Eads Quilt Pattern and Quilt Along.

My Eads quilt pattern is one of my newbies. I showed it at Quilt Market in St Louis, and I’m excited to share it with you here now. It’s a lot of fun, but I’m also biased, because I don’t make things that aren’t fun.

I’d been wanting to do a big, graphic, paper-pieced project for a while now, and this spring presented a great opportunity. Eads is a project where lots of fabric and color can play together in new and interesting ways–my favorite type of project.

After nailing down the design, I pulled fabric from many places–friedlander, friedlander lawn, euclid, kona cotton, essex linen… I wanted a big mix of prints, solids and textures to play with and to use to highlight the design in a variety of ways.

(By the way, Robert Kaufman put together a little kit, which you could ask your local shop about. Otherwise, all of the fabrics are also listed here.)

The design works with fat quarters, which makes the fabric gathering pretty easy. After that, the instructions work from strips which then makes it easy to start mapping out your blocks.

I love this way of working–first gathering a bunch of inspiring pieces, breaking them down into smaller chunks, and then having the ability to react along the way as you work through the project. I find this to be a massively engaging, creative process and big reason why projects like this are so much fun. Grab your fabric, start making some blocks, throw them up on the design wall, assess, make more blocks and continue to grow your composition.

In the end, my project doesn’t follow a perfect color gradation–although that could be a lovely path to take! But instead, I liked finding new and different relationships between the colors and shapes as I worked. By just shuffling around some fabric, I discovered new color friendships and new ways to expose or conceal the motif itself. So much fun.

I’m often asked about overcoming creative blocks, and this project is a perfect example of how I keep myself creatively charged. My wheels were turning so much while making this guy, that I couldn’t help but think about other ways to explore the project, things to do with fabric and other things to make in general. I find that creative satisfaction in one place can overflow into many others.

I had such a good time making this project, that I couldn’t help but think about other versions to make while I was making it–always a good sign in my book. Because of that, I thought it’d be fun to do a little quilt along this summer. You interested in joining me?

The plan is to keep it mostly informal, but I do have a structure in mind that I’ll at least be holding myself to. To make this size, which is a good-sized throw, there are 120 blocks, which at 12 weeks (3 months) is 10 blocks a week. I think that 10 blocks will be a perfect amount of creative cardio to schedule in each week. There are also 48 fabrics in this version, which breaks down to 4 fabrics/week if you want to set goals for that too. Personally, I’m not sure I’ll partake in that way…but it’s a helpful number to consider.

The quilt along will start next week, June 15. Expect weekly blog posts, including the first next week to kick things off. You can also follow along on my Instagram for weekly visuals, as well as in my newsletter (see “subscribe to the newsletter” at the top right corner on this site) for recaps and updates.

And for you, please join in! I’ll be checking in on anyone else’s makings by scouring the #eadsQAL hashtag on instagram. Since there are so many ways for this project to pan out, it’ll be fun to see where your projects take you. My bet is that we’ll all start to inspire each other, and it’ll be quite merry.

Plus, I’ve got some prizes planned. To be eligible to win, you’ll need to be posting to the hashtag on IG. Sound good?

To start, you’ll need a copy of the pattern. Hard copies are starting to appear in shops (like Hawthorne, Fabric Bubb, Etsy Studio, Jones & Vandermeer, I Love Fabric, etc), and the PDF version is available here too. Then start thinking about fabric…fat quarters are perfect.

Oh, and make sure to keep your scraps! I’ve got plans for those, but it’s a surprise to be uncovered towards the end, so stay tuned.

Looking forward to sewing with you!