2013 umbrella prints trimmings competition

These days, I'm pretty much smitten with screen-printed fabrics. I love the look of one and two-color prints and I love being able to support independent designers who produce their work by hand. One of my goals for the year is to incorporate more screen-printed fabric into my work, so when I saw the posting for this year's Umbrella Prints Trimmings Competition, I decided to enter for the second year in a row (you can see my entry from last year here). I love Umbrella Prints' screen-printed fabric, and this competition is such a great motivator for me to cut into fabric I typically hoard.

I mulled over my options of what to do for weeks, and this past weekend I finally decided to make something from my growing to-make list: a drawstring bag using Jeni's tutorial.

For the front, I scaled down Faith's Greek Cross block from the Summer Sampler series and made a mini quilt block.

I sewed the remaining scraps together at random to create a panel for the back, and used chambray for the remaining panels.

I lined it with a Denyse Schmidt print that complemented the Umbrella Prints' fabric in both style and color, and used up some leftover Kei Honeycomb Dot binding (originally made for this quilt) for the drawstrings.

Voting for the competition starts Saturday and runs through June 5. To vote, simply pin all of your favorite entries over here.

Will you be entering the contest this year? If so, please share a link to your entry in the comments; I'd love to see!

P.S. You can see some of my photos from the recent Portland Quilt Market over on Instagram! You can find me there under the username @saltyoat.