the fabrics.  I took a grey scale photo of the fabric to help determine the values better. This allowed me to arrange the fabrics to balance between a dark and light for each band in the pattern. Two of the prints in the Germany collection are stripes so this set the next challenge, making sure the direction didn’t change! Luckily the way the fabric is cut, I was able to keep the stripes moving in the same visual path.

Now on to my favorite part, the quilting! The red stripe print of hearts was by far my favorite. I actually have a German bell knocker from Disney’s Epcot which was a very similar print. Looking at this print I knew I could recreate it.  I took the sample yardage image to Photoshop and created a continuous line drawing of it.  Then took the image to ProStitcher and turned it into a quilting design! It stitched out beautifully on my HandiQuilter.

My final challenge were photos which Mother Nature was not cooperating. No really. I live in Florida and the week these photos were due is when Hurricane Hermine came to visit! The direct storm did not affect me, but the entire week was cloudy and rainy. My daughter’s school even closed for two days due to rain and flood issues.  But I had a 10 minute window of sun on one day to grab some quick pictures! I feel very lucky  to work in this program with Springs Creative and look forward to the next project!