I love making resolutions. A goal-setter by nature, resolutions feel like opportunities and, though I have plenty of shortcomings, I usually stick to the bulk of them.
So, I eagerly embraced Gretchen Rubin’s idea of making 20 resolutions for 2020 and included releasing a PDF pattern per month on that list. This might seem like a big goal to tackle, but, having been a pattern designer and writer for many years, I have a small library of patterns that I wrote and illustrated for publication and, according to contracts, now belong exclusively to me.
My hope in re-designing and updating these patterns is to make them part of my collection rather than have them live separately somewhere else.
My first PDF pattern and it’s not lost on me that today is last day of January, but, hey, it’s STILL January, is Four Triangle Ombre.
The top version was originally featured in Modern Patchwork Magazine about 3 years ago and has since been exhibited at QuiltCon in 2019. The bottom and smaller version was created almost on a lark out of leftovers from my Medusa 2.0 quilt.
What really got my butt in gear was the fact that I’ll be teaching this design at QuiltCon at the end of February and wanted to offer paper patterns to my students as well as in my booth. That takes a few weeks of lead time, so finished by January it needed to be.
This design combines so many loves for me: simple design both in concept and execution, creating movement through changing values, and using as much or all of the fabric purchased for a given project. That last love may seem out of place, so practical compared to the other more aesthetic-based ones, but it has become a core value in my making practice.
And another of my 20 for 20 resolutions.
More about that later. Today is about this pattern release. Available as a PDF, the fully illustrated pattern includes step-by-step directions for making this design as shown in the top image or in the colors and to the size of your choosing. I’ve included a piecing diagram and a coloring page, crucial for planning your fabric choices.
If you’re interested in this pattern and want to see the finished quilts in person, come by my booth at QuiltCon in Austin, Texas February 20-23.
If you’re a fabric or quilt store looking for paper patterns or a guild interested in having me teach this class, feel free to email me here: