Ah the infamous Fruit Quilt.

As a long-time lover of Elizabeth Hartman patterns, I knew I would be making this Produce Section quilt as soon as I saw it. It’s such a fun idea and totally fits my house aesthetic. The best feeling ever was posting this on Instagram and finding out so many people also loved it!

I started this quilt a whole year ago, so when I posted it I didn’t realize how many colours I had picked out and changed from the original pattern. So here we are, a blog post about everything I picked so you can also make a super fun and bright fruit quilt!

To start, the pattern can be purchased here.

Now rewind to January 2023… When I started looking for inspiration for my quilt colors, I saw that Emily from @rain.and.pine made the small version with Kona Everglade as the background and I was in love. This started my plans to have a brighter and more saturated colour palette. I also realized Elizabeth Hartman had been making a version with solids and Kona Ultramarine for a background so this was definitely not my original idea!

This quilt requires a ton of different colours so it’s a bit overwhelming at first. Elizabeth recommends a bunch of Kona solids and some Robert Kauffman prints in the pattern which was a good place to start. Also, I am familiar with what colours most fruits are so that gave me a general idea of what to focus on. I used my Kona colour cards (which I have cut up and magnetized to a whiteboard) to pick everything out. Once I knew what I needed, I went hunting through my stash for anything that would work, then ordered the rest online. Here is what I ended up using:

1 - Foxglove

2 - Plum

3 - Azalea

4 - Pomegranate

5 - Honeysuckle

6 - Flame

7 - Pimento

8 - Tomato

9 - Coral

10 - Nectarine

11 - Cantaloupe

12 - Creamsicle

13 - Peach

14 & 15 - Kumquat

16 - Goldfish

17 - Cedar

18 - School Bus

19 - Grellow

20 - Canary

21 - Duckling

22 - Sunny

23 - Lemon

24 - Biscuit

25 - Leather

26 - Citrus

27 - Wasabi

28 - Peapod

29 - Peridot

30 - Pickle

31 - Honeydew

32 & 33 - Kiwi

34 - Cadet

35 - Nautical

36 - Windsor

Progress shot of picking my colours.. I changed a few in the final but having these colour chips really helped.

I also ordered both Everglade and Ultramarine for the background because I couldn’t decide from a tiny colour chip which would be better. Once I had all my solids lined up and in person, I still didn’t know! So I took it to my Instagram stories and Ultramarine won out. It was definitely the right choice with the bright solids I had picked out for the fruit. These stories are still in my ‘quilting’ highlight on instagram if you want to see what I did.

Auditioning the backgrounds.. they really were so similar

And don’t worry, I didn’t waste that huge chunk of Everglade! It became the backing of this quilt, with a pop of a Ruby Star Society Food Group print that matched so perfectly I couldn’t resist.

As a longarm quilter, my last big decision was panto. I copped out a bit on this and used the same Arches panto as the cover quilt. I love picking pantos for client quilts but I'm terrible with my own! I also used a light teal thread to match the background.

And there you have it! The recipe for this awesome quilt. Here’s to making more slightly weird quilts in 2024.

Making the Fruit Quilt

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