Patterns, Foe or Friend?

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Written by lenneamw

We spend hours, days, weeks searching for the right quilt pattern for a favorite relative or friend and for our gorgeous fabric. A great pattern can make a quilt! An awful pattern can cause heart break, tears, cuss words and a full trash can.

Sometimes patterns appear to be written by a committee of gremlins!

I do not use many published patterns. And I tend to remake quilt patterns that I have used previously, like Floating Triangles, which I learned from a Missouri Star Quilt video or Quilt in a Day version of log cabin. When it comes to applique, I love Esther Aliu patterns.

My ability to use a (not so great) pattern has improved over the years and occasionally I will see a pattern that catches my eye and will suit a specific purpose. More often than not, I change my mind after looking at the pattern more closely.

Foe quilt patterns

1. Have pieces smaller than 3”. I am NOT ever cutting a couple hundred 1.5”, or even 2.5” squares. Or making dozens upon dozens of half square triangles that size. But way back in 2017, I won this pattern in a drawing at a quit shop and decided to give it a go for my cat loving grand daughter.

An adorable pattern, but it was over my head at the time and I had never made a quilt with applique elements. (The cat head and the rats are applique.)
I did get it finished! It was tricky, but I took my time and did a lot of deep breathing.
Close up of the cats! I only had a vintage machine at the time and the applique was done using a satin stitch. I was so glad when it was done! And I will never make this one again!

2. Are written in tiny type. I spent a couple decades reading the Federal Register, which is written in about size 4 type. I was paid well to do that, but no one pays me to read tiny type patterns. Also pattern writers who don’t believe in paragraph breaks!

3. Have the words “irish chain” in the title, or anywhere, actually. One of my earliest quilts was an irish chain that I produced after taking a class. I swore off both classes and Irish chain quilts after that one. This also ties into #1!

4. Any pattern that still doesn’t make sense after reading 3 times. I was making clothing in high school using patterns (over 50 yrs ago) and if the quilt pattern is incomprehensible, it simply isn’t worth the pain it will inflict upon me.

5. Patterns written primarily to sell a product. Many patterns are written by purveyors of fabric or specialty quilting tools to encourage or, let’s be honest, force us to buy an item we will use only once or twice. Patterns written for fabric lines tend to leave us with lots of leftover fabric.

The pattern is Kimono Rose and was a freebie, but written by a fabric company. Notice the long, unpieced sections. You have a LOT of left over fabric. Sandra and I did this as a quilt challenge and she did not like it at all. I really liked it and made two!
Cat + Koi #1 was my first effort. The cat fabric I found worked really well with the pattern. The “frame” section was a nightmare (I used turned edge, machine quilting for the sections). They did not fit together properly and I still shudder to think about them. 7 fabrics were used in the construction. A friend owns it and loves it. Fortunately, she lives in a different state and I will never have to see those frames again!
Cat + Koi #2 was more fun. I used the center panel fabric for the corners and avoided having as much left over fabric. Only 5 different fabrics were used. I skipped the “frames” around the cat faces and cut simple ovals and circles using stash fabric. Stash was also used for the interior sashing.

I still have plans for a Cat + Koi #3. This pattern does have the added advantage of going together quickly!

Is your pattern a Foe? Your choices are to suffer through and hope for the best, to toss it or to tame it! I have done all three. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments, jettison tricky items like that dang frame that would not, could not go together correctly. If you abandon a project, do it early before too much time and fabric are lost. There are thousands of patterns out there!

Friendly Patterns

1. Patterns in the public domain, classic patterns like log cabins and the many variations thereof. You can almost always find an inexpensive, understandable pattern or video of a classic pattern.

This is a proper book!
It has a real Index!
With proper, step by step, by step instructions. A video was also included.

This may have been my BEST EVER quilting purchase. I learned so much from the book about quilting in general. I have probably made a couple dozen log cabins, as you know if you follow my blog. There are endless variations and I never get tired of a great log cabin.

2. Patterns I make up myself. I used to draw them out on graph paper, do lots of math and calculate yardage. Now I have EQ8 software which allows to do the same thing many times faster and using actual fabric swatches. If you design it yourself, you are likely to have a firm picture of the quilt in your head and how to proceed before you pick up your rotary cutter. I love this degree of certainty.

Designed in EQ8 for my grand daughter’s birthday, 6 yrs after the Sleeping Cats quilt!
I love the way my EQ8 pattern actually looks like the completed quilt!
My Kaffe Fassett log cabin mash up. Two different blocks using grunge and Kaffe fabrics.
And here she is waiting to be quilted.

3. Esther Aliu applique patterns. You might know this already, but if not I will repeat. I LOVE Esther’s patterns. They are well written, succinct and have accurate yardages. And if you join the FB group, you can always ask questions.

My first Esther Aliu pattern and first serious appliqué project. I picked up a used Bernina 353 SE to get a real blanket stitch for the applique work and fell in love with appliqué.
My first Esther quilt, which is still in the guest room! The main squares are the wrong size, but no one knows or cares. I adjusted the gray sashing to make up for the squares being off. I added the log cabin border to make it queen sized and corner pieces with addition flower applique. This is all turned edge, machine stitched applique.
The center of my second Queen’s Garden quilt (which was expanded to King size) for a friend. This is much better technically, after having several years of experience with applique. I used a similar color scheme, and some of the same fabrics, adding in some darker and bluer purples. The background here is off white with taupe borders