Orange Juice and Sunshine: New Fabrics

If lime is the new neutral, orange is the new pink. At least that's the thinking about fresh colors.

No matter how you feel about fashion and hot colors, they sneak into your work. Mostly because they look so cool together with the other colors of the day.

Orange comes and goes as a fashion color. It was in the 70s, anathama in the 80s, very bland in the early 90s and back big time after 2000. Say what you will about orange, no one is neutral about it. A lot of people are nervous about using orange.

But it always has a kick. It's visual orange juice.
We just got in the coolest line of orange pieces.

Of course any time we have one color, it needs to have some other colors  to dance with. The greens and the yellow are perfect.

Simple squares and strips become a woven-look wonder. And they feel like the orange juice and sunshine waiting for you on a perfect summer day.

Do you have a color you never use? See what happens when you stretch a little and work start with a color outside your palette. You'll never know until you try.

Seminole Stripping: Not Done in the Nude

Kathleen McCormick From Cambridge Quilts

We've talked about cutting strips and resewing them to make intricate patchwork.






The Seminole Indians have always been the masters of this. Seminoles were a tribe in the Florida cypress swamps. The people who had come to Christianize them also taught them to sew quilts as well. But they were developed a form of  strip patchwork that involved stitching, cutting and restitching.

 Vintage Seminole Skirt From/Miss Farfalla's Etsy Shop

Traditionally they made clothing with their piecing. This is a traditional Seminole skirt. They also made jackets, shirts and other garments, as well as quilts.

Seminole Pieced Apron from Ms Sews It All

It's easier to understand how this piecing is accomplished by seeing the back. It's all strips, cut at different angles and resewed.




Here are several construction diagrams. 

From Lakeview Stitching

From Creating So Many Colors

Seminole Tutorial

Karen Pior has this fabulous tutorial on her page at Sew Well Maide.

Contemporary quilt by Niki Valentine Vick

Seminole piecing is quick, very intricate and beautiful. 

Traditionally it's done with solids, but traditions, like rules, are made to be broken.

If you'd like to add amazing pieced detail to your quilting, Seminole pieces is an easy way.