Yay! By popular request, my Child’s Pinwheel Quilt is now available in a PDF pattern. Hop on over to the shop to check it out!
Thank you for all your support and kind words about my quilt designs. It’s so appreciated!
Elaine
I had a vision for this quilt – something light, airy and fresh looking that had fabrics that reminded me of the ocean, sky and beach. I am so pleased with how it turned out and it has exactly the look I was going for. Of course, I had to make a rope bowl to go with it – my new fun thing to make.
I had so much fun picking out these fabrics. I got a lot of help from Hawthorne Threads, which has their own fabric designs that are printed digitally. This enables them to offer them in a very wide variety of colors. I selected water and sky colors: Skipping Stones in Sky, Doodle in Powder Blue, Watercolor in Robin’s Egg, Stardust in Sky, Multi Dot in Fair Isle Glacier, and for the binding Rogue Stripe in Cornflower.
The other fabrics in this quilt were Seaside Blue Waves Anchors, Reef Sky Dots by Robert Kaufman, Laura Gunn Painter’s Canvas, and Timeless Treasures Sand Dollar Beach, which I love and was so lucky to find – I love the delicate little sand dollars.
The backing fabric was a real find, too – Indigo Coastal Words in Blue from Studio e Fabrics. It’s a perfect beach/ocean fabric and gave some interesting punch to the backing.
I thought about the design of this quilt for a while – I wanted to use larger pieces of fabric. I really didn’t want to do a lot of cutting up fabric and making blocks – I really wanted these fabrics to be the star. So I decided to just sew strips of various widths together into sets and then subcut those sets into strips. I laid out the strips into a design I liked then sewed them into rows – since all the strips’ widths were different, there were no seams to match up!
Here you can see the completed strips that were sewn together:
I really loved the design of this quilt and since there are no blocks to assemble, it goes really fast! I am working on a pattern now and hope to have it available soon.
I used my new favorite thicker batting, Quilter’s Dream Supreme. It makes such a nice hefty quilt.
I love this binding because I love bias binding. And now you don’t have to cut diagonal strips to get bias binding – Hawthorne Threads has a wide selection of colors of stripes on the diagonal, called Rogue Stripe. This one is Cornflower. Makes it so simple when you can cut crossgrain strips and get bias binding!
When you use a Stripology ruler, cutting same size strips is even faster. Like really fast:
You don’t have to lift up the ruler to measure each strip. You make your cuts, lift up the ruler and they are all done.
I quilted this using Aurifil cotton thread, a natural white on the top and a light blue color in the bobbin. I used a 4.0 stitch length and a walking foot. The vertical quilting cut across the strips and the horizontal quilting was all in the ditch.
Thanks for coming by,
Elaine
I’ve made several patchwork baby quilts in the past and have so many people ask me for patterns, that I finally made another quilt and spent some time making up a pattern. In the past, I have made these patchwork quilts using a traditional 16-patch block but I’ve thought about it and feel that sewing width of fabric strips together and then subcutting them is faster. So this pattern utilizes a super easy and quick strip piecing method.
This little quilt is my “less is more” philosophy that using just a handful of prints can have more impact than many prints. In this instance, I’m using just four fabrics – my main fabric, which is a little lamb print, a dot, a solid and a subtle checked print. This is similar to the Little Owl Quilt that I did and which got such a great response and so many requests for a pattern. *
* The pattern to make this quilt is now available in my Shop.
The little lamb fabric is called Clover from Cotton + Steel. It’s so sweet! I selected my favorite dot fabric from Art Gallery Fabrics called Firefly in Whisper from the Hello Bear collection. I added a Moda Solid and a little bit of a check fabric from Camelot called Mixology Woven in Rainwater.
For the backing, I found a fabric I thought went so well with the top – it’s called Scattered Hashtags from Moda Mixology.
For the batting, I used a low loft Warm and Natural 100% cotton. I quilted it with Aurifil thread, using a 4.0 stitch length and a walking foot. I just used the seams on each square as my guide.
For the binding, I used Squared Elements in Turquoise. I machine stitched the binding using my usual method.
I have this pattern out to testers right now and when I have it available very soon, I will announce it here on the blog and it will be available for purchase. If you follow me on Instagram, you will see it there also. I will be very happy to finally be able to provide you with a pattern for this simple, fun quilt.
This quilt itself is now listed in the Shop.
** A pattern to make this kind of quilt is now available in my Shop.
Thanks for coming by!
Elaine
Beech Tree Lane Handmade 