Wine Country with Deb Tucker

Deb Tucker of Studio 180 Design has been designing with Aurifil for years and we always love seeing what she is up to. Today, she is here celebrating Wine Country, her latest fabric range for Island Batik/Lumin Fabrics. It arrives in a stunning palette of purples and greens that evokes rolling vineyards, dappled light, and the unhurried beauty of harvest season. Pair it with her Vintner’s Treasure Block of the Month, an epic, traditionally pieced quilt in Deb’s signature style, and you have a project worthy of the fabric.

To bring it all together, Deb has curated a coordinating Aurifil thread set of 6 Large Spools: 4 in Cotton 50wt for precise, perfectly matched piecing and 2 in Cotton 40wt for slightly more defined quilting. In support, Deb was kind enough to share some details about this latest project, the BOM, and a bit about her history in the industry. HUGE thanks to Deb for always humoring us and for sharing a bit of her inspiration!

---

Thanks so much for partnering with both Studio 180 Design and Island Batik to offer a complete opportunity for quilters interested in creating fabulous quilts.

My quilting journey began in 1981. Engaged to be married in a few short months, I was walking down a street in DeKalb, Illinois, when I spied several quilts beautifully displayed in a storefront window. I declared to my husband-to-be that I was going to make a quilt before our wedding. With no previous skills or knowledge, I didn’t actually complete that small lap quilt for several years, but I was instantly hooked!

Over the next 20 years, I honed my stitching, designing, and teaching skills. My goal was to help every motivated quilt maker achieve better results with streamlined construction processes. In 2004, I created a unique way to build a traditional Hunter’s Star—strip-pieced, oversized, and trimmed for high-precision blocks. After two years of tool development and testing, we launched our first two tools and founded Studio 180 Design.

Now, 18 patents later, we have a fantastic lineup of construction tools and processes that achieve our early goals of “increased success and decreased stress” for quilters. Hearing about so many quilt makers’ rewarding experiences with our tools, books, patterns, and techniques remains the strongest motivation and joy in my work.

Regarding my approach to color, when designing fabric, we usually start with a broad idea—sometimes a mood, theme, or inspirational photo—that snowballs into a complete product. For example, for our “Wine Country” line, we initially decided to create a collection using our corporate colors (purple and green). The tjap designs were generic at first, before the line had a name. Our art department submitted a color compilation of approximately 300 to 350 potential mixed tjap and color possibilities, which were sent to Island Batik and then to Bali for production samples. We examined those samples in North Carolina, narrowed the count down to 22, and named the collection. At that point, I began designing the Vintner’s Treasure Block of the Month (BOM). All of this behind-the-scenes production takes approximately two years from conception to retail availability.

My Vintner’s Treasure BOM is a large king-size quilt (100” x 110”). It uses five tools and half of the fabric SKUs in the Wine Country collection. The individual design units create strong diagonals without requiring blocks to be set on point. The 10-month, full-color program instructions work logically through tool and block construction to create large sections that are eventually stitched into the final design.

To learn more about our Vintner’s Treasure BOM, quilters should check with their local quilt shops for the program instructions, the Wine Country batik fabrics, and the associated Aurifil thread collection. Our coordinating Aurifil set includes both Cotton 40wt and 50wt spools that perfectly match the light, medium, and dark hues of the purple and green fabrics. This allows each quilt maker to choose the ideal spool for piecing, quilting, and finishing. Participants can construct their own Vintner’s Treasure heirloom quilt with confidence, thanks to the curated design, instructions, fabrics, tools, and threads.

As for where you might find me in 2027, it’s best to follow our social media for updates on live appearances and online videos. Moving forward, you can expect more tools, designs, techniques, patterns, and projects to help every quilter—from rookie to veteran—make the very best quilts possible.