Hello, quilty friends near and far, and welcome to the Strawflower Quilt Along!
This 5-week quilt along will take you from start to finish in creating your own strawflower quilt top. This pattern is best for intermediate quilters or beginners with some experience. If you love this pattern but have been too intimidated to try it on your own, then this quilt along will be perfect for you. If you don’t have the pattern yet, grab it below.
Timeline
- Week 1: Choose quilt layout and fabric
- Week 2: Cut fabric and make the square in the square block for each quilt block
- Week 3: Make triangle in a rectangle blocks for each quilt block
- Week 4: Using pieces from weeks 2 and 3, sew all of the quilt blocks
- Week 5: Sew quilt blocks together with sashing for a finished quilt top
Week 1 – Choose Layout and Fabric
This may be your favorite week of the entire quilt along. Personally, I love dreaming up new color palettes and playing with colors. You may already have the perfect idea, but this week, I’ll be providing inspiration for your quilt palette.
Before we get too ahead of ourselves in choosing fabric, you will need to decide on a size and layout. The size will determine how much fabric you need to purchase and the number of blocks you will make for your quilt. Next, choose a layout. The pattern includes two options: mix-and-match or traditional. Below, I have displayed a version of each. First, is the mix-and-match version that has you mix up all your fabrics in each block so that every block is unique. In this version, a large throw, I used 8 different fabrics. The next example, the traditional layout, uses 6 different fabrics with a consistent background so that every block is identical throughout the quilt.
Choosing Fabric
When choosing fabric for your quilt, think about saturation and brightness. Saturation is considered the purity of a color. A color in its purest form is vivid without white or grey dulling the color. Less saturated colors will be muted or dusty. I often use these colors. For example, the Northern Sky quilt shown below uses several fabrics that are muted, or less vivid. The greyish purple, lightest blue, and soft pink are all great examples. Oftentimes, people like to use a color palette in which all colors have a similar saturation, but I think it’s up to you.
Another consideration is brightness. High brightness refers to colors that are closer to white and low brightness refers to colors that are closer to black. In the quilt below, the Cove quilt, the light blue of the background would be considered brighter than the dark blue. I prefer to use a variety of brightness in my quilts. One way to discover if you have a good distribution of brightness in your color choices is to take a picture of your fabric and turn the picture to black and white. The colors with high brightness will look white while the colors with low brightness will look grey or black.
Inspiration
Now you know more about color, but does that help you choose fabrics? One way I choose fabrics is to look for an image or piece of artwork that appeals to me. I pick out the colors in the image that I like best and test if I like those colors together. Once I have an idea of colors I like, I go to my favorite shops to look for these colors in fabric. It’s not always perfect, but it is a great starting point. With this idea in mind, I have created a few mock-ups to get your wheels spinning.
Enjoy all this color inspiration. I’ll be back next week with tips for cutting your fabric and sewing the square-in-a-square blocks.
Mix & Match
Traditional
