Camille Roskelley's Patchwork Sky Pattern / Beauties Pageant 267

Years ago, my mom got me a fat quarter bundle of Nova, by Basic Grey, for my birthday. I bought some yardage to go along with it and slowly started chipping away at the mountain of prints in teal, rose, and navy. The first project I completed with Nova was Irish Twist, my own take on a traditional Irish chain quilt ...

Then I cut two additional throw-size quilts: Basic Grey’s Stolen Kisses and Camille Roskelley’s Patchwork Sky. The first one is not pieced at all (like, not even a little bit). The second quilt, however, is this week’s finish ...

Patchwork Sky checks so many boxes for me. I love the big, bold stars that seem to fall off the edges of the quilt and the swaths of 2-inch (finished) squares. The pattern instructions call for a jelly roll and a strip-piecing technique to assemble the 16 patches that fall between the stars. Because I had fat quarters, yardage, and scraps, I cut my own 2.5-inch strips and squares. I am a sucker for quilty math, so I was happy to play with my calculator if it meant busting through all that fabric. 

My first Nova project went directly to the longarmer for a swirly pantograph treatment. I thought Patchwork Sky, on the other hand, would benefit from the straight-line quilting I could accomplish on my own. Those straight lines, I think, make the quilt that much more modern.

You know I love a good jelly roll pattern, and Patchwork Sky is one I may revisit in the future. : )

 

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
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• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

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New Year's List Writing / Beauties Pagent 242

I am a big believer in making lists. It doesn’t matter whether I write a list out by hand or type it into a digital document, the activity is worthwhile. It gives me the opportunity to process my short-term tasks and establish some long-term goals, but perhaps more important, it frees up space in my brain. Sometimes it seems as if just writing something down and committing to tackling it is half the battle.

My quilting-related lists usually focus on WIPs, but since the new year is upon us, I like the idea of writing out some general goals and making a few detailed lists to set the stage for my 2024 quilting journey.

Stashing Goals

I have a lot of fabric. I suspect you do, too. And if you’re like me, you start each January by resolving to buy less. Yup, that’s a goal for 2024: I don’t want to buy pretty fabric just to buy pretty fabric. (Have you seen the posts about recently restocked Starry from Ruby Star Society? I’ve resisted them all!)

In addition to using up a good portion of my stash this year, I also plan to destash fabric I don’t love anymore or don’t think I’ll use anytime soon. I posted a dozen lots of fabric on Instagram and FeelGood Fibers in December, selling several of them. I plan on posting more to FGF in January. It feels great to see space in my drawers of fabric!

Related links:

• How to Destash on Instagram
• Fastest Way to Finish a WIP: Sell the Fabric!
  
• Learning How to Destash
  
• 10 Ways to Quilt on a Budget
  

Pattern Design

I released just two patterns in 2023: Set to Spin, which is an intermediate paper-piecing pattern, and the Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt, which is one of my $3 Almost Free for Charity PDF patterns.

Most of my designing and quilting time for the next few months is already spoken for, so I don’t expect to release any new patterns until the second half of the year. Still, I am looking forward to adding to my collection of offerings. I’m hoping for two, perhaps three, new patterns. (Hold me accountable to that, friends!)

Related links:

• Set to Spin PDF pattern
• Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt PDF pattern
• From Bolt to Beauty on Etsy

From Bolt to Beauty Blog

I am committed to writing Friday posts here on the From Bolt to Beauty blog and hosting the Beauties Pageant linky. I know that in general blogging has taken a backseat to social media, but this platform continues to be my preferred place to document projects, celebrate triumphs, and discuss the speed bumps along the way. Thank you for being here, for participating in the linky, and for making blogging regularly a worthwhile goal for me!

Social Media

I’ve lost a lot of love for Instagram in the past nine months or so. Algorithm changes over the past year have caused even fewer people to see my static pictures and rendered my involvement on the platform halfhearted at best. Will I post in 2024? Sure, but I expect it to be sporadic. (Darn you, Instagram!)

I’m considering playing around with YouTube in both the long and short formats, but that’s another idea to pursue the second half of the year.

WIPs

I took stock of my works in process, and I have just five of them! Sure, there are a few others that have been cut out, but these are the ones I’ve actually started sewing. (The pictures in this post are testament to that.) One way or another, I can bang these out in the next 12 months. Here is the rather short list, with links to blog posts that discuss them:

• Sandhill Sling (Anna Graham)
  
• Patchwork Sky (Camille Roskelley)
  
• Leaded Glass (Tracey Jacobson)
  
• Random Hearts (Make Things. Grow)
  
• Pineberry (Pen + Paper Patterns)

What is on your list for 2024? Your list doesn’t have to be anything fancy, and I wouldn’t approach it as a legalistic I-have-to-accomplish-these-things-in-the-next-12-months activity, just an opportunity to have a think and give your year of quilting some direction.

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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One Quilt Four Ways / Beauties Pageant 231

I fell down the rabbit hole that is EQ7 last weekend. But can you blame me? It’s satisfying to see how different fabric collections would look in a quilt design without sewing a stitch.

What you see here is my Double-Sided Diamond Quilt, a layer cake-friendly pattern that I wrote about last week, in four different Moda collections. (Pssst ... Moda didn’t put me up to this post. I just like the company’s modern designers and consider it the OG precut manufacturer!)

Dawn on the Prairie

Designer Stephanie Sliwinski of Fancy That Design House caught my eye back in 2021 with her debut collection, Songbook. I’ve loved the floral designs and palettes in every collection of hers since then. There’s just something different about them. Check out her latest line, Dawn on the Prairie, at the top of the post. See what I mean? The color combination isn’t one I could have developed myself, and it’s so good. The earthy tones in rust, brown, and charcoal are surprisingly good companions for blush and mustard. Beautiful!

Fruit Loop

I am a big fan of Basic Grey—just check out the 40-some posts of mine that reference the design house (click here). I am especially drawn to its collections with gray undertones. (Some—like Nutmeg, Cider, and Persimmon—have more brown undertones, and they’re not my thing.)

Fruit Loop, pictured below, hasn’t been released but is circulating on social media. It’s a different kind of collection for Basic Grey, with all those bright fruit-themed prints, while remaining true to the design house’s aesthetic. And it has a black colorway, which pretty much seals the deal for me!

 

Sunflowers in My Heart

I credit some of my brightest quilt projects to Kate Spain, whose use of color often pushes me out of my comfort zone. I especially like her use of pinks and reds (check out my first Plaid-ish quilt and my first Warm and Cool Coin quilt). 

Her latest fabric line, Sunflowers in My Heart, is in my mind pretty different from her other collections, but maybe it’s just the way I mocked up this quilt design. I think of it as a blue fabric collection. Perhaps if I had used a different color on the mocked-up backing I would say otherwise? (You know I’m going to go straight to EQ7 and find out as soon as I finish this post!) Way way or another, it’s really lovely, and I’m especially smitten with the large-scale floral print.

 

Lighthearted

And then there’s Lighthearted, the collection by Camille Roskelley I included in last week’s post. Lighthearted is a throwback to when Camille designed collections with her mom and features the signature Bonnie and Camille color palette, with pink, a not-quite-red hue, aqua, and grassy green.

And that concludes my spate of precut-focused blog posts. You can click through to the previous four posts with the links below. And stop back next week, when I will unveil my two Postcard from Sweden quilts!

My latest precut posts:

• Double-Sided Diamond Quilt
• So Many 2.5-Inch Squares, So Little Time
• Two Patterns for National Sew a Jelly Roll Day
• A Finally Finished Jelly Roll Quilt

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The Double-Sided Diamond Quilt is one of my Almost Free for Charity PDF patterns. 

It’s just $3 in my pattern shop, $1 of which goes to an organization supporting the Down syndrome community.

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

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Two Patterns for National Sew a Jelly Roll Day / Beauties Pageant 228

Have you heard about National Sew a Jelly Roll Day? (It’s a real thing, up there with National Golden Retriever Day and National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day!) On the third Saturday of September each year, we’re encouraged to unroll those lovely bundles of strips and get to quilt making!

