New Pattern Elate!

It’s time to meet my new pattern Elate!

Elate is the type of project where your fabric can shine. It makes simple squares exciting (and efficient!) by way of strip piecing.

There’s so much you can do in a project like this. So much, that I’ve made 4 of them so far, and I can’t stop. I keep catching glimpses of fabric in my studio that are making me want to sew up another version, which is the truest sign of a good project in my mind. Elate is that project that gets your creative wheels turning. Today I’ll share the first three of them.

Memento Elate

Memento Elate is a great place to start. It is made from the fat quarter stack of my newest fabric collection, Memento. How satisfying is it to have a project where you can make use of an alluring bundle?

I loved working my way through the collection, and picking fabric pairs that complement, contrast and play in different ways.

With any new collection, I love projects that allow me to push the collection in different ways. It’s one thing to dream about your swatches and an entirely different thing when you have yardage that you can start cutting up and sewing together.

Showing off a full fabric collection in a single quilt gives you the best opportunity to showcase all of the colors at play. This is when I like to find and highlight the unexpected color combinations that you couldn’t have imagined until physically putting them together.

Two-Color Elate

Instead of using a lot of different fabrics, you can just use two.

Two-color quilts can be beautifully dramatic. The restraint of the limited palette forces you to focus on the shapes at hand. In this case, I love what that does for the Elate design itself. There are clearly squares and rectangles, but the shapes and sizes are constantly changing on you.

Both fabrics in this quilt are from Memento as well. It is SO HARD to pick just two fabrics. I love a two-color quilt, but I think it’s this type of quilt that is always the toughest for me to decide. There are always so many ways to take it, how can you just choose two? (I consider the binding choice my form of rebellion.)

I’m quite thrilled with the quilting. It’s one of my designs with OESD, and you’ll recognize it in other projects. I really like the final effect.

Scrappy Elate

My scrappy Elate quilt was the first version I made. I had my design idea, and I wanted to let go and cut from my fabric stash.

I gave myself permission to cut the fabrics that I’d been holding onto–the precious fabrics as well as the fabrics that happened to be on my cutting table were fair game.

There are so many fun moments when I look at this quilt. I love a project that allows you to discover new things each time it is laying on your lap.

In the two-color Elate, the shapes are especially sharp and defined. The contrast between the fabric choices are high, meaning the shapes are pronounced and bold. In this scrappy Elate, I deliberately blurred the lines by choosing similar in contrast and color prints as well as large-scale motifs that when cut up can play tricks on your eye. There is nothing more fun than navigating these possibilities in a project.

Laying out any of these projects is a blast. I love deciding areas of rest and areas of excitement. I find that my eye is continuously moving around discovering all of the goodness at play.

The New Pattern Elate and Quilt Along

This quilt is simple sewing at it’s finest and definitely not boring. It’s versatile in all of the best ways, and ready to embrace whatever fabric you might have your heart set on using.

My new pattern Elate is available in print and digital forms in my shop here, and I am planning a Quilt Along to be coming soon too. Want to make Elate with me?