Meet my next fabric collection: Sunnyside Ave

Whew. I just got back late Monday night from the International Quilt Market in Houston where I introduced my second fabric collection for Penny Rose Fabrics (part of Riley Blake Designs). I’m excited that I can now present a sneak peek of Sunnyside Ave!

The Sunnyside Ave collection will be hitting stores sometime in March, 2018. There will be SO much more to share (including 3 new quilt designs) as the time gets closer.

The color palette for this one is bright primary colors with, once again, a kind of retro-inspired vibe. It’s definitely meant to play with my Gingham Girls collection, and it goes SO well with the Riley Blake woven ginghams (which will have a bunch of new colors arriving in 2018). But there are a few new colors to change things up a bit. And of course, there’s a backstory for inspiration. 😉

Sunnyside Ave was a street near the house where I grew up. There was a big park on Sunnyside where we played on the swings, learned to play tennis, watched my Dad play on a softball league, and went to family reunions. Later, as a teenager, I drove down Sunnyside Avenue every day to and from high school. Lots of nostalgia there.

One of the pieces that inspired this collection is this little draw-string denim backpack that my mom made for me when I was about 7. She made one for each of my sisters and hand-embroidered our names on them. They were perfect for packing our dolls and a snack and trekking around the neighborhood. So this collection is definitely another homage to that era of my life bringing back more memories of matching clothes, yarn hairbows, and back-to-school.

As I struggled to come up with a name, I was trying to think of places in my childhood. When the name Sunnyside Ave came up, it felt like a perfect fit for the cheerful colors and personal nostalgia.

As you can tell, there’s a bit of an apple theme going on with this collection. As I prepped for Quilt Market I found this adorable Scrappy Apple pattern by Retro Mama for these stuffed apple pincushions. I was so grateful to friends Erika of Pink Suede Shoe and Amy from Ameroonie Designs for helping to make them for my booth. I’m still pretty smitten.

And since I was already on an retro-inspired-apple kick, I was doing some googling for inspiration and found this vintage pillow with yarn crewel embroidered apples!

Oh my goodness – such great patterns here! I’m going to see if I can recreate some of the patterns at some point. But for the meantime, enjoy this vintage-y inspiration.

Here’s an example of the apple print on navy. There will also be the red apples on white, with green dots as well as green apples on royal blue with white dots. I love the way the apple print works with the plaid. Both the navy apple and red plaid prints will be available as laminate cotton! I wish we’d had them in time to make the bag, but the regular cottons look pretty great too.

This pattern is the Retro Travel Bag from Melissa Mortenson of the Polkadot Chair.

I’m really excited about the addition of the royal, but especially excited about the kelly green. I have such a hard time finding kelly green fabric, so I decided to add it to my own collection.   It’s funny because every time I’ve shared a preview of the collection the most common response I get is, “Oh the green!” So apparently I’m not the only one who likes kelly green. You’re welcome. 😉 lol

So, hopefully that’s enough for now to whet your appetite. I’ll definitely be sharing more of the individual prints, etc as well as more projects, quilts, and ideas as the time gets closer to the release date in March.

Thank you SO MUCH for all of the support and love for Gingham Girls this past year. It exceeded all of my wildest expectations. I feel beyond lucky to get the opportunity to design another collection.

I’m working on sifting through all of my pictures of Market last weekend and will put together my Quilt Market recap post by the end of the week. And I brought back some loot for a giveaway, so definitely check back!