Scintillating Stars

As if you hotties were not scintillating enough on your own, my latest pattern, one that I finally after almost a year of hemming and hawing got off my butt and released yesterday, has been named "Scintillating Stars." Scintillating, because that's as sexy a name as I would allow myself despite the fact that what I really wanted to name it was hands down amazing. It was also a name that would have caused half of quiltdom to reach for their smelling salts and immediately boycott my company due to the unladylike attitude of its owner.

So we stuck with Scintillating Stars. And I have to say, they are pretty scintillating. All that color! All those sizes! The cool border! Even the fun setting of the photo! 

 So where did this starry piece of wonderment come from, beyond the dark recesses of my overactive mind? After I made a triple star block for a swap several years ago, I became a bit obsessed with seeing just how many stars I could nest in a quilt, so one day I started nesting stars, using the biggest, brightest floral and polka dot fabrics I could find - no two fabrics in any given round of this quilt are alike, and I love it that way. I was kind of shocked and disappointed when five rounds was the largest quilt I felt comfortable with; I think a sixth round might have buried me in the studio for all eternity as it would have eclipsed the size of my available floor space, but it's pretty cool even with the five rounds.

So by now, you are likely looking at this pattern, loving it, wanting to buy it, but also thinking "She said this took forever to release. Why? Is she kind of incompetent? It doesn't look THAT hard to write up." The answer to am I kind of incompetent is obviously "For sure, now and then I am a hot mess." The rest of the answer is more the three pronged situation of because I don't want the pattern to be a hot mess, because I pride myself on my directions, and because I've been in this business long enough to know that quilters who buy this pattern are going to want to make it EXACTLY LIKE THE COVER. I'm not yelling, just vehemently stating facts, a fact I can prove with several months of showing this quilt in lectures, being told I needed to release the pattern immediately, but that yes, quilters wanted directions to make it just like the cover. Which means eight fabrics per round. Which means a lot of specific cutting directions from each of several different sizes of yardage to get the most bang for your buck and the most variety in your stars. And THAT, my dear quilty peeps, was a big old pain in the butt. However, I rocked the heck out of it, if I do say, with diagrams that will make you shed a tear due to their beauty.

 And bingo! The cutting directions in Scintillating Stars are written so that your stars will look like the cover - that is, eight different fabrics in each round of star points. If you follow them, you'll not only get your own awesome star quilt, but you'll use your fabrics the most efficient way possible. Should you want to go rogue and make the quilt with only four fabrics per round, I say go for it.


 Adding a scrappy, strippy, asymmetrical border gave it a little punch and made it not just another star quilt. Could you add the strips in every corner? Sure! I just like to take the quick way out, and I happen to like things just slightly off kilter. It's possible you've noticed these things about me.

The quilting was mostly done in pebbles, with some narrow straight line quilting in the stars, the combination of which almost killed me. There were many, many days that I complained nonstop about how long the quilting was taking me. I ran a contest on my FB page one day to see if anyone could guess how long it took to pebble one of the largest squares in the quilt. (49 minutes. For ONE SQUARE! Now I'm yelling.) The problem is, once you start pebbling, you are committed. By the end I was ready to well and truly be committed.

Cover photography was stealthily taken on a side street of my town while I prayed no cops would arrest me for thumbtack marks in the door of an antique schoolhouse. Every quilt pattern has a little risk to the designer, and with this one it was my sanity and arrest record, but thankfully both remained clear at the end of the process. The schoolhouse was a building on the third grade "History of Pepperell" project my older daughters completed four years ago in third grade, but I had forgotten about it until a week ago, when I drove by and realized what a great backdrop it would make. As long as I don't get arrested for defacing public property, I'm sure I'll use it again.

As a thank you to everyone who was so very very patient when it took me just under a year to get this project from start to finish, through Monday March 21, 2016, the pdf pattern is half price ($5.00) on Craftsy. Print patterns will be available just as soon as my printer can get them to me!

I hope you'll give Scintillating Stars a whirl!

Modernizing the Crap out of Quilting

Modern. It's the buzz word of the decade. I challenge you to enter any LQS around the country and not be boinked on the head with the word at least 15 times in the course of your visit, be it from the cover of patterns, the description of fabric lines, or even the cool haircut on the owner, which can be counted if you are struggling to find 15, but I doubt you will.

It's outside of the quilting world, too, with Target showing us "Fresh, Modern" palettes in everything from their towels to drink cups. As if the year 2013 invented the color orange, thereby making it "modern."

It's even at antique shops, where "upcycling" has become the way to "modernize" everything from barn doors to yellowed books to glass jars. I've even done a little upcycling myself, as evidenced by my-library-card-catalog-turned-quilting-tools-holder.

File that under "C" for "Things that can Cut you badly."

A lot of it I really love, but I shudder when I see people painting a gorgeous piece of furniture from 1862 and then "distressing" it for that "modern" feel (Begging the question - is distressed the way we are all supposed to feel in 2013?); having once stained an early 1800s desk the wrong color only to be told by an appraiser I had just "ruined all of its value," I can't even go there in my mind.


With that said, if you are just arriving to check out my blog today during a break from painting your grandmother's china hutch teal.....um.....welcome! It's no secret that I don't keep my feelings to myself, but I always respect the rights of everyone to do as they see fit in life even if I couldn't do it myself, and a teal china cabinet is no exception. You know without a doubt I applaud the color choice in any case. But overall, let's be honest, I'm over this modern thing.


A couple of weeks ago designer Ebony Love went on a tear in the quilting world, calling out designers for putting out stuff that is less than stellar in the names of money, fame, fortune, and deadlines in a blog post called "The Dumbing Down of the Quilting and Sewing Industry". She'd had it up to here with poorly constructed quilts and patterns that in her mind were not worthy of industry standards, and she had no problem telling it like she saw it. My only issue with what she said was briefly worrying that she was about to kill off my "Perfection is Overrated" lecture, but since I've had a few inquiries over the past week I guess we're good, and I am confident we are both on the same page when it comes to imperfect vs a big old mess. What has made me crazy about our industry and the "Modern" movement over the last few years is along the same lines, so with Ebony having blazed the trail, I'm feeling free to share my opinions. Not that it usually takes someone else to blaze that trail, mind you. (I've linked her blog post to her name, and I encourage you to read it at your leisure.)


Modern quilting: "Many people describe it as breaking-the-rules quilting, reflecting the personality and individual style of the quiltmaker. .......... quilts which may differ from traditional quilting through new approaches to fabric combinations, piecing, construction methods, and motif quilting."

Okay. Um, hello. I've been breaking the rules and making up new piecing techniques since 2005. And not ONE person cared enough to realize I was a modern quilter when modern quilting wasn't cool. Heck, I didn't even know it! Woo hoo! I'm ahead of my time! I bet by that definition just about every one of us is a "modern" quilter. But I bet if you are to ask Susie Q. Hottie, average American quilting hottie, what she thinks of as modern, she might also add negative space, squares, circles, and and heavy machine quilting. All of which, don't get me wrong, are great elements in a design and I love them individually and together. A quick search on Pinterest for modern quilts is going to give you every one of those things in spades. (Well, actually, spades is one shape I DIDN'T see in that search, but if you find one let me know.)

But here's the thing: How many times can we as the quilting community get excited about one more quilt featuring - wait for it - squares and rectangles surrounded by white or gray? How many more times are we going to accept a design in a magazine that is basically a log cabin done in "modern" fabrics? Or ooh and ahhh over a quilt that is mostly negative space with one crazy star or hexi strategically placed? Or clamour to buy a pattern by a well known designer that we could have figured out on our own because it really is just a nine patch or churn dash or any other public domain block featuring their new fabric line?

Before anyone thinks this is sour grapes on my part because I've apparently been modern for forever and am not raking in the fame over it, consider this:

It's baaaaa-aaaack.

I have repeatedly referred to this thing as "The stupidest quilt I have ever created" and I mean that wholeheartedly. It is fourteen strips of fabric sewn together, with a "modern" border made of squares. I put the top together in 4 hours while blind in one eye from a contact lens solution incident, proving that it takes literally NO talent or special skill to make, vision even being optional. It ended up on the cover of a major magazine, has been kitted by shops, has been a mystery class at least once, is the pattern more Susie Q. Hotties contact me to tell me they have made than any other, and has forced a spin off pattern which is my #2 best seller, all because it is "modern."

I love that this pattern has made people so happy. It makes me happy, too, because it is pretty and sweet and is accessible to every quilter no matter how newbie or advanced they may be. I love that it put me on the map a bit in this industry. And as much as I want to be able to just bask in that, I can't get beyond the fact that it is a ridiculous pattern, and one that I believe is popular only because of that "modern" element. And that feels a little bit like selling out, and that makes me die a little inside.

I've never been one to design for the masses; I design what I love and if the pattern catches on, I'm thrilled. I truly believe that there is a place in our industry for all kinds of designs, and as fun as it is to catch a wave of a fad like this quilt did for me, from here on out, I renew my vow to design from the heart, not from the whims of the industry, as I truly believe my designs are better when they are more me and less trend, and I hope a few of you might agree. I can't expect the rest of the industry to follow, but I know I will feel better about what I am putting out there.

I'm going to call it my "Post Modern" era.