Sometimes you have a quilt pattern that just begs to be made. It is a great excuse to search for just the perfect fabric! But sometimes, you have fabric that is just so pretty, you simply had to buy it, not knowing what you would ever make. That was the case with a sunflower panel I had in my stash of fabric. I’ve had it for several years. It had beautiful fall colors, and individual 5 inch sunflowers. I looked at it the other day, and knew it was time…
Now, I am not a professional pattern designer. But I have been sewing for about ten years now, mostly making quilts – piecing and quilting on my domestic sewing machine. And in my previous career, I did quite a bit of technical writing. So I knew I could do this! There is software that I am sure can greatly assist in pattern making. But there is something about paper and pencil – and GRAPH PAPER!
I knew I wanted to make a small tablerunner, and perhaps a couple throw pillows. So I started scribbling ideas in my graph composition notebook until I came up with something I liked. I love quarter square triangle blocks, so I decided to make several different sizes. My sunflowers were about 5 inches square, so I pieced a small border around each, and then trimmed them to 6-1/2 inches. I came up with 6 columns, each 6-1/2 inches wide, varying the blocks in each. As you can see, nothing fancy. Next I figured out how many quarter square triangle blocks I needed of each size. I made the blocks, and created the 6 columns, then sewed the columns together.
If you’d like a free copy of my tablerunner pattern “Quarters for you Thoughts”, and also a ‘how-to’ for my zipper backed throw pillows “Painted Sunflowers”, click here to jump on over to my FREE page! And if you’ve never done so before, I hope you’ll give quilt pattern making a try.