Unwind

 Over the next few days I'm going to go into detail about each new quilt.  First up is Unwind!

Unwind!

Unwind was one of the first idea I came up with once I started sketching ideas of what to make using the Lazy Angle Ruler.  I knew I wanted to make a skinny star block and offset the block placement.  My first sketch had solid backgrounds around the stars and was kinda boring.  I had a lightbulb moment and thought... what about making a strip set first... and this was the result of that lightbulb!
Here is the back cover
In includes all of the fabric requirements for 5 sizes!

I used a roll up Pick a Bunch by Nancy Mims to create this quilt.  Often patterns will list the # of pre-cut bundles you need and not the QTY of strips or squares.  Then you might find out you needed 45 and you really didn't have to buy that second pre-cut... you could have bought more of your backing or binding fabrics or added from your stash.  Because this bugs me as a shopper I decided not to do it that way on my patterns!  If you look closely above you'll see that I list the # of strips you'll need so that you can decide how best you want to purchase your fabric.

I decided to use a blue for the binding.  All of the fabric for the quilt top, binding and backing are organic.  Robert Kaufman has a great selection of Pure Organic solids to go with their organic prints.

I got lots of great comments yesterday on twitter about my cover photography.  Yes I took all of the photos myself! {Of course except for the one I'm in... but more on that when I post about Carnival.}

I love taking the photos myself but it can be quite a process.  Below are a bunch of "outtakes" from the multiple photo shoots I did for this quilt.

This almost ended up on the cover.  I was happy with the lighting on the quilt but I didn't like that you didn't see much of the binding or the back at all.

The wind was not being my friend at this moment... but I decided to share the photo with you so that you could see more of the pieced back.

I really liked the lighting here... but I didn't like the random straw from the garden that popped up at the bottom & decided that seeing one star wasn't enough of a view of the quilt design.

This photo is from one of the first photo shoots.
I liked the wood in the background but the lighting on the quilt was too harsh.

At first I planned on showing the entire quilt...
This photo didn't work because of bad lighting... and the quilt didn't have any "life" just hanging there.

Sometimes the wind is my enemy in photo shoots...
other times a nice soft breeze can give a quilt some life

I love this photo...
I like the way that the 4 stars form a vertical line

A similar version of this photo ended up on the back of the pattern.

While it doesn't show the full quilt design it really highlights the amazing quilting that Angela did.  I really like how she used organic curvy shapes in the colors and straight structured ones in the stars.

I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about Unwind!

noteThe patterns are off at the printer now and will be available to ship on March 16th.


© Blog post written by Julie Herman
For more information visit http://www.jaybirdquilts.com/