My First Quilt with Marlene Oddie

Did you blink and the month of March disappeared? Me, too! Fast as it may have been, it's the last Friday of the month and I have another first quilt story to share with you. This time Marlene Oddie is sharing the story of her first quilt.

Marlene (Baerg) Oddie is an engineer by education, a financial services systems professional by experience, a project manager by profession, and a quilter by passion. She believes in the KISS (Keep It Simple S______) method and has incorporated this into the company name.

You can connect with Marlene at her website, on Instagram, on Facebook, and on YouTube.

And now, here are Marlene's first quilts! First, one she made as a child.

And then the first quilt she made as an adult.

What year did you make your first quilt? What prompted you to make it?

As a child about 1978. (As an adult 2001.)

My neighbor said it was a right of passage to make a quilt so she took the time to teach me to blanket stitch sun bonnet sues and overall sams with fabric scraps from clothes my mom had made me onto muslin. Sashed it by machine and tied it with a Holly Hobbie sheet on the back.

2001...9/11 prompted me to consider my legacy...and my local church started offering quilting classes. After joining and making a flag from the scrap bin I quickly ended up leading out at subsequent sessions after the teacher was in a car wreck. 

What techniques were used in that first quilt? Did you quilt it yourself?

Adult: Machine piecing, including some strip/strata style sets to make the star field. I quilted a big star on the star field and in the ditch of the stripes. I tucked under the edges of the top and bottom and sewed around the edge. Not really any binding. But that is how we had done the "as a" child quilt in 1978.

Who taught you to make the quilt?

Child quilt. Velma Judson

Adult quilt...just did it on my own.

Are the colours you chose for your first quilt ones you would still choose today?

Not really.

Did you fall in love with quilting right away? Or was there a gap between making the first quilt and the next one?

Big gap! About 23 years.

Where is the quilt now?

I still have it. The flag hangs on my shop wall to show how far I've come.

Is there anything you wish you could go back and tell yourself as you made that first quilt?

Blanket stitch isn't the only way to make a quilt.

Anything else you want to share about your first quilt?

I'm grateful now for my neighbor who gave me a seed of inspiration that took awhile to germinate.

Thank you, Marlene, for sharing the story of your first quilt!

Quick Updates

This post contains affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission if you click on the link and make a purchase. That does not affect the price you pay.

I have just a few quick updates I want to share today. It's a pretty random assortment, but I wanted to get them all out there, so we're going with the randomness.

I'll start off with some sad news in the online quilting community, which you may have already read: Make Modern magazine will stop publishing new issues at the end of this year 🥲 I have loved Make Modern for a long time, and not only because they published so many of my patterns! They're not selling subscriptions anymore, but single issues are still available for purchase. Or you can purchase the All-Access Pass, which gives you access to every issue they've published (that will keep your quilty heart happy for a while!). 

Make Modern has been a big part of my journey as a quilt pattern designer and in the online quilting community as a whole. They'll definitely be missed. But they're not gone yet, and I'm looking forward to watching them spend the rest of the year celebrating their 12 years of quilty goodness.

Here's a throwback to when Stand Out Starburst was on the cover of Make Modern, back in May 2021.

And now on to my own updates! 

Registration is open for two Conquering Curves workshops happening soon. The first will be this Saturday, March 28th at 1:00 PM Eastern (10:00 AM Pacific) and the second on Thursday, April 2nd at 6:00 PM (3:00 PM Pacific).

During the workshop, we'll use my Noodles pattern (included in your registration) to sew gently curved blocks. I'll share all my tips and tricks for sewing pucker-free curves, which you can then use for any blocks with curved seams, like drunkard's path blocks or inset circles.

Both sessions will be recorded and the replay link sent to everyone who registers. You'll be able to watch it again while practicing your new quilty skill, or if neither session fits your schedule, you can still register and just catch the replay.

Register for the Saturday, March 28 session

Register for the Thursday, April 2 session

And for my last update, I've been sharing a fun series of videos on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube. It's 30 days of Quick Quilting Tips and today is day 10. So far I've shared tips about quilt binding, colouring quilts with crayons, and more. If you've been watching the videos, I'd love to know which has been your favourite so far!

I've also created a spreadsheet where I'm sharing links to all the tips videos, plus extra resources that go along with them (like the link to my quilting binding tutorial when the tip was related to binding). You can get access to that spreadsheet here and get caught up on all the tips and the resources!

That's all the news around here. I've been cutting a lot of scraps lately, drawing lots and lots of lines for some stitch-and-flip flying geese, and just generally enjoying my time in my sewing room. I hope you're doing fun quilty things, too!

Cool Down Mini Quilt

Today I get to share the March Mini of the Month quilt! Every month in 2026, Stash Artists members receive a new mini quilt pattern and this month it's the Cool Down mini. If you're not a member yet, come join us!

I always say that if I weren't writing and selling my quilt patterns, they'd be known as 'that blue one' or 'the one I gave Dad' or something like that. Naming the patterns can be so much harder than designing and making them! For this one, I was drawing a complete blank, so I reached out to some friends for suggestions. One suggested Cool Breeze, saying the blue said cool to her. I loved that, but there are already a couple of quilt patterns out there using that name. Darn. I kept toying with different ideas and asked ChatGPT for suggestions, but everything I liked was already a pattern name, until finally I hit on Cool Down. Considering that was only a day or two before I needed to upload the pattern to the Stash Artists site for members to download, it was a relief to finally have something that fit!

Cool Down is similar to Spin & Sparkle (which was the Stash Artists pattern for May last year), in that they're both large pinwheels made of smaller pieces, but Cool Down is not just a smaller version of Spin & Sparkle. It was fun creating both and playing with different ways to make the pinwheels.

I do wish I had noticed that the grey plaid-like fabric used in the bottom left portion of the center pinwheel was so close in value to the black. I feel like that takes away from the contrast of the central, small pinwheel, but I didn't notice it until the quilting was finished. I wasn't about to take it all apart at that point!

Most of the fabrics for the quilt top came directly out of my scrap boxes, though you'd never say that to look at them. My blues are overflowing! Good thing my plan for the May full size Stash Artists pattern will be primarily blue (though that still won't be enough to empty this basket).

I used two different brands of solid black (Northcott and Island Batik, if I had to guess, but I'm not certain for either of them). I could tell the difference by the feel of the fabrics as I was cutting them, but you really can't see the difference looking at the finished quilt. I figure 'scrap quilt' means using the scraps I have, even when that means mixing brands of solids. I've done the same in Stand Out Starburst (black, again) and Pinwheel Irish Chain (white) and it works just fine.

For the quilting, I decided to only use back-and-forth lines, using Aurifil 50 wt in 2600 for the grey sections, 4140 for the blue sections, and 2692 for the black. I left the center pinwheel unquilted, which gives it a little extra pop.

As usual, I love how it looks on the back!

I didn't think I had enough solid black left for the binding, but managed to find a piece hiding in the back of the drawer that was just big enough to work. I was very happy to find it because I didn't have anything else that felt quite right for the binding.

Cool Down has a winter feel to me, so it really fits that I took these pictures in the backyard, where we still have several feet of snow. 

If you love scrappy and stash-friendly patterns like Cool Down, you'll love the Stash Artists membership! Each month in 2026 there's a new mini quilt pattern, every other month there's a new full-size pattern (6/year, usually with multiple size options included), and we meet to sew together over Zoom every month, too! Learn more and join us here!

Thanks to Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl, I'm trying to remember to take pictures of me with my quilts more often. No one was home to help when I took these pictures, so I draped the mini quilt over a tree branch and snapped a selfie with my 'the sun is really bright' squint 😆

Lessons From 13 Years of Quilt Blogging

Devoted Quilter is 13 today! 🎉🎉🎉 I know I say it every year when this day rolls around, but it's still true, so I have to say it again - I can't believe how much has happened over the past 13 years because I started blogging!

To celebrate the anniversary, I'm having my annual Anniversary Pattern Sale, so head to my shop to save 25% off PDF patterns and printables. No coupon codes needed, the discount is already applied. Happy pattern shopping!

As today was getting closer, I was thinking about all the things I've learned since hitting publish on that first post back in 2013. There are plenty of tech skills I've picked up, beginning with my husband needing to teach me how to get pictures from our camera to the computer for those first posts. He then had to show me again a few days later when I forgot what to do 😅 Aside from all the tech stuff, there are a lot of lessons I've learned from 13 years of quilt blogging and quilt pattern design (which would never have happened without the blog). Here are those lessons, with a few quilts made over the years for added eye-candy.

