As a Graphic Designer, Toad & Sew branding is something I'm continuously tweaking - how can I commit to only a few branding colors?! It's impossible. After spending hours pondering what colors felt the most “me” but also looked great across many different platforms this is what I landed on! Why not have a whole month to see how these colors work with my patterns? Granted my branding is a lot, dare I say brighter, than my typical quilts but it was a blast to see how easily those neon colors worked with the New Years Kiss Quilt!
MOOD COLLAGE
There isn't really a set artist or style that inspired this palette its more of a general vibe. The palette consists of bright saturated colors (i.e. citrus green and fuchsia) with a mix of some more muted tones (i.e. deep gold and dark green). A great way to utilize those bright pops of colors, is to butt them up against tones that will let them shine, in both value and hue.
COLOR PALETTE
THE QUILT - NEW YEARS KISS
For April, we chose to go with the New Years Kiss Quilt to be made using the Toad-Spo palette! This fun color scheme fits so perfectly with the bold shapes of the NYK design. If you're a fan of big, statement-piece quilts, this one is for you!
The fabrics we used are Art Gallery Fabrics Pure Solids in the colors Celestial, Evergreen, Aero Blue, Cactus Flower, Tigerlily, Raw Gold, Lemonade, and Quartz Pink.
If you haven't ever noticed it before, the NYK Quilt has a lot of half square triangles in it. But don't let that scare you away! It really is worth all of the trimming when you finally get to see the end result.
We recommend getting a rotating cutting mat so you can spin the HSTs around without having to reposition them on your mat with each trim. Plus, it's kind of fun to do too - it feels like you're on a gameshow a little bit. Ha!
Sewing that final seam and seeing the quilt top finished is a pretty great feeling, am I right? But the fun of this Toad-Spo sample doesn't stop there... You'll want to see the quilting on it too!
LONGARM QUILTING
Our Toad-Spo sample longarm quilter is Ashley Perkins of Hen House Quilting! We love Ashley around here not only because she does such a great job with her quilting, but she's a pretty rad person too! If you haven't already worked with her before, we totally think you should!
We decided on using the Mexican Tile #8 pantograph and super-sized it! We felt like it was fitting for our quilt, and boy, were we right!
Want to know our favorite part of this whole quilt? The NEON YELLOW thread! This thread color blends in with the "pop of color" fabric, Lemonade, that we used in the quilt top. We just couldn't get enough of it and decided to use it all over.
BACKING AND BINDING
Because we had such a busy front on this quilt, we decided to get the back a little calmer to give your eyes a rest. We chose this black and white tiny dots fabric called Windscatter from the Pollinate collection designed by Jessica Swift.
And remember how I said we couldn't get enough of that pop of color. We brought it back again for the binding! The binding is Art Gallery Fabrics Pure Solids in the color Lemonade.
What do you think of our April Toad-Spo New Years Kiss Quilt sample? Let us know in the comments below! And if you want to make your own version of this quilt, you can get yourself a quilt kit here! Tara is the owner of Full Moon Fabric Co and she loved this quilt so much that she put this kit together for you all!
If you’d like to make this quilt a reality, please contact one of these shops!
- Full Moon Fabric Company - Quilt Kit Available here!
- Pasadena Quilt Studio
- Lamb and Loom Fabrics
- Cottoneer
- Hawthorne Supply Co.
- Stash Fabrics
- Wyldwood Creative
- Blossom Quilt & Craft
- Piper Autumn Fabrics
MAKER SPOTLIGHT - TARA
Our April Toad-Spo maker is Tara Fanning of @thewindycityquilter and @fullmoonfabricco! Tara will forever be from Chicago but currently resides in Michigan. She has always been into arts & crafts, but found quilting during the beginning of lockdown times as a way to battle anxiety and stress of teaching middle school remotely. With lots of YouTube videos and Instagram posts, she found her way into the quilty world that would make her quilty grandmother proud!
Quick fun facts about Tara:
- She could eat cheese pizza all day every day!
- She would love to be able to read minds - specifically her middle schoolers' minds
- She has 2 sewing sidekicks - Hank and Joey
- She's a big fan of Post Malone
SEE THE PALETTE IN ACTION
JOPLIN QUILT
ENIGMATIC QUILT
(AVAILABLE THROUGH TOAD CIRCLE AS A TOADSTER ONLY)
FLOYD QUILT
Want to save this palette?
If you're loving what you're seeing and want to save this color palette for future use - don't forget to pin it by clicking the image below.
