I am excited for my latest pattern to be out in the wild. The Rosecity Quilt is a love note to our home - Portland, Oregon. This spring we bought a new-to-us 1925 Craftsman house, cementing our intent to put more solid roots down for our family. The house is providing a studio space for my work, a guest room for family and friends and eventually a finished basement for parties, sleepovers and family hangs. Purchasing the house woke up my love of interiors and decorating, a creative muscle I haven't worked much in the last few years. I really was inspired to create a pattern that feels like our house - modern but with good bones. Nothing too new age or fancy but something you can play with constantly and adjust to my needs. I love the cross feature of the quilt and the secondary hexagon design.
I actually had the general block idea of Rosecity in my head over four years ago but I was still pretty new to designing and had no real understanding of how to bring my vision to life. But, I looked back over the design and realized I could completely change up how the quilt is constructed while keeping the design the same. Here is my screenshot of the idea from 2017.
I originally thought I would create a large block first, then cut it into quarters, invert them and sew back together. Now, that would have been bias seam hell. So I am thankful I waited and was able to update the construction to fit a less insanely frustrating way to sew!
After I designed the Rosecity idea within Adobe Illustrator, I had to figure out how to best do it in real life. My husband, Luke, and I played around with angles and construction methods for about 2 hours. I just couldn't wrap my head around it at first but the finally it clicked! Here is my test block and the bad photo I snapped to show Alysson we did it!
For my test quilt, I wanted to use what I had on hand and luckily I have a good amount of half yard cuts (my fav cut to buy). The baby size requires (8) 1/2 yard cuts and that's it! I also wanted to work with a palette that is a bit different for me. A bit more earthly, floral and sort of vintage looking. Now, I was nervous about the pull so I decided to create a mock up of the idea in Illustrator before I went for it.
And wow! I LOVED it. A really fun, retro baby quilt. Nothing screaming IT IS A BABY QUILT and I liked that. Here is the fabric pull.
Part of testing my own pattern is seeing where things can get confusing and where I need to provide more explanation or details to a pattern. After cutting this fabric up, I realized, well shoot, there are a lot of pieces and they all go to specific parts of the quilt. If I don't make it incredibly clear what goes where, this will be baddddd. So for this one, I made very simple labels out of scrap paper and decided that I gotta make very detailed labels for every single cut moving forward.
Since this was my first time sewing together this quilt, it was so fun to see the quilt change block by block.
I tapped all the blocks up onto my wall to really see how it look all together before sewing them up. It is still so new and fun to me to have a room all my own for my work!
Pins are ESSENTIAL when sewing this quilt top all together. This is a big reason it is an intermediate pattern. There are several seams that have to line up in each block when sewing them together. Pin, pin, pin!
So after I finished this quilt, I was determined to take photos of it with sunflowers. I got the idea in my head and I couldn't let it go. Unfortunately, I didn't want to drive to a beautiful farm to take them but I didn't want to give up on my idea. We drove around Portland looking for homes/yards/streets with sunflowers (it is possible!) and after an hour, we found NOTHING. So instead, I said, let's just go to the plant nursery close by and see if we can find a spot there.
I found Sunflowers!! Even if they were potted, they were there. But, since we were at the nursery, I dragged my boys around for longer to find other shots. They are patient helpers. We found this really cool old tree that I told Luke to go hold the quilt in front of it but the only spot I could realistically get a shot from was inside a plant display.
But look at cute these couple shots turned out! #worthit
I made FIVE samples of Rosecity for the release - I just couldn't stop sewing these up and coming up with new ideas! I decided to split up all the work of longarm quilting between different longarmers. I sent this one off to Kaitlyn of Knot and Thread Design.
I knew I wanted some kind of retro curved design. And we found the Deco Fan panto and I was like YEP! That's it!!
When I got the quilts back and I went on a mega binding marathon, I had no idea what I wanted to use to bind this quilt. In the mock up, I had a bright yellow/lime color which was pretty but in real life it just didn't read right. I wanted to play up the vintage/retro/mix the patterns vibe. And I looked into my stash and the blue gingham just popped out to me. It was calling me. And I am so happy it did!
Will it surprise you if I told that this four hour photoshoot had upwards of 6 outfit changes? ha! I think this look is my favorite casual one though. And the sweater goes perfectly with this quilts colors.
Right before we wrapped for the day, Amy ripped some of the bouquets apart and took these fun shots of the quilt. I love these! I love her creative ideas.
Please tag me and share what you are making with the Rosecity Quilt Pattern. It is my favorite part of designing!
