In past years we have gone with more traditional patterns but not so tradition fabrics. Brights & batik fabrics are our fabrics of choice, and the tickets have always sold well. This year however we wanted to try something a bit less traditional so set out to try and find some inspiration for a new pattern. I had seen a few quilts on Instagram made from Half Square Triangle blocks that i thought would work well with the batik fat quarters that already purchased. I was pretty sure i could come up with a quilt without directions but i was lucky enough to find a free pattern online that was very very close to what i wanted to do.
Half Square Triangle Fun is a free downloadable pattern from Connecting Threads & was designed by Mari Martin. I used her basic direction on size of blocks and so on. I wanted to make the quilt larger than the original pattern so i used 24 Fat Quarters and 4 yards of a background fabric to enough blocks. I had a few left over that i will make a throw pillow with later on. When it came time to layout the quilt on the design wall things took a little bit of a turn!
i had in my head that i wanted the quilt to look almost exactly like the photo in the pattern only off center by a few rows. I started the layout high up on the design wall and i had to stand on a chair to reach it. I didn't look at the pattern photo but i knew i had it perfectly right... WRONG! I twisted on block the wrong direction and didn't even notice until i had over half of the quilt laid out on the wall! But i liked it, actually i loved the off kilter look way better than the symmetrical look of the original pattern so i stuck with it!
When it came time for quilting i picked out two different threads to blend in as much as possible. I used both Essential Pro and Superior Lava threads. The Pro thread went for the Wishbone design in the background and the Lava was used on the Batik fabrics with a simple" U Turn" quilting design.
Tickets went on sale this week, keep your fingers crossed that it sells lots of tickets!
