Spin & Sparkle

I love pinwheel quilts, scrappy quilts, and the colour blue, so this new quilt checks all the boxes! Meet Spin & Sparkle 😍

Spin & Sparkle is the Stash Artists pattern for May (We're not talking about the fact that I still haven't blogged about the March pattern, Summer Dreamin' 😆 I'll get it posted eventually) The Spin & Sparkle pattern has baby, throw, and queen size instructions, all of them made with the same number of HSTs, just in different sizes. I made the baby size, since I'm still on a mission to use batting offcuts. Zach was thrilled to be hiding all 6'1" of himself behind the 48" quilt for these pictures!

To write a new pattern, I start by figuring out all the quilt math, so I know how many blocks I need, how many units, etc. Then I figure out the cutting instructions for the size I'm going to make (the other sizes usually get figured out later), then I make the sample quilt. When it comes to figuring out how many pieces to cut, HSTs are among the simplest blocks - you need 1 square of each fabric for every 2 HSTs. I know that. And yet somehow I still managed to cut, sew, and trim twice as many dark blue/light blue HSTs as I needed. I take that as incontrovertible proof that I am right to always send my patterns to a technical editor before they're released! Having someone else check my math will never be a bad idea.

When I was planning this quilt, I figured I would quilt it with the double-loop design that always makes me think of wind. That seemed appropriate for a giant pinwheel quilt, but the quilt had a different idea. Once the HSTs were all up on the design wall, the quilt started whispering that it wanted to be quilted with a big spiral. I resisted. I really don't enjoy walking foot quilting. I think it looks great, but it's incredibly boring to do, so I avoid it like the plague. The quilt insisted, though, and by the time the top was pieced I knew I'd have to quilt that spiral.

The quilt, of course, was right. The spiral was boring to do, but it does look fantastic!

I love how it looks from the back, too. It was a bit windy while we were at the beach, so getting straight pictures of the quilts was tough. You'll have to believe me when I say my Spin & Sparkle is not a parallelogram!

When I quilted the spiral for my Burst quilt, I got myself stitching in the wrong direction, so that the part of the quilt already quilted went to the right of the needle. That meant as I got closer to the edges of the quilt, more and more had to pass through the throat space. When I was getting ready to start this spiral, I was very aware of that, but I still started going in the wrong direction! Yes, this quilt did feel like a comedy of errors at times. Thankfully I realized it as soon as I started making the second pass of the spiral, so I stopped, ripped out the stitches, and started again in the right direction.

I used Aurifil 2600 to quilt the spiral. It's visible against the blue fabrics up close, but it's not distracting at all, and it's not noticeable from a distance. All you see from a distance is the lovely texture.

One of my favourite things about scrappy quilts is remembering where all the different fabrics came from or which projects they were previously used for. That floral binding the corner above? I made a skirt with that years ago. A bunch of the fabrics, both blues and low volumes, come from the years I was an Island Batik ambassador. They were so generous with their boxes of fabric that I may always have some in my stash! There are a couple of blues that I bought at a quilt shop in Canmore, Alberta, when Paul and I were on our 25th anniversary trip last summer. A scrap quilt is like a fabric collection of memories.

If you love scrappy quilts as much as I do, you'll love the Stash Artists membership. Doors will be opening for new members next week, so get on the waitlist to be sure you don't miss that. New members will get access to the Spin & Sparkle pattern as soon as they join, along with our current BOM, Kitchen Party.

I love designing and making these Stash Artists patterns and quilts! As I type this, background fabric for the next one is in the dryer, and I'm excited to start cutting into my stash of pink fabrics for it this week. And even though I haven't cut a single piece for that July quilt yet, I've been working on the design for the September quilt over the past few days, and I think I've settled on the colours for it. There's no chance I'll ever be bored, so long as I can make quilts!