Optical Illusions Quilt Book!!

I am very excited to announced that I am published in a book! About a year ago I had the opportunity to submit a quilt design for an optical illusions book Kansas City Star Quilts was putting together (thanks Shea for letting me know about this project!). This was the first time I had created a quilt design for a specific project, and it was hard! It took me awhile to figure out what my design should be, but in the end, I am happy with the results. And KCSQ was so easy to work with, which was helpful for a newbie like me.

There are many other awesome quilts in this book too, some of which I'm hoping to get a chance to try out (I'll have to add it to my long list of quilt to-do projects). And, 7 of the 9 designers featured are also part of the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild! I think that's pretty awesome, and it makes me very proud to be a member of our guild:)

Above is the design as I submitted it. You can see that the block is very versatile, so you can play around with the direction of your blocks, and you'll get different effects. It works great in different sizes too. The 80" x 80" (16 blocks) is a great large lap quilt, and the 40" x 40" (4 blocks) works great as a baby or wall quilt. You can see the smaller quilt in the photo below.

If you make this quilt, I would love to see it! When I showed my mom the design, she was not excited about all the pieces, but I hope you aren't dissuaded by that! If you like triangles and matching points like I do, than you will love this quilt. It has a lot of impact when it's all sewn together, so it will be worth it! You can get your copy of the book here.

Octagon Baby Quilt

My friend just had her second child, a boy! Designing quilts for a second baby is kind of difficult. Do you do something different, but what if one looks or seems more superior? I was a second child (ended up being a middle child) so I have very strong feelings about further children not getting screwed (my sister always seemed to get the better versions of everything).

So I decided the best thing was to do something similar, but different (you can see her daughter’s quilt here). I got the color palette from my friend and decided on an octagon for the shape. I used the same quilting as before, and used flannel on the back. I can’t wait to see her baby boy on his new quilt!