6 Ideas for the Manzanita Grove Focal Print

When you fall in love with a great large print focal fabric, what do you do with it? Fussy cut it? Use it as a border? Leave it folded on your fabric shelf and admire it? 

Today, Barb Eikmeier is sharing six ideas for featuring a focal fabric using the fabulous iris print from her new Manzanita Grove collection. Try these ideas on your favorite print! 

Here's Barb:

Here's the iris print I started with--it has so many possibilities!

1. Ohio Star Block: In this classic quilt block, I simply cut up the print to make the hourglass units. I didn't worry about what sections of the fabric showed in each piece. I think it the coordinate prints really help to draw attention to the green and yellow in the iris print pieces. 

2. Honeycomb Block: This block is all about the hand piecing! I used the paper pieces to fussy cut the center section, creating a focal design, and then I cut out sections of the print's background fill for the outer pieces. English paper piecing continues to be so popular, and prints like the iris are really fun to use in them. 

3. Broderie Perse with Needleturn Edges: For this block, I cut out the entire iris and used needleturn applique to stitch it to the white background square. Notice how the iris has fine yellow outlines around all the different elements--this allowed me to use yellow thread and keep my stitches practically invisible! 

4. Broderie Perse with Fusible Interfacing: Rather than cut out the entire iris for this design, I cut out sections of it--that bluebell shape you see on the outer edges is actually a portion of the entire iris, as is the larger sections of florals. I created a complete design by adding short stems and the center section. After i fused the designs in place on the background, I machine blanket stitched the pieces using black thread so the stitching is an element of the design. 

5. Fussy Cut Lemoyne Star: I used a template to cut the diamonds that create the star. I started with a hinged mirror to find a section of the fabric that I liked in repeat, and then I cut the eight units. If you look carefully at the middle (widest) section of each diamond, you can see that I actually fussy cut two separate units to add variety. I love how the red pops on the yellow background! 

6. Stack-n-Whack®: These blocks are made by stacking six layers of identical pieces of fabric and cutting equilateral triangles. You'll get six identical triangle sto sew into a hexagon block. You'll end up with a variety of random blocks, as you can see below. Every block is a surprise!

There's more to Manzanita Grove than this versatile iris print! See the entire Manzanita Grove collection here and ask for it at your local quilt shop.

Ready for a Manzanita Grove quilt project?

Sign up for Barb's Manzanita Grove Sampler BOM here.