Our newest quilt pattern is out now! Meet the Barrett Quilt!
The Barrett Quilt Pattern showcases two classic quilt blocks on repeat - Nine Patch and Snowball. By focusing on color placement, adding a fun Flying Geese Border, and the instructions to use your stash if desired, this pattern gives a modern take on a classic design.
The pattern highlights the relationship between minimal colors with high and low contrast options. You can use all yardage, all scraps, some FQs, or a combination of your own choosing! This pattern is full of scrap charts to help keep you organized!
We have included six sizes from Baby to King with two main design styles - Five Color and Two Color. Within each design style, you get to choose if you want to use all yardage, all scraps or a combination of your own!
We've made five Barrett Quilts for this launch and I will be deep diving into all 5 eventually but for now, let's do some general info on this design and inspiration!
The Nine Patch and Snowball combination is classic. I am not reinventing the wheel here, but one thing I have always felt was missing was a pattern that really focused on a minimal color palette. I think one of the most beautiful parts of using classic quilt blocks is the minimalism it can create when we focus on only a few colors at one time. Note: NOT only a few fabrics, a few colors.
The Barrett Pattern has a section with Color Tips and Suggestions where I explain more of my design theory on how to use color in this quilt. You can take it or leave it for what it is but I thought it would be helpful to include so you can understand how I made my samples look the way I did.
I love being able to sew scrappy and with my stash but I typically gravitate towards doing that when I can focus my colors. Instead of throwing every color and fabric at the design wall, I like to throw A LOT of ONE color and play with different tones, depths, warmths, coolness, prints, etc. And the Barrett pattern felt like the best place to highlight this enjoyment.
I started playing with an updated take on this classic design back in May of 2024. I really admire vintage quilts and I always love to find a way to put my spin on it. I love the combination of nine patch and snowball, especially in two colors, but I didn't like how the quilts just visually ended. I felt like I wanted to see more come off of the edges. I tried just adding a solid border and it felt too blah.
That is when I decided I wanted to try a flying geese border that could fade to the edges or frame the edges. I also tried a new color way that was less high contrast.
I liked this idea but I didn't enjoy how the blue border dominated the quilt visually now that the border was larger and the same color of the bigger snowball inside the quilt. The peach colors felt too inferior.
So next I tried making the outer most border a different color. It was a little better but the outer border scale still felt too big. So next up, I played with the idea of the outer most border being a different color than the inside part of the flying geese.
I went back to the original colors and now the only two parts of the pattern that had the same color were the outer flying geese and the 4 part of the nine patch and the corners of the snowball. I loved where this was headed but I couldn't wrap my head around only four colors in a quilt top. Four felt too clean. It felt like all the colors would compete too much and the dominance of one over the other would be a constant issue.
Tension is obvious when you use only 2 colors, that's the point. It is simple. But when you add more than that, it starts to bring more variety but also more possible problems. Four felt like two couples fighting with each other.
So this is when I decided that I wanted there to be 5 colors - 2 in the nine patch and snowball portion - and 3 in the flying geese border portion.
I felt good about this idea back in May of 2024 but I didn't feel ready to jump into it. I did make a few more mock ups for other possible ideas and sizes.
So this is where I left it for over a year. Just screenshots and a file on my computer. Instead of working on this guy, I designed and wrote - Meadow Star, Plot Twist and Petal Patch. After all of those launches and a big season of change for my business and myself, I felt called back to this design.
I craved simplicity. I craved classics. I craved using my stash. So I dove back in in August of 2025 and picked up where I left off. I made a new mock up, confirmed how I wanted to sew (chain piecing if I could) and then did some basic math to try my first sample. Here is the mock up of the idea below.
And here is how this sample turned out (I will write a whole detailed blogpost soon):
Having made this quilt with entirely my stash, I KNEW this would for sure be my next official Then Came June pattern. It was time to write it, confirm sizes, design styles, material requirements and figure out my samples.
There were my original four ideas I had for our cover quilt and polled the girls (Alysson and Christy) and they said the bottom left coral one felt the most TCJ and the bottom right one felt like it must be made but maybe not for the cover.
So now that I had one scrappy sample made - the green one above - I now had the plan for the cover quilt (coral one above) and another scrappy sample - the black and blue. Sneak peek:
The Green Scrappy sample showed four out of the five colors scrappy (the outer most border is yardage). The Cover sample would be all yardage. The Black and Blue mock up would be 100% scrappy. So for our last two samples, I wanted to be sure to highlight a couple other ideas.
This soft cream and peach sample I wanted to show a more low contrast idea AND a combination of using yardage and scraps in a single quilt. Fabric A (the large snowball and 5 part of the nine patch) is made of cream yardage. Fabric B (the peach color of the snowball and nine patch) is made from all stash fabrics. Fabric C (the outer points of the flying geese) are made from stash light pinks. Fabric D (the inside of the geese) is a solid blush pink and Fabric E is made from a solid marbled metallic cream print. Sneak Peek:
So my final sample I needed to make the Two Color option and I wanted to use all solid yardage.
Sneak Peek:
But remember at this stage in the design game, I had only sewn ONE actual sample. So to be sure I liked how all the samples would possibly look together, I put them all together and BAM. It was gold. Also, you may notice a sixth sample I haven't yet talked about - wink wink.
This pattern is so so fun to sew and I can't wait to keep making more. And I have made up a bunch of inspiration mock ups to get your ideas flowing. We also have printable coloring pages available. AND Barrett is up on Prequilt for those who love to play digitally before diving in!
Here are a few more sneak peeks of our samples and some more mock ups!