Thimble Blossoms’ Patchwork Sky

One jelly roll pattern I sewed recently and wanted to recommend to you is Thimble Blossoms’ Patchwork Sky. (Thimble Blossoms is Camille Roskelley’s pattern company.) This project turned me into a fan of strip sewing—that is, sewing the strips together length-wise and then cutting them into usable units for the quilt top. 

That technique makes the 16-patches in between the big stars go together much faster, while still maintaining the super-scrappy, I-pieced-all-these-little-squares-individually look.

I had hoped to have my Patchwork Sky all quilted and bound for a National Sew a Jelly Roll Day debut—after all, it’s been basted since June!—but here you see the project as a flimsy. I am planning on quilting double lines on an angle all over this top and binding it with Grunge in wild ginger (the stars are Grunge in blue steel). Here’s hoping it crosses the finish line before the end of the year!

Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt

Regular readers are familiar with the second pattern I wanted to showcase today. It’s my own Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt. This humble pattern has been my most successful to date, and the ombre version was so well received that I recently updated the cover of the PDF version with it.

Patchwork Sky is not a weekend project, but the child and lap sizes of Ridiculously Easy are. Personally, I think the lap size is the project’s sweet spot, because it calls for 29 strips and jelly rolls usually contain 40. In other words, there is a little wiggle room for you to select the fabrics that work best with your background fabric.

The pattern requires sewing long columns together (it is not a block-based pattern) and includes tips on getting great results. If you’re a new sewist, I recommend making one of the smaller sizes before embarking on one of the larger sizes.

Will you be at your machine on National Sew a Jelly Roll Day? If so, we’d love to hear what you plan on making!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

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A Plaid-ish Finish! / Beauties Pageant 220

A guildmate once shared a scrap quilt of hers in which there were no repeats—each fabric was used just once. Can you imagine the scrap bin necessary to create such a masterpiece?! Although a challenge like that would be a worthwhile one, my taste in scrappy quilts swings to the other end of the spectrum. 

First, I like my scrappy projects to have a strong geometry. Sharp, predictable lines create an orderly environment for me and my scrap bin to play. Then I need a well-defined palette to reign things in—I can’t handle what I’ve heard others refer to as “scrap vomit”—and my favorite way to develop a color scheme is to use a few fabrics as inspiration. 

My latest finish, a second go-round with Kitchen Table Quilting’s Plaid-ish pattern, meets both of those criteria. I started with a few prints from Kate Spain’s Sunnyside, and from there fleshed out a sizable  enough fabric pull to complete this 64-inch by 82-inch quilt.

Some fabrics make a single appearance, but there are many others that are represented a half-dozen times or more. I like that kind of repetition in my scrap quilts—it creates some cohesion and helps me bust through a few fat quarters while I chip away at my stash of scraps.

I’d be remiss not to mention the beautiful quilting in this finished quilt. It was done by my friend Ophelia and is a pantograph by Urban Elementz called Diamond Plaid. Those angled lines soften the horizontal and vertical seams in the piecing, don’t they?

To read more about how I built my palette (and expanded it when necessary), click here. To see my first Plaid-ish quilt, read this blog post. And to make your own Plaid-ish, visit Kitchen Table Quilting and click on “tutorials.”

 I have more to say and show you about this Plaid-ish finish. Come back next week to see what I did with the back. Spoiler alert: I used Kelly Young’s new book, Perfectly Pieced Quilt Backs, to make it!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

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Quilty Retreat Prep / Beauties Pageant 215

My guild’s annual spring retreat happens next week in Maine, and I’ve been getting ready for the event for the past few weeks. I approach retreats as more guild socials/sweat shops. I do a lot of catching up with friends and go out for all my meals. When I’m at my machine, I’m go-go-go—it’s more of a time to make progress on many projects and less about tapping into the collective creativity around me.

That being said, I pack several projects, knowing full well I won’t touch them all—the variety helps me make the most of my away-from-home sewing time. My retreat projects generally fall into one of three categories: fast finishes, marathons, and challenges.

