I am so excited to introduce you to my 4th fabric collection - Between the Pages! The collection is scheduled to hit quilt shops in November 2024 and I'm so excited to share more about it with you today!
Fabric Inspiration
As the name suggests, the Between the Pages collection was inspired by my love of books. Before starting down the road of all things quilty, I was working as a librarian. I started way back in high school, working as a library tech and continued on during college. I worked in both public libraries and academic libraries and loved every second of it. So I went off to library school, but because of *life*, I wasn't able to pursue that career after graduation.
That doesn't mean books have left my life. Working around book day in and day out, slowly but surely also turned me into a life long reader. When I'm not sewing, or with my kiddos, I'm sure to be deep in a book. So, it's been a long dream of mine to design a book-inspired fabric collection and I'm SO, SO excited it's finally happening!
The Collection
Between the Pages has a total of 28 prints and it includes subtle bookish touches, florals, teeny tiny books and paper clips, stars, and of course lovely stripes, all in my favorite colors - blues, pinks, and yellows.
The main print for this collection is probably my favorite main print I've designed. I love the loose florals and the subtle text on the background. It's bookish, without being in your face about it, and I just love it.
Another favorite print is the first one I designed for this collection - Manuscript. I designed this print shortly after binging the Emily Dickinson show on Apple TV+. The show features a lot of handwritten moments and looks and I really wanted to capture that. I know nowadays authors write most everything on computers, but there's something about those old handwritten manuscripts that just really called to me. I loved it so much that I echoed some of this on the main print.
Some of the other bookish but not in your face bookish prints are the Open Books print and End Papers. Open Books, from afar, looks like little moths or some other motifs, but it's little tiny open books and I just adore them. I love this print so much that it comes in five (!) colors ways - Honey, Coral, Ballerina, Iceberg, and Navy!
End Papers on the other hand features big bold designs inspired by end papers in old books. When I worked at the library, specially the academic library at the University of Washington, I used to love cracking open old books to see what art or designs were hidden in their end papers.
Another bookish print is Bookish Life. This print came together after a sketching session on my iPad and it's full of little details that are part of a bookworm's life - book stacks, glasses, little paper clips, flowers, and stars.
Of course, I can't write a blog post about this new collection without talking about the last three coordinates - flowers, starlight, and stripes!
Flowers is a delicate flowers coordinate that really helps round out the whole collection. I love the little flowers and all the different colors in each of the prints.
Starlight was included as a nod to my favorite series of books – A Court of Thorns and Roses. I simply had to represent the Night Court in this collection somehow. IYKYK.
Last, but not least - the stripes! I find it hard to design a collection without including stripes because I liiiiive for a good striped binding! This stripe is a double stripe on the bias which will look just GORGEOUS as binding! I cannot wait to use it on every single quilt in the near future!
Quilt Patterns
I included a total of three patterns with this collection - two oldies and one newbie!
When I finish a new fabric collection, I always open existing quilt patterns and mockup a bunch of them with the new collection to see how it works and if there are any last minute adjustment needed. For previous collections, I've maybe chosen one to include in the artboard, but I loved how this collection looked in these patterns so I included two - Stellar Mosaic and Stellar Flare!
The new pattern is Bookmarks. It seemed only right to design a book inspired quilt pattern to go with this collection! Bookmarks is coming out in Fall 2024 and will be precut friendly (10" stackers) and FQ friendly, and include multiple sizes baby, throw, and bed!
As I mentioned, Stellar Mosaic and Stellar Flare are both currently available in my shop, and Bookmarks will release at the end of the year, just in time to ship with the collection!
If you are a shop owner you can order these from Riley Blake Designs or directly from me through my wholesale page.
I hope you love the Between the Pages fabric collection as much as I do and I cannot wait to see what everyone makes with it once it's out in the world!
