Holly Holderman on Emma's Garden Quilt

Our guest designer today does not really need an introduction, but here it is anyway! She is the powerhouse behind LakeHouse Dry Goods, she keeps a little blog you may check religiously (HOLLYBLOG!), and we are fortunate enough to be on her list of "Blogs I Love" (find it on our sidebar). She is Holly Holderman, and she has designed a beautiful baby quilt in honor of our own little Emma, although the soft spring shades will fit any little girl.


I first heard about "Miss Emma" from my friend Brenda Riddle...It was all in one breath, and it went something like this: "Kimberly Jolly had a baby, she named her Emma, and she's the cutest pink-cheeked little baby you've ever seen...and Anne and I are going to visit her this summer in Texas."

Actually, all I really heard was, Kimberly Jolly had a baaabbbyyy...before my brain switched on to the "decorating channel" (I keep a lot of sketch pads for this little problem). For every baby, there’s the perfect quilt, and the perfectly coordinated room for that quilt!

I imagined my room for "Baby Girl Jolly" like this: the softest petal pink walls, soft white cove moldings & window trim, a poufy white on white roman shade, cotton hooked rugs on the floors, soft white crib, a liberal use of petal pink mini-prints (especially gingham), some soft celery & moss greens and few touches of yellow...and a quilt to complete the look. In the spirit of “anything worth doing is worth doing to excess” I even imagined a little ”E M M A” banner made out of the letters from our Little Girl’s Alphabet fabric to coordinate.

Knowing how much Kimberly, Brenda and I all love pastels, it was just good fortune that I happened to be in the middle of styling the new Cherry Baby line for our Fall 2007 intro. Cherry Baby was designed to go with many of the fabrics from the La Belle Rose line that we'd introduced the season before.

Luckily, I happened to mention the “Emma Jolly” quilt idea I had to McCall's Quilting magazine editor Beth Hayes one day on the phone, and that’s how the Emma’s Garden quilt came to be.

The funny thing is that I imagined Emma as a blond and pink cheeked baby, (a miniature Kimberly). What a surprise it was to see her picture many months later at Fall Quilt market and realize that she got her daddy's red hair... Thank goodness pink and green are just as adorable for redheads!

The “Emma's Garden” quilt can be seen in the April 2008 McCall's Quilting magazine that just hit the stands last week, and Fat Quarter Shop is offering the kits online, and the magazine will be in their store any day.

I can’t wait to see a picture of Emma when she gets her little quilt...I’m guessing that Miss Emma is going to be the poster child for a new generation of quilters, don’t you think?

In the meantime, please visit me at HOLLYBLOG, I’ll be giving away a free gift to the first three first-time visitors!

Keep on Creating!
H2

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