The Garden Glow Quilt is finally available! You can grab the pattern here!
When I was designing what my next pattern would look like, I found myself having a hard time committing to a design. I worked myself into a panic with all of this pressure on this release, because I wanted this quilt pattern to be perfect and impactful to the quilt world. When I ran into a design roadblock, I reached out to the people whose opinion really mattered to me - my Instagram followers!
I asked everyone on Instagram which mood board spoke to them the most. Each mood board I provided gave a little insight into the quilt designs without actually revealing the design itself. There was an OVERWHELMING amount of votes for the Garden Glow mood board. I must admit, I was absolutely thrilled with this choice!
I still might pursue the other two options in the future, so if you were someone who voted for one of those options, they aren’t off the table just yet!
The Fabric
When planning the Garden Glow cover quilt, I inadvertently fell in love with the new Suzy Quilts Pure Solids. I knew that they were not shipping out to shops until August, but I thought that Art Gallery Fabrics would have some on hand for me to use for the cover. I was wrong… Panic started all over again! I actually mocked up a new cover quilt with similar colors as a back-up.
If you’re wanting to make that version, Linli over at Lamb and Loom has a quilt kit for that version available now!
Okay, so there I was rushing around to find the alternate cover quilt fabrics when one of my testers, Amanda, reached out to Suzy to see if she by chance had some of the solids for us to use. And what do you know, she did! Both Suzy and Amanda totally saved the day and we were back on track!
The Sewing
Amanda from @hidden.grove.quilts was the fabulous maker that sewed up this sample for me. If you don’t know who Amanda is, she is this amazing quilting genie that gets quilts finished in record time!! Plus, she takes some awesome progress photos too! She got started right away. It was so fun to see the pictures rolling in!
She was sewing up the yardage version of the Garden Glow pattern and assembling the Layout 1 option. In case you haven’t seen it, Garden Glow has 2 layout options and comes with yardage and fat quarter versions as well!
Amanda made use of the cutting labels I have available in the Garden Glow quilt pattern. This really helps keep everything sorted and organized when working through the sewing process. The labels in the picture are a little different than the final version. Not only was Amanda the maker of the cover quilt, but she was also fulfilling the role of tester too!
This Garden Glow quilt pattern is full of lots of skill-building piecing techniques, including the 4 at a time flying geese seen in the picture above. I love this method so much, because it’s quick and reduces fabric waste! You can find other techniques like economy blocks, snowballed corners, and 2 at a time half rectangle triangles.
I love seeing these blocks come together! It’s like all of the pieces to a puzzle fitting together perfectly. The two blocks of Garden Glow are very similar to each other, but different enough to provide some variance throughout.
The navy and cream half rectangle triangles (HRTs) surrounding the center pieces of the blocks create this really awesome starry secondary design when you put all of them together.
And we can’t forget the popular quilt swirl picture - the best swirl of colors!
The Quilting
The quilting was done by the amazing Katie of Katie’s Quilting Co. She got this quilted up so fast that these were the only progress photos her and Amanda were able to take. I’m not kidding, they both got this thing done so fast. I’m still unsure how they were even able to do it. Such good work!!
The quilt pantograph that they went with is called Sashiko (designed by Karen Thompson). I love the starry motifs in this pantograph that tie in the stars from the pattern!
The Cover
A huge thank you to Suzy, Amanda, and Katie for coming together and allowing me to have the cover quilt of my dreams! I’m so happy with how this quilt turned out!!
Pattern: Garden Glow now available in my shop!
Maker: Amanda Picard of Hidden Grove Quilts
Quilter: Katie Malan of Katie’s Quilting Co. using the Sashiko pantograph
Fabric: Art Gallery Fabric Pure Solids Signature Suzy Quilts Collection provided by Suzy Quilts and Soft Wulfenite from the Prisma Elements fabric collection Love this!!
