by Reed Mangels, PhD, RD

Fruits and vegetables are beautiful! They come in a variety of bright colors – intensely orange carrots, vivid green peas, and shiny red apples. You can certainly celebrate fruits and vegetables by eating vegan meals featuring a variety of produce. Fabrics printed with pictures of fruits and vegetables offer another way to showcase these foods.

Think of a fruit or vegetable and it’s likely that someone has created a fabric featuring it. Some prints are realistic, others may be comical or abstract. There are large scale prints and tiny prints and everything in between.

If you have a sewing machine or are willing to take the time to hand-sew a project, you can create all sorts of household items and clothing using fruit and vegetable prints. For example, cut a strip of fabric as long as your table plus some overhang and as wide as you’d like. Hem all four sides and you have a decorative table runner. Try a harvest print for Thanksgiving or a print with summer fruits for July 4^th. You can use a larger piece of fabric (or several strips of fabric sewn together) the length and width of your table plus overhang and hem it to make a tablecloth.

Napkins are easy, and you can make a set featuring matching fabric or let everyone choose their favorite fruit or vegetable for personalized napkins. The simplest napkin involves cutting a rectangle a bit larger than the finished size of the napkin and hemming all four sides. Placemats can be made using a single fabric or fabric scraps or strips.

Look for simple patterns for tote bags, aprons, hats, curtains, and pillowcases if you’d like to surround yourself with colorful produce. And then there’s clothing – shirts, skirts, vests, pants, dresses, even ties can all be made featuring everything from apricots to zucchini.

Quilts can showcase a variety of vegetables and fruits. Look for quilt patterns on-line or at your library.

In my experience, quilting cotton is easy to sew and features lots of prints and is my fabric of choice for projects featuring fruits and vegetables. For fabric needs, stop by your local fabric store. You can see some of the variety that is available by visiting the links below:

Clothworks – Berry Sweet, Strawberry Days

Cotton + Steel – Under the Apple Tree

Elizabeth’s Studio – Berry Good, Food Festival

Paintbrush Studio – Farmer John’s Garden Party, Fruit Stand, Homestead Harvest, Sweet & Sour, Tropicana

Rifle Paper Company – Orchard, Primavera

Robert Kaufman – Sweet Pumpkin Spice, Strawberry Season, Artisan Batiks Farm Stand

Timeless Treasures – Orchard Valley

Note: Links to specific lines of fabric may no longer work with time. If that happens, use the listing for the fabric company and search for fruit and vegetable prints.