My Quilt Patterns

Hi everyone,

coming to you in a late night post here.

Hope you are enjoying these summer days? Summer is such a busy time of year and often I feel a bit “all over the place”… Well honestly, I do feel like that any time of the year, specially when it comes to my quilting, designing and teaching, or even blogging about it! As teaching is on the back burner right now,  (hope to get back into it soon!) I specially felt un-accomplished lately in terms of new quilts or new designs. Actually, I felt un-accomplished – period.

That specially hit me recently, on a Saturday afternoon, when it was unusually quiet in the house as I was alone and had this “free” time.. (“me” time?). I was really beating myself up and feeling down and then decided to stop that!

I asked myself: OK, so what DID you do so far? (in terms of designing patterns, being published…)

In a spur of a moment there I walked around the house, gathered my three published quilts and set out to take some new, fresh photos of them (day was just perfect for it!) and kinda see them in new light? Do I still like these, I am still proud of my work?

So this is what this post is all about – my three designs that are published in national magazines, designs I felt really proud of, quilts that make me smile when I see them, patterns I hope some quilters out there made or will make too, and enjoy.

Whirlwind Garden

If I remember correctly, they way I came to this design and how it developed was among very first blog posts I ever did… back still on Blogger, in 2011, and when I REALLY didn’t know much about blogging or any of these things? He, he… However, I just took a look at that post and it is interesting even to me, to be reminded HOW I got to this final design – take a look HERE!

This is one of those patterns that reflect my passion of using classic patchwork to depict something from real life, like flowers. I am always drawn to flowers it seems….

For magazine publishing purposes I made a queen size quilt in beautiful selection of batiks chosen by magazine editors. However, this quilt can be made in many different sizes, by just using different number of two alternating blocks.

What I really love about this pattern is how, by just skipping few blocks at particular positions (by simply using a plain square of fabric instead), a medallion style quilt is created easily. Hence, if you don’t like that, just make few more blocks! 🙂

And another important feature – this quilt is made from two very simple, basic blocks – a Half-Square Triangle block (so called HST), with a very small modification, and a Quarter-Square Triangle block (so called QST or Hour Glass block), again, with a small modification in some of them. So – any beginner quilter CAN make this quilt!! ( and I know this for a fact, since I taught this pattern many times locally and many beginners did it!) Yes, I feel very passionate about that – I love to encourage beginners and make them NOT afraid of trying new things. 🙂

I used wool batting for the first time in this quilt and really loved how it showed the quilting. I quilted this one on my friend Robi’s long arm, (with superb supervision of The Herd (several distinguished felines), using my favorite, 50wt cotton Aurifil thread.

Sweet April 

Another one of those designs that started a long time ago and developed, another inspired by flowers… Original name of my pattern was April Showers Bring May Flowers, but it could not be used in the magazine since some previous projects had that name. I do like the alternative editors came up with.

Explanation of the name/inspiration?

See that blue/green color of the right and top borders and in all the Nine-patch blocks? That’s rain…April showers. And then all the floral fabric – May flowers!! 🙂 Again two very basic blocks – Nine-patch and Quarter-Square triangles, set on-point this time. These are 6″ blocks that make this Full size quilt, but I also did version with only 3″ blocks to make a wall hanging.

Since this pattern does call for somewhat specific fabric (blues for the “rain” and florals for all the flowers, just when magazine editors picked this design and we were deciding on fabrics to use, my so very talented friend, Katarina Rocella designed this amazing, gorgeous fabric collection, called Lavish, for Art Gallery Fabrics. It is one of my favorite fabric collections to this day. It is just so…. lavish!! 🙂

I am including this flat view so you can see what I mean about “April showers bring May flowers” – yes? 🙂

This quilt has cotton batting, and I quilted it on my regular sewing machine, again (and always!) with 50wt Aurifil.

I really love this quilt. Its draped over the sectional in my family room and it just makes me smile every time.

Blue Lagoon

I love strip-piecing as a technique. I really do. This design was a direct result of my doodling and thinking how can I use strip-piecing in a new way, in a new block… The main block of this quilt was created and it is the same one, throughout the quilt (except the corners), and NO, there is no curves in this quilt at all! Just strategic color placement in all these (same!) blocks makes the illusion of curves. Yeah – another one of my passions – making illusions of curves with straight piecing. Don’t you just love that? He he…

The editors asked me to pick some batiks from Timeless Treasures and I just loved this Tonga collection…

These blocks can be set in many different ways though, giving you so many different looks! I need to go back to my EQ and export some of my many play variations to show you…maybe in a different post?

This quilt also has cotton batting and was quilted on my regular sewing machine, with few different colors of 50wt Aurifil (yes, I am a big fan! 🙂 )

So these are my biggest accomplishments so far my friends – in terms of sharing my designs with everyone and being published. Now after I wrote all this, I can sincerely say – yes, I am proud of them.

However, much more importantly, what I feel now is – INSPIRED! Inspired and determined to bring many more of my designs into life, into published patterns, inspired to keep doodling and designing too!

Oh and to add to that inspiration, one little silly thing also happened between Saturday when I felt un-accomplished and “all-over-the-place” and now: I was searching for direct links to my patterns (to include in this post) and guess what came up?!? THIS!!!

I mean it is KEEPSAKE QUILTING people!!

The quintessential catalog, one I worshiped since I started quilting back in ’94. !!  The iconic store too, one I actually visited with my friend Martha! I still remember the excitement…

My patterns are in Keepsake Quilting!! (and that is a real link to them all, in case you are interested)

As silly as it may be – I am just so excited about that and definitely inspired to go on! You have my sincere permission to laugh (I am too!), but it feels so good to be excited like a kid, for these little things… am I right?

Anyway, it’s getting really late and I should have some sleep too, since my brain should function tomorrow in the lab… Thank you for spending this time with me and sharing my “all-over-the place” thoughts and feelings, it means a lot!!

Have any thoughts to share about it all? – please do! I LOVE reading your comments and sharing our experiences – thank you!!

Love,

Marija