The online quilting community is amazing

There are so many examples of this, but the most personal one for me happened in 2017 when the senior's home across the road from our house burned down. I asked for quilt blocks so I could make quilts for the 21 seniors who had lost their home and the online quilting community responded in a BIG way. To make the 21 quilts, I needed 882 blocks. I ended up with over 3,000 blocks, plus donations of backing, batting, and binding! With the help of local quilters, that turned into quilts for the 21 seniors, the 10 employees who had lost their jobs when the home burned down, and all the first responders who responded the night of the fire. I also sent 21 quilt tops to Houston after Hurricane Harvey.

It was amazing to be on the receiving end of the generosity of so many quilters, and to be able to pass that on to people who needed a little extra love and care. It's also amazing to see how quickly quilters step up every single time there's a need.

A stack of over 300 blocks that all arrived on the same day!

The things I think will be hard are probably not as hard as I imagine.

I can't even tell you how many times I have put off some task (even things I really wanted to do) because it was going to be hard to figure out, only to finally do it and discover it wasn't really that hard after all. Getting my patterns in printed form so I could sell them to quilt shops is a prime example. I wanted to do that for a couple of years before I reached out to another designer to ask her some questions about the logistics. Her answers sent me down the path that was surprisingly easy to follow.

This lesson has repeated often enough that I made myself a mini quilt as a reminder to just do the hard things!

You don't need special training to design quilts.

I quilted for a long time before I started designing my own patterns. During that time, I had this feeling that quilt designers had some special skill or training I didn't have. I didn't know what that was, exactly, but I was sure I didn't have it. Then I came across Craftsy in 2012 and from there found my way to quilt blogs, and started to realize that quilt designers were just regular people like me. The only special skills they had were the willingness to try, coupled with the willingness to learn the stuff they didn't already know. Realizing that I could do that, too, was life changing!

 What would you love to do, but you're holding back because you think you don't have the right qualifications? Are those qualifications real? A willingness to try + a willingness to learn can get a person pretty far with a lot of things.

Inner Beauty quilt

Technology isn't scary and it makes incredible things possible.

I used to be so nervous about trying anything new on the computer! Learning a new program, going into the backend of my blog, editing pictures... It all made me worry I'd mess it up so badly it couldn't be fixed. While I'm still not the most tech-savvy person out there, I have learned how to tackle a lot of tech stuff over the years, and most of it wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be (see the lesson about hard things, above!).

It helps that my husband is pretty tech-savvy, so he's my first stop when I can't figure something out with the help of Google. And when he can't figure it out, either, I turn to my brother, who is leaps and bounds ahead of either of us. Surprisingly, though, I'm able to handle most tech stuff on my own.

As for what it makes possible? 

• My Stash Artists members are scattered all over North America, and we meet monthly to chat and sew together over Zoom.
• I give lectures and teach workshops for guilds in Canada and the US, all without leaving my sewing room. Want me to 'visit' your guild? Send this link to your program chair!
• I've sold PDF patterns to people all over the world.
• My on-demand course teaches quilters how to paper piece with freezer paper, so they'll never again have to remove bits of paper from their blocks.
• I currently work as a virtual assistant to 2 other pattern designers, neither of whom I've actually met in real life.
• I have quilty friends who share their makes every time I check Instagram.

You don't need to meet someone in person to become friends.

Thanks to technology, I have so many quilty friends I've never been in the same room with. In the case of many of them, we've never even been in the same country! 

I've been able to meet a few of them over the years, and have plans to meet more this year (I'm so excited about every one of those plans!). But even if we only ever talk and share our love of quilting through a screen, I'm so grateful for the friends I've made in this online quilting community.

Stripe Shuffle quilt

You don't have to have it all figured out when you start.

Right from the first day I started blogging, I've been figuring things out as I go along. That's been true for designing and writing patterns, for running my shop, and for teaching workshops. As long as we know the next thing we need to do, we can gradually find our way along the path, especially if we're willing to ask for help from people who are a little farther along that path than we are. Thankfully, the people in the quilting industry are generally very generous with their knowledge.

Running a quilt pattern business involves a lot of computer time.

I mean, A LOT of computer time. I had no idea how much time I would spend with this computer. I work on a laptop, which means I'm often sitting in the living room typing a blog post (as I am right now) or a newsletter, but I could also be creating appliqué templates in EQ8, or standing at the kitchen counter answering emails while waiting for the water to boil for pasta. While I do get to spend a lot of time making quilts, I spend even more time doing a multitude of things on the computer.

Creativity doesn't run out when you use it.

When I was first considering starting the Stash Artists membership in 2023, there was a little worry in the back of my mind that maybe I'd run out of ideas for stash-friendly patterns. Well, not only has that not happened, but I have so many ideas and plans for quilts (and whole series of quilts!) that I don't have time to get to them all 😊 And yet I still find myself designing more things that weren't even on the list! Yes, I actually have a list on my phone of quilts I want to get to eventually.

All of that to say, creativity doesn't run out when you use it - it grows!

Thread Love quilt

You'll never know if you don't ask. And if you ask, they might just say yes!

This is one of my favourite lessons! 

The first time I submitted a quilt design to a magazine (Make Modern, for the record), I didn't really expect them to accept it. I had this dream, though, so I submitted it even though I expected a no. But I got a yes and the Flower Box cushion was published in May 2015.

The first time I reached out to a company to ask them to sponsor a prize for something for the blog, I thought my blog might be too small to be worth it for them, but they said yes.

Over the years I've reached out to a lot of people and companies for a lot of different things. Sometimes the answer has been no and sometimes I didn't get a response at all, but quite often the answer has been yes. That doesn't mean I don't sometimes hesitate to send that email, but I try to remind myself that I'll never know if I don't ask and that they can't say yes if I don't ask.

I had no idea any of these lessons would come from me decision to hit publish on that first blog post! I'm so glad I took that leap and joined the online quilting community! I'm looking forward to all the things I'll learn as I keep blogging, making quilts, and writing patterns. 

Thank you for being here for the journey. I wouldn't still be here 13 years later without you!

My First Quilt with Leslie Rutland

I unintentionally took a break from posting My First Quilt interviews, but I'm back with one today 😊 This time Leslie Rutland is sharing the story of her first quilt.

Leslie Rutland is the founder of The Seasoned Homemaker where she shares simple quilting, sewing, and crafty projects for busy women looking to connect with their creativity. She loves to teach and inspire her readers to spend a little time doing something they love and help them connect with future generations through a quilting legacy. Today, she shares quilting on her blog, writes quilt patterns, and hosts a membership community for quilters. 

You can connect with Leslie at her website, Instagram, and her membership.

And now, here's Leslie's first quilt. As a lover of blue and a lover of star quilts, this one is right up my alley!

What year did you make your first quilt? What prompted you to make it?

Around 1989 or 1990. It was a graduation gift for my youngest sister and intended for her to take to college the next year. It's been a part of her life ever since.

What techniques were used in that first quilt? Did you quilt it yourself?

This was before acrylic rulers and rotary cutters. I made templates from cutting up cereal boxes. Then I traced these templates onto my fabrics and cut everything out with scissors. I squared up the quilt by using a carpenter's square. I hand quilted with 100% cotton thread and used Mountain Mist Polyester batting. The binding was wrapped from the back to the front. 

Who taught you to make the quilt?

I took a class at a short-lived local quilt shop.

Are the colours you chose for your first quilt ones you would still choose today?

Never! It was during the "country blue" era. While I would still use these colors, I wouldn't use them in this way.

Did you fall in love with quilting right away? Or was there a gap between making the first quilt and the next one?

If I wasn't making it as a special gift, I would've abandoned the project. It felt tedious and I knew there had to be another way. I didn't make another quilt for 25 years. 

At that point, I started dabbling in quilting, but I "had a moment." In 2015, QuiltCon came to my hometown of Austin, TX. While sitting in a lecture about the Ohio Star quilt, a beautiful quilt was shown and it was like my brain lit up at that moment. After that, everything about quilting shifted and I knew I would be a quilter for life. I dove in head first and haven't stopped making quilts since that moment.

Where is the quilt now?

It is still in use at my sister's house, sitting in a basket in her den. It went with her to college, and then marriage, kids, pets, and all of her life.  It's in fairly good condition considering its age and use. Three kids have all snuggled under this quilt. I  need to replace the binding, but I hesitate to make a single change because so much of my sister's life has happened on this quilt. 

Is there anything you wish you could go back and tell yourself as you made that first quilt?

Don't stop. Keep quilting. Make small quilts and experiment with blocks.

Thank you, Leslie, for sharing your first quilt with us!

How to Appliqué with Ladder Stitch

We were on the road one morning recently and I was stitching hexie flowers to their backgrounds for my Shoo Fly Garden blocks when I thought, "I should write a tutorial for this." So here I am 😊

I'm using ladder stitch to attach the hexie flowers to the background and I'm always amazed at how invisible the stitches are. It makes me think of a scene in a book I read many years ago (though I can't remember the name of the book, the author, or anything else except this one scene). In the scene I remember, Japanese school girls are hand sewing kimonos and the protagonist/narrator says that her older sister was showing off how invisible her stitches were by using red thread to sew a white kimono. I know nothing about sewing kimonos, so I have no idea what stitch they would have been using, but ladder stitch might just be invisible enough for that!

To do appliqué with ladder stitch, the seam allowance of the appliqué shape needs to be folded under. You can't have raw edges for this technique. English Paper Piecing shapes, like my hexie flowers, are perfect, since their edges are folded under. The way I made the circles for my 2020 temperature quilt also resulted in the edges being turned under, so I used ladder stitch to appliqué them to their backgrounds, too. This would also work for appliqué shapes you've prepared with the freezer paper method, though I've never tried that. Basically, any appliqué shape with the seam allowance folded to the back is perfect for stitching to the background with ladder stitch.

What you'll need

• Your appliqué shapes
• Your background square
• Small pins
• Thread to match the appliqué fabric (or bright red, if you're feeling brave!)
• Hand sewing needle
• Thread gloss (optional, but I find it helpful)

First, position the appliqué on the background square. If you want to be sure it's centered, fold the background in half horizontally and vertically and finger press it to create light creases, then use the creases to center the appliqué. Pin the appliqué in place. I love these tiny appliqué pins from Clover!

Thread your hand sewing needle with the thread, then run the thread through the thread gloss if you're using it. I use So Fine Thread Gloss and the Satsuma scent is my favourite (I also have and use vanilla and strawberry).

Tie a knot at the end of the thread. I do this by wrapping the thread around the end of my finger twice, then rolling it off my finger and pulling it tight. I then wrap it around my finger again and roll it off, aiming to get the new knot to land right on top of the first one, making it slightly larger. I find this helps prevent the knot from pulling through the fabric.

I take a tiny stitch just through the background where it will be hidden under the appliqué shape.

To start the ladder stitch, bring the needle up through the background to the right side at the edge of the appliqué shape. All of the work will be done from the right side of the fabric.

Insert the needle into the edge of the appliqué shape, where the seam allowance is folded over, and travel it through the fold just a little bit. I usually travel about ⅛", but it's not exact.

Pull the needle out of the fold of the seam allowance and pull the thread tight, but not so tight that you ripple the background fabric.

Insert the needle into the background square, right at the edge of the appliqué shape, and then back up, again about ⅛" away. Pull the thread tight.

Again, insert the needle into the fold at the edge of the appliqué shape and take a stitch about ⅛" long. Insert the needle into the background square and take a stitch about ⅛" long. Repeat all the way around your appliqué shape.

If there are corners on your appliqué shape, be sure to have a stitch right at the corner to secure it down.

Here's what the stitches look like from the back.

When you come back around to where you started, or if your thread gets too short, pull the needle through to the wrong side of the background, right at the edge of the appliqué shape. 

I like to take a small stitch only through the background that is hidden under the appliqué shape. Then take another tiny stitch only through the background, but leave the needle in the fabric. Wrap the thread around the needle two or three times, then pull the needle the rest of the way through to create a knot. I usually take another tiny stitch just to secure it a little more, then trim the thread.

That's it! You appliqué shape is now secured to the background with nearly invisible stitches. Feel free to admire it for a minute or two before moving on to the next block 😊

Portals Mini Quilt

As I mentioned last month, we're doing a Mini of the Month series for 2026 in the Stash Artists membership. Portals is the mini quilt pattern for February and I'm so in love with this little quilt!

I love that picture, too, even if it doesn't show the whole quilt. My sister-in-law and I went out snowshoeing Sunday afternoon, and I took Portals along to try to get pictures. We really wanted to stand it up against these trees, but it kept flopping over as soon as she let go of it, which made us laugh every single time 🤣 We finally managed to get that picture above, and then had to give up on trying to get a straight picture of the whole quilt there.

Instead, here's one of me holding it.

And another one that shows the beautiful scenery. This is just a few minutes trek through the woods behind our house.

Portals was inspired by some of the books I've read over the past few years:

• The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix Harrow
• The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern
• Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire
• The Unmaking of June Farrow, by Adrienne Young

In all of the books, characters find themselves traveling to other places and/or times through doorways they find. Aside from sharing the 'traveling through doors' part, the books are all wildly different and I'd be hard pressed to pick a favourite (though Every Heart a Doorway lands at the bottom of the list. It was okay, but not on the same level as the others). I guess it's like how we can make four quilts using Friendship Star blocks and they'd all be different 😊

A version of this design had been sitting in my EQ8 files for a couple of years, but I wasn't enthused enough about it to make it. That version was larger, with all the 'doors' coloured the same and lined up perfectly. I think I was going for a Roman aqueduct kind of look, but it wasn't working. When I was looking through my designs a few months ago, I tried colouring them all differently and staggering the middle row, and that's when I saw them as similar to the doorways in the books.

Of course, in the books the doors are scattered around here, there, and everywhere. The characters are either hunting for them or stumbling upon them, depending on the book. They're not all gathered neatly in one place where the character could look from one to the other and choose where to go. That works well for a book, but not so well for a mini quilt!

I chose the name Portals rather than Doors because I wanted to reference the fact these aren't ordinary doors just leading to the next room. They're portals leading to somewhere totally different and I had a lot of fun choosing fabrics that made me feel like I wanted to travel to the places behind them.

The doors are applique, with bias tape applique for the frame around them. That means the quilt top was really quick to put together. 

For the quilting, I used Aurifil 50 wt thread to match each of the doors and echoed the shape of the door, working my way in to the middle of the door. Then I used navy Aurifil to quilt three lines in the 'floor' under the two upper rows of doors. That fabric looks black in the pictures, but it is navy. Then for the background, I used white Aurifil to outline the doors and echo that line again, then I quilted a dense stipple all over the background. As always, I love how the quilting looks on the back!

There must have been a couple of snowflakes on the camera that created those blurry spots.

As you can see, I did all the echo quilting with my free motion foot, so the lines are organic and straight-ish rather than the perfectly straight and evenly-spaced lines they could be if I used my walking foot. I really don't enjoy quilting with my walking foot, though, so I prefer to embrace the imperfections of free motion quilting.

Making mini quilts every month is definitely helping with my stash of small pieces of Warm and Natural batting. Of course, I'm also making larger quilts, which produce those small off-cut pieces, so it's a never-ending cycle!

If you love scrappy and stash-friendly patterns (and mini quilt patterns!), come join us in Stash Artists! Along with the patterns, we also sew together over Zoom once a month, which is always a lovely time of community.

What fabrics would you use for your doors? And where/when would you want to travel?

Shining Softly Quilt

Welcome to another TGIFF party! And if you're thinking, "Gee, Leanne has hosted TGIFF twice already this month" you'd be correct 😆 As one of three TGIFF managers (along with Laura and Anja), I take care of making sure the linky party runs smoothly during January, which means stepping up to host when there's no other host signed up. If you blog and you'd like to host the party, there are plenty of open spaces in 2026 and we'd love to have you! You can sign up here (hosting is really easy, I promise!).

And now on with the party! This week I'm sharing the quilt that was actually my last finish of 2025, and the Stash Artists pattern for January, Shining Softly.

Don't ask me why, but in my head Friendship Star blocks have a 'correct' way to lean (to the right, if you're wondering), so having them purposely lean in both directions felt very odd to me. But I love the jewel shape that creates in the space between the stars!

As always, I had fun digging into my stash for the right fabrics for my stars. I did have to buy a few, though, because I didn't have enough pink or purple blenders to not repeat any. Oh darn, right?

I coloured this design a lot of different ways on my computer before I settled on the one I actually wanted to make. While I'm not a huge lime green fan, I feel like it really makes this colour palette sing. And having the colours run diagonally is so much more interesting than if they went straight across.

While I was piecing the stars and assembling the top, I wavered back and forth about how to quilt it. Part of me wanted to do something to highlight the shapes in the negative space, but I couldn't decide what. Another part of me wanted to quilt something swirly to emphasize the way the stars seem to be dancing across the quilt. As you can see, the swirly part of me won. I used Aurifil 1125 50 wt for all of the piecing and the quilting.

I was kind of obsessed with how the sun being low in the sky really made the quilting texture stand out.

I took these pictures the same day I took the pictures of Thread Love, which meant it was a snowshoes-required kind of photo shoot. Since then, we've had even more snow! It's several feet deep in our backyard now, and there's more in the forecast for tonight. It just keep coming!

If you love stash-friendly patterns like Shining Softly, come join us in Stash Artists! We're doing a Mini of the Month series in 2026 along with what I'm calling our 'main' patterns every other month, plus we get together virtually to sew every month. We'd love to welcome you into the community 💖

Now it's your turn! What have you finished recently? Link it up below and be sure to visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes, too 😊

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter