Let Freedom Ring

About a year ago, I started working with The Quilted Cow and their Wednesday night Facebook Live sales. I’ve sold patterns, hosted mysteries, and had lots of fun working with them. Jennifer, one of the owners, is absolutely fantastic to work with.

About nine months ago, she sent an e-mail saying, “call me.” As someone with anxiety, this is one of the scariest messages to get. It’s hilarious to look back now at how worried I was.

It was super secret at the time, but her shop had been selected to appear as one of Quilt Sampler’s top shops in their Spring/Summer 2020 issue. They had to design a quilt for the magazine and she wanted to know if I would be interested in designing for them. I don’t think I hesitated for a second before I said, “Yes!”

She was working with Wilmington Prints and wanted to use one of their future collections for the quilt. Side note: I never realized how tricky it can be to get the timing of magazine quilts right. Fabric companies and publishers work on different timelines, so there was some finger crossing, breath holding, and a lot of frantic shipment tracking, but it all worked out in the end. The collection used for this quilt is called “Summertime” and it’s available in stores now.

This quilt goes together quickly using strip piecing or chain piecing for the blocks. The longest part for me was cutting the corner squares for the sashings. There’s a lot of them, but they can be quickly pieced using one of the three methods I describe here.

I quilted this quilt with an open feather on my longarm.

I absolutely loved working with these fabrics, Wilmington Prints, The Quilted Cow, and the staff at Quilt Sampler magazine. There are still a few kits available from The Quilted Cow but they’re going fast.