I have a new design in Quiltmaker Magazine’s July/August 2015 issue. The folks at Quiltmaker named the design a Hero’s Homecoming. I thought this was a great name for the quilt as shown in the magazine as it’s a Red, White & Blue quilt. Before that I was calling it Stormy Sea because of how the final design resembles a Storm at Sea quilt design. The funny thing is that I wasn’t even thinking of Storm at Sea while designing this. It was only after I decided upon the final value shading that I noticed. Once again, Janice Roy of Bridgeport, Connecticut did the beautiful quilting. Click on the underlined text for links to the magazine issue and quilt kit featuring this design.
This design started the way most of mine do; it came to me as I doodled while waiting for an appointment. I can’t stress enough how important it is to carry a sketch book with you everywhere you go. You never know when inspiration will catch up to you. I started by filing in the squares on the graph paper to create an interesting pattern. For me, the pattern started out looking a bit like a stylized dogwood blossom. After sketching out a couple of repeats I looked for the base unit and marked with a couple of lines. Then I sketched it in the corner for reference.
After I drafted the design into my Electric Quilt (EQ) program I colored it using only grey and black values for contrast. I next tried rotating the block in different ways to see what the design would look like. I decided I liked the original sketch best. After returning to the original version I toyed with adding different values and the placement of the values. Once I had the values and their placement decided I swapped the grey tones for a color.
Next I added borders to the blocks that supported the scale of the design. Then I went looking through my EQ Stash files for a fun collection to audition in this design. The collection that caught my eye was one from McKenna Ryan called Acres to Go. In my EQ program I sorted the fabrics in the collection by value and replaced the grey values with the fabrics. I tweaked the fabrics and their placements until I had a look that was pleasing to me. I think this design would look great in any type of fabric. If you make one please send me the images and I’ll post it on my web site.
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