Presentation Recap & Digital Panels

Last night we had Rob from Trendtex Fabrics do a presentation on Batiks. The presentation went over the intense process used to make Batik Fabrics, how they differ from screen printed fabrics and how Hoffman differs from other companies and what they are doing now in the Quilting Industry. One thing that they are doing is digitally printing fabric rather than screen printing it. These digitally printed fabrics contain millions of colors and the details are incredible.
This week we received 10 new digital panels from Hoffman, there was a variety of wildlife prints, scenery, space and a couple new Dream Big panels. The question is how do you use them?

Panels often make for quick projects as a big portion of the quilt top is already completed for you.
We often will take a panel, quilt and bind it and add some hanging loops which makes for a nice door or wall hanging. You can add some simple borders to enlarge a panel into a quilt or make some fun blocks pulling colors from the panel to put around the panel on one, two, three or all four sides. I love trying out different borders on panels, because I put very little effort into the center of the quilt top. The fun thing is you can center the panel, put it to one side, use multiple, cut it up, there are no rules!
We have a variety of patterns available for panels mainly from Mountain Peak Creations or Hoffman Fabrics, and we ordered in a new set of patterns from a new designer who uses the Hoffman Panels quite often.  Here are a few pictures of ones that we are working on now or have done in the past.

Have you made quilts or wall hangings using panels?
Kayla