a New Parade is coming soon!

Today I get to start a new quilt in bright, saturated colors. Know why? Because I’m gearing up for a pattern release and sew-along this June! Yay!

You weighed in with requests for the Economy Star Parade quilt pattern, so I’m going to oblige with a complete pattern release next week. The pattern will have all the details you need to sew this 72” square quilt in a convenient PDF format.

In addition, I’ll be posting a free, beginner-friendly tutorial for an 8” economy block - essentially a brief excerpt from the pattern. This way I can add to the free online resources that so many of us used to get started with quilting. I’m excited for what’s ahead! More details about the June sew-along and pattern release next week!

Meanwhile, how do you like my fabric pull? I’m trying to channel a summer vibe, despite the unusually cool spring weather. I love bright, saturated colors in summer. This pull was inspired in part by my Clashy Bright mosaic contest, so many moons ago. If you’re ever feeling stumped for color palettes, you can always navigate through Inspiration/Color in my main menu to find the mosaic contest archives. Lots of good ideas there!

My last Parade quilt was big on low volume fabrics in springy shades and featured those yellow stars. This new one will be much more vibrant, due to saturated prints, few low volumes and the addition of some solids. The parade stars will alternate between black and dark gray. This dark contrast should really intensify the surrounding colors.

How did I create this mix of fabrics? First I browsed my stash, looking for any intense prints. Generally these are not prints with a light colored or dark colored background. When the background itself is a bright, full-bodied color that really makes the difference. Still, the big pile of fabrics I amassed on my work table didn’t look quite right, so next I made a second round of selections, this time pulling from the fabric pile. That did it!

Here are some of the fabrics that I eliminated during the second selection round. Those at top left are too pastel. Those at top right are too dusty. The bottom section is bright, saturated pink fabrics. These fit my original criteria, but during the second selection phase I realized that I didn’t want so much pink in the mix.

Now the super fun part! Before I let myself loose cutting, I decided to mock up a set of blocks. Oh my gosh, yes, yes, yes! I’m loving what I see here.

Time to get busy cutting and sewing and taking some process photographs for the new pattern!