Thursday, June 18, 2015

Introducing Daryl and Wildflower Park and Runway

I'm so excited I could bust a gusset! Okay, I've actually just really been wanting to say "bust a gusset" for a while now and this was a good excuse, but OMG YOU GUYZ I MADE QUILT PATTERNS! that's a pretty gusset-busting thing if you ask me.

Introducing...DARYL.


Daryl was made during a major binge of The Walking Dead, and so I named it after my favorite character, the leather-clad, cross-bow wielding Daryl Dixon. I used Kona Silver for the background and the squares are made from a custom jelly roll I got from the wonderful Quilter's Square in Lexington, Kentucky.  (They will custom cut a 40-piece jelly roll in whatever color scheme you specify out of Bella and Kona solids. I asked for blue, purple, and teal, and I may have snuggled the resulting roll just a bit once I received it.)

My husband liked Daryl so much, he asked if we could hang it in the bedroom. 


This is the small size, but the pattern comes in small, medium and large. My intrepid pattern testers made different sizes and all came up with great color combos. 

Rebecca (of Becca's Crazy Projects) chose a really lovely yellow background and very pretty pink and orange and violet prints for her squares. I love how it softens the look of the whole quilt.



Up in Quebec, Manon (whose first language is not English, so I thought she'd be s great help to see if the writing was clear) chose a lovely jelly roll in shades of red for her squares. She even made a matching pillow out of the leftovers!



And Joanne also chose some pretty pinks and black for her color scheme, and experimented with the block settings to create a different look:



My friend Janet, who runs SLO Creative Studio in San Luis Obispo, California, chose a funky print for her background, which really looks cool:



And in living embodiment of the notion that "it's not a mistake, it's a design element," Terry overlooked the part of the pattern which tells you to keep your colors organized and her blocks all ended up scrappy AND IT'S FANTASTIC.


This pattern is available NOW as a PDF in my new shop.


And let's not forget WILDFLOWER PARK.

This scrappy field of flowers is a lot of fun to put together and the big centers on those flowers are just begging for some fussy cutting. (THIS IS WHAT CORGI BUTT FABRIC WAS MADE FOR.)  I end up with a lot of scraps in my stash, and this is a great pattern for using some of them up while still keeping a very cohesive look to the quilt.

The day I finished the binding on this one, it started snowing big, fluffy flakes, so I made my husband hold it up outside so I could get a shot of flowers in the snow. Cuz I'm arty like that.


Pattern tester Annette made it in the medium size and decided to gift it to a dear friend. I love her fabrics!


And Heidi of Happily Stitched made the large and chose a soft green for her background and gave me a lovely review of the pattern:


"Wildflower Park is a sweet pattern with a lot of flexibility. The instructions were clear and straightforward. A beginner quilter could accomplish this pattern with basic skills. It could also be used to teach techniques as it has just enough cutting, point matching and trimming to solidify skills. I had no problems understanding or following any of the instructions. Honestly, I did not work to match points. I mainly pinned seams and winged it. I cut off a few points but by golly you can't see them unless you get close and look. Not to mention in Oklahoma we never, ever have perfect flowers. The wind, rain and hail beat them to death on a regular basis. Wildflower Park is written to be simple and forgiving even to lackadaisical quilters like me. "

This pattern also comes in small (shown), medium, and large and is available now as a PDF in my shop. 

A million, bajillion thanks to Rebecca, Manon, Joanne, Janet, Terry, Annette, Heidi, and Joanie for all their help and feedback. 

And last but not least, RUNWAY

Testers for this pattern were not able to get me photos in time, nevertheless I can say with confidence that this one is fast and easy, and I love it because it uses all 2.5-inch strips, even the background. And there's even an alternate way to set the blocks so you get a different look:

I love this one so much, it's still hanging out on my design wall. This one also comes in three sizes and is—wait for it—available now as a PDF in my shop.

In addition to quilt pattern PDFs, my shop currently has my book (both the paperback and the PDF version), and my Quilt Dots! Quantities of Quilt Dots are currently limited, but they will be restocked when they sell out.

And don't worry - I'm not gonna be constantly bombarding you with pleas to buy my stuff, though I will give you a brief heads-up whenever anything new is stocked or anything sold out is re-stocked. 









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