Oh baby!! I've got a new pattern for you today! Meet our latest design called Petal Patch!
The Petal Patch Quilt Pattern is available now! This pattern is our first flower design and it’s written to be Fat Quarter and stash friendly. Here are some Petal Patch facts:
- Petal Patch is an Advanced Beginner pattern that requires basic knowledge of quilting terms and accurate 1/4” seam allowances.
- Includes four sizes - Baby to Bed.
- You can make your petal and leaf sections solid or mixed within each set of material requirements.
- The binding can be made scrappy from the cutting remnants of the Petal Fabric FQs.
- Individual Coloring pages and inspiration mocks up available in the pattern.
- Lots of Scrap Charts included to help stay organized while using your stash!
Before I get into the first sample we made for this pattern, let's chat my design ideas! I have always loved flower quilt blocks but never felt the calling to make one. I appreciate geometric designs and the way color can make secondary designs in quilts - it is mostly what I design in general. But, I have always admired quilt patterns that reference real life tangible objects and turn them into blocks. And I finally felt it was time to find a way to create my own flower block.
My top priority was to create a block that could use FQs and stash/scraps. FQs are my favorite precut and I also feel the most free when I am sewing my stash so I wanted this pattern to seamlessly work with both wants.
For the actual style of flower, I didn't want to reference a specific type of flower like a tulip or rose. I wanted it to be reflective of a flower but not directly specific to one kind. And I also wanted there to be a stem and floating leaves. I do enjoy when there is a little bit of negative space in a block to let the fabrics stand alone.
I made a few mock ups with ideas - solid leaves and petals, blocks alternating up and down but just getting the general feel for the idea.
I hadn't fully figured out the exact size of the 16 patches for the center, the petals and the leaves but the general idea I was loving. So at this point, I started making a test block. It took me a couple tries to figure out the right scale for the petals and it took me like 3 days to figure out the angles I wanted for the leaves. And we finally landed on this cutie patootie!
And making this block with my scraps fully confirmed my commitment to make sure the pattern was written to include scrap/stash charts. It is just so so fun.
Now that I knew I wanted to turn this idea into a pattern, I had to decide what my first sample would be. I wanted an option for the flowers and leaf sections to be made with a single fabric (solid petal and solid leaves) but I also knew I wanted to make sure we could make a scrappy looking flower and leaf but using FQs. That is my favorite combo - using FQs but mixing up all the cuts and making it look scrappy. So I decided, let's do the scrappy looking quilt first and be sure my math works and my idea works.
We had just gotten in a ton of new fabric and I decided to use what we had on hand and I realized I had some gorgeous low volume new prints. I couldn't NOT use them when I stacked them all together.
You choose your petal and leaf fabrics independently from each other. So now I knew I would use 12 low volume prints for the petals and make "white" flowers and it was time to pick the 6 fabrics I wanted for the leaves. Ya'll, this took me like two hours of constant debate with both Christy and Alysson. We went in so many circles but I landed on these six fabrics in a warm burnt orange color palette. I thought it was an unexpected and fun choice and there are lots of burnt orange/reds in the prints of the petals too.
Then we moved onto the 16 patch centers of each flower. We tested yellows and blues and purples but we landed on this low contrast but bright combo of Glow and Azalea from Ruby and Bee Solids.
I thought the pink color ties into the pinks in the petal fabric and the more coral color ties into the warmer oranges of the leaves. A perfect nod to both other sets of fabrics. The last puzzle piece was to choose the background fabric. This took even longer than the leaf fabric debate. I really could not decide the vibes I wanted. We tested out darker reds and blues for a moody deep palette. Then we tested out light pink and purples for a softer feel. None of them felt right until I pulled this small 1/8" Carolina Gingham in Periwinkle from Robert Kaufman. The soft blue felt like a nice additional color to add to our white flowers and orange leaves without it being too distracting. It felt like it supported the other choices instead of drawing too much attention.
I mean, HELLO YOU ARE GORGEOUS.
And now we cut it all up!
When making the Flower section and Leaf Section mixed (to look scrappy), you will be sewing all of your individual petal and leaves FIRST before assembling them into blocks. And before starting on any of those, I worked on making my 16 patch centers.
Once my 16 patch Flower Centers were finished, I moved onto batch sewing all of my petals. You will make three different types of petals and they all need to be made before turning them into block piles to make into flowers.
We loved using Diagonal Seam Tape when making this pattern. There is a lot of snowballing in this design. Snowballing is a technique where you sew a smaller square onto a corner diagonally, then trim away from the sewn line and press the new added fabric open to refinish the corner. Because these squares of fabric are smaller, diagonal seam tape is amazing because we didn't have to mark the backside of the square to keep the seam straight. Instead we add the diagonal seam tape to the front of our sewing machine, lining up the red line with our machine needle. Then you use the red line as the guide for the corner points of your fabrics and boom, straight line.
Here are all of our petals ready and finished!
It's really fun to see all the small prints come together and see how the blue gingham really adds this calming consistent presence to the quilt. And now that they were all ready to go, it was time to mix them up into their individual block piles to be turned into Flower blocks!
Here is one block laid out before being sewn together. I just tried to keep any repeating fabrics from touching each other between the petal and the center unit.
The blocks come together rather quickly at this stage and before I knew it, we had all 12 flowers done!
Next up, it was time to chain-piece and batch sew all the leaves like we did with the flower petals.
Now that the Flower and Leaves are finished, it's time to all the sashing and turn them into the finished Petal Patch blocks!
Sewing this quilt together was incredibly satisfying and it made me really excited to sit down and write it.
We stepped outside and snapped some photos outside of this quilt top. I use to drive all around Portland to find cool walls and areas to photograph finished tops and quilts but I stopped doing that when we moved into the studio. The light we get in here is so perfect and fun. But, sometimes I miss the outside photos too.
We sent this one off quickly to Emily of So Sunny Quilts because we decided last minute to debut this new pattern and a couple samples at H&H Americas in early May. I had about 3 weeks to make 2 quilts, write the pattern, finish the quilts and get them done to take with us to Chicago. H&H Americas is an industry trade show that focuses on craft, textures and fiber businesses. It was a fun networking event and great place to soft launch our new design!
Okay, back to the quilt! I wanted a whimsical all over pantograph design to lean into the scrappy vibes. We landed on a newer pantograph design called Honey, Honey by Sew Shabby Quilting.
It's a really cute design that has a rainbow and petals and flowers and little circles. It's very playful. We bound this quilt in a gorgeous plaid from Ruby Star Society from Ooh Lucky Lucky and backed it in a wide back in hot pink.
We used a medium pink thread and it pops just enough in person you can see it well and it's pretty. But it's not loud enough to be distracting which I am happy about.
I am always picking loose threads off of this finished quilts. It seems no matter how many we pick off, we find more. I think threads just continue to grow on the quilts.
You can see the quilting pantograph better on the backside of the quilt. It's so fun!! And we used an Everett Star Quilt Block Label on this quilt because the colors match perfectly.
The Petal Patch Pattern is one I am very proud of and so excited to see out in the world. I can't wait to see what people think up with it and create. It's the best part of designing patterns is to see other people's creativity at work!
I'll be back soon with the other two samples we made - the Cover Petal Patch and the Retro Petal Patch! Stay tuned!