Fast finishes are projects that I can bang out in less than a day (think baby quilt tops) or those that are far enough along that I can wrap them up quickly. Checking a fast finish off my list helps propel me into another project. For example, my Brightly blocks (pictured at the start of the post) are completely pieced; I just have to assemble the rows and then sew them into the top. Brightly will come together quickly at the retreat. And my Patchwork Sky (pictured below) is well on its way. I still have to do some piecing, but then it will be smooth run to the finish line.

Marathons are those that require a lot of mindless chain piecing. I won’t start and complete one at retreat, but I can make good progress on several. So, when I’m bored of snowballing a hundred pieces for one project, I can move on to sewing the nine-patches for another. I have three of these ready to go: Legendary (by Elizabeth Hartman), Pineberry (by Pen and Paper Patterns), and my own Irish Twist.

A challenge or two helps keep things interesting. I have prepared many blocks from the Bonnie and Camille Quilt Bee Sampler to that end. It’s not that these are hard blocks; they’re all different and will require some effort from me to sew. I cut everything and bagged the components for each block in a separate plastic bag. When I want to work on something interesting while on retreat, this is the project I’ll reach for.

All of that aside, I think the most important thing for me to do in preparation is to read through each pattern, make sure I will have everything I need on hand, and cut out all the fabric in advance. After a few days of socializing and staying up later than I should, it’s best—for me and for my projects—that I steer clear of my rotary blade!

Do you have any advice from your own retreat experiences? I welcome the wisdom!

 

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Irish Twist Pattern Release / Beauties Pageant 194

 **Get your copy of Irish Twist here**

I’m happy to present a new addition to the From Bolt to Beauty pattern collection ... Meet Irish Twist!

Irish Twist is a new chapter in quilting’s Irish chain story. Here the chains fall to the background, and the in-between spaces take the spotlight. Add in thoughtful fabric placement, and you’ve got a quilt fit for modern tastes.

Irish Twist comes in four sizes:

• Baby: 38" x 47"
• Small throw: 50½" x 62½"
• Large throw: 63" x 78"
• Twin: 75½" x 93½"

This pattern is a whole-composition design. The different sizes are created by enlarging the individual pieces, not by adding more blocks. To help you plot your fabric placement, there is a coloring page in the pattern as well as an accompanying blog post that talks about value and an alternative way to mock up your quilt top. 

My original Irish Twist was sewn in all solids. The pattern, however, caters to print lovers and even accommodates directional prints so you know how to get great results from the start.

Irish Twist is available as a PDF download in my Etsy shop. You can also find it at Quilt Pattern Mart, where it—and my other PDF patterns—are specially priced at $9 through November 30.

For some Irish Twist inspiration, check out the testers’ projects at #IrishTwistQuilt on Instagram!

The cover quilt was sewn with Nova by Basic Grey for Moda Fabrics and quilted by Tammie Earnest.

 

**Get your copy of Irish Twist here**

 

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Planning Fabric Placement for Irish Twist

My latest pattern—Irish Twist—just released into the world! It’s a quick-to-sew pattern that’s great for beginners and more seasoned quilters alike. (Get your copy here!)

Irish Twist is a whole-composition design—that is, the different sizes are created by enlarging the pieces, not by adding more blocks. In other words, you won’t make a bunch of identical blocks and have the luxury of settling on a layout for them once they’re all sewn. Irish Twist requires a plan from the get-go.

The pattern includes a coloring page to help you design your quilt top. Before you take your colored pencils to paper, however, there are a few things to think about ...

Playing with Value in the Quilt Top

It may be helpful to consider the value of the fabrics you’ll be working with. The three examples below all use the same fabrics (Nova by Basic Grey for Moda Fabrics) but distribute value differently in the quilt.

The high-volume fabrics in these examples include the cranberry fabric and two deep blue fabrics. The low-volume fabric is the small floral with a white background. Everything else can be described as a mid-tone. The black and white versions of each design help in observing these discrepancies in value.

Example 1, which is the pattern’s cover quilt, concentrates the high volumes in the corners and in a large diamond in the center of the quilt. (I hope that description makes sense! It’s what I see when I look at it!) The low-volume fabric is sprinkled along each edge. (In the pattern’s terms, fabrics C, E, and G are high volume; F is low volume.)

 

Example 2 uses high volumes around the entire perimeter and a creates a small X of them in the center. The low-volume fabric appears in four blocks just beyond that X. (In the pattern’s terms, fabrics B, F, and G are high volume; C is low volume.)

 

Example 3 concentrates the high volumes in a small diamond in the center of the quilt and sprinkles them along each edge. Chunks of the low-volume fabric are adjacent to each of the four corners. (In the pattern’s terms, fabrics A, B, and F are high volume; D is low volume.)

You may not think about a fabric pull and the subsequent placement in such terms, but you might decide that you like the look of one of these examples over the others and want to recreate the value distribution similarly in your own project. 

Another place to go to for ideas on palettes and fabric placement is Instagram. My testing crew has already used #IrishTwistQuilt to post pictures of their projects, and wow, there are color and fabric combinations I would never have thought of myself. Check their pictures out here!

An Alternative to the Coloring Page

As mentioned earlier, the Irish Twist pattern comes with a coloring page. If you find that plotting a quilt top with a coloring page is effective, go for it! I rarely use coloring pages, and for this particular pattern, there’s a more effective way to evaluate potential fabrics.

Irish Twist’s cutting instructions include a large square and a small square. Using the small square dimensions for the quilt size you want to make (the small square size is different for each), cut a square for each of the shapes in the pattern top, including the half-shapes along the edge. In other words, for example 3, above, cut 4 of the cranberry floral, 4 of the teal geometric, 8 of the low-volume floral, 8 of the navy floral along the edges, etc. You will cut 49 squares in all.

Use the pattern to lay them out on point to get an idea of how they play together. I’ll be using a white background fabric, so I placed mine on a piece of white batting and then took a picture. (That way, I can view it in grayscale if I want.)

Example 1 in 2-inch squares looks like this ...

 

Pretty cool, right? This exercise can help you get a better idea of what your final quilt top will look like without wasting any fabric. Because I am making a baby-size quilt, I cut 2-inch squares and will use them in my actual project.

Questions? Comments?

This post is just food for thought. There’s no right or wrong way to plot your Irish Twist. And I suspect you already evaluate fabrics placement in an intuitive way, without thinking, Hey, I’m using a low volume here!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on selecting and placing fabrics for this pattern. Leave a comment, whether I’ve confused you (!) or got you thinking. 

Heads-up! If you comment anonymously, I will not be able to respond to you via email. Likewise, if you’re a no-reply blogger, I won’t have access to your email address. You can always include your email in the comment or send your email address to frombolttobeauty [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thanks!

**Get your copy of Irish Twist here**

Sneaky Little Peeks / Beauties Pageant 192

All pictures by Tammie Earnest

I can summarize 90 percent of my sewing this fall in two words: QuiltCon submissions. Sewing up to the submission deadline is not something I recommend, but considering I’ll be attending the conference next February, I was especially interested in finishing a few QuiltCon-worthy projects, in hopes I would see at least one hanging in person in Atlanta. 

I’ve vacillated on whether to reveal these projects before the show—there’s something to be said for keeping them under wraps until the event (presuming they are accepted).

One project I am happy to show you sneaky little peeks of today is my Irish Twist quilt, which has nothing to do with QuiltCon. This is my latest pattern, and it’s slated for release in mid-November.

Unlike my QuiltCon submissions—which I painstakingly quilted myself!—I splurged on this Irish Twist and had it longarmed by Tammie Earnest. I won’t receive the quilted project for a few more days, but Tammie sent me a bunch of pics of her beautiful work ...

 

Whenever I have something longarmed, I always go for the curvy, swirly pantos. After all, I can produce more-linear designs on my own with my walking foot. The panto I chose—Ginger Flower by Urban Elementz—was especially suited to the prints I used in the quilt top. All of the fabrics come from Nova, an older collection by Basic Grey, and the loopy flowers of the panto match the floral cranberry fabric.

I’ll reveal more of this Irish Twist in Nova, and my testers’ projects, in the weeks ahead!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter