Back in February of 2021, I hosted a Campfire Glow SAL. Well, since it has almost been a year since this SAL, I thought it was high time to start sharing the process and finished quilt here.
With any sew along quilt, I take SO MANY PHOTOS because I am walking a group of people along with the quilt making process step by step. So buckle up friends!
The Campfire Glow Quilt Pattern provides three sizes, baby, throw and twin. For the SAL, we made the throw size which finishes at 54" x 66".
Here is the mock up I made to get the general color idea I was going for and then I went to my stash to see what I had on hand.
For my quilt, I wanted to dive into my stash so I made the Stash Buster version. I was able to use a combination of fat quarters, quarter yards, and jelly strips, etc. The awesome thing about Campfire Glow, is I provide you a ton of charts of what you need for materials and it doesn't matter how you get there with the start fabric cuts as long as they are a certain width and length. So, I just pulled the colors I wanted from my stash and started playing around with my idea.
The Campfire Glow pattern is made up of 2 classic quilt blocks - the 9 patch and the sawtooth star. I modernized the 9 patch by not making them have a "reverse" patch. So instead, in Campfire Glow, you only have 2 different 9 patch blocks and the color placement stays the same throughout the whole quilt.
So my main two 9 patch blocks were a combination of a yellow and peach 9 patch and a black and grey 9 patch. Then I choose this gorgeous collection of blue fabrics to be all the star backgrounds and then this deep gold and purple/blue floral print as the stars themselves.
In the above photo you can see the color families slightly separated out. Fabric A - yellows, Fabric B - peaches, Fabric C - greys, Fabric D - blacks and then the star fabrics on the far right.
Once I had my fabric picked, then it was time to start building my SAL and how I would break this make down into 6 weeks. The schedule ended up going as follows:
Week 1 - planning your quilt top (I gave lots of inspiration in this week)
Week 2 - fabric cutting (get all of your fabric cut)
Week 3 - Make A Blocks (the 1st set of 9 patches)
Week 4 - Make B Blocks (the 2nd set of 9 patches)
Week 5 - Make Stars
Week 6 - Sew it all together!
I thought I would share my make according to the schedule so it is easy to follow along if you end up wanting to make your own Campfire Glow quilt. This is not as in depth as the actual SAL newsletters that went along with the SAL in real time but it gives you some solid extra information to use along with the pattern!
Week 1 - Planning your Quilt Top!
Campfire Glow provides two different design options - Modern Solid and Stash Buster. Both options follow the same basic principles of having 4 main colors and then the stars. So the stash buster one (like mine in this post) just allows for a variety of fabric to be used within each color family.
Here were a bunch of mock ups I made to give people different ideas for this quilt pattern. Some are bold, some are more contrasted, some are more muted. Take your pick!
See! The options are endless and I find that so thrilling as a pattern designer. Once you have picked your color palette and gotten your fabrics together, you move onto Week 2.
Week 2 - Cut the Fabric
The Campfire Glow Pattern provides a lot of charts so it is easy to follow along at each step of the process. If you make a Modern Solid version then there are specific cutting instructions in the pattern since you will be starting from yardage for your 9 patches. If you make the Stash Buster version, I provide diagrams of how to cut what you need from different starting fabrics - Fat Eights, Fat Quarters, 1/4 yards and Jelly Strips.
So all of my 9 patch strips have been cut and now it's time to move onto the sawtooth star fabric cuts needed - all squares!
Once all of your fabric is cut out, it's time to move onto sewing!
Week 3 - Make all A Blocks (1st set of 9 patches)
Let me start this section off by saying I LOVE CHAIN PIECING. I really really do. I love the ease of sewing strips to strips, ironing and then cutting sections down to POOF magically sew them back together. That is how these 9 patches are made!
Look at those gorgeous yellow and peach 9 patches - all happy and scrappy!
Week 4 - Make all B Blocks (the 2nd set of 9 patches)
Now, let's do the same thing as above but with the grey and black fabrics. One, two, three.... CHAIN PIECE!
Okay, let's take a moment to stare at this metallic sparkle of Kona Sheen fabric.
I never grew out of loving sparkles.
Now that A and B Blocks are done, let's take a gander at them side by side. You can start to see the quilt come together now and oooooo its exciting!
Week 5 - Make the Star Blocks
All the Star blocks are assembled the same way so this can also be a great section to chain piece in. There are a good amount of flying geese (4 per star) so I liked to break it down to sewing maybe 4 stars at a time. It was less overwhelming this way as there are 16 stars total for throw size.
And just like that - we have all of our blocks finished and ready to be sewn together. This next set of photos are some of my favorite from this whole process.
So fun to see all of them come together. Now onto the last part of this quilt top - sewing it all together!
Week 6 - Sew it all together!
Now that all of our pieces are ready, stack them up and start laying them out according to the diagram in the pattern.
No matter what way you look at this quilt from, it looks consistent and yet different from every angle. I love that.
Once all the blocks are laid out, then you will stack them according to their layout, row by row. You sew each row together and don't press any seams until they are all sewn. The rows are then pressed opposite directions so the seams nest and the quilt top comes together easily!
And suddenly, we have a quilt top!
We finished this quilt top right before we moved homes. It was fun to snap a few of these outside our old house that we had just freshly painted a blue.
The Cherry Blossoms were just starting to bloom here in Portland, OR when I finished this quilt top. We headed down toward the river and snapped some photos!
And now, if you are like me, you fold up this quilt and forget about finishing it for at least six months.
So six months later and in a new house, I finally sent this quilt off to Kaitlyn to get it quilted! We chose a really fun panto called Firework Clam by Karlee Porter.
I snapped a few photos of adding the binding to the quilt top. I loved this pop of pink/purple that kinda pulls out the same color in the golden star floral fabric I used.
During my Rosecity photoshoot in September of last year, I also had this finished quilt to photograph. I really love how this quilt turned out. Now to decide what do with it? That is always my last question. Do I keep it? Do I sell it? Do I give it to a store to help promote the pattern?
The pops of blue and purple really make me happy. This quilt sort of reminds me of a "search and find" quilt. Flowers, stars, strips, metallics, speckles and little splatter fabrics.
I jumped into a few of these photos and as luck turned out, I got a few new headshots and my newest profile picture on Instagram.
Now let's look at some of the quilting upclose.
I love the flame aspect of this pantograph - Campfire Glow... Firework Calm... perfect combination!
One of the last photos we snapped with this quilt was a photo of the the whole team - myself, my assistant and friend Alysson and my husband Luke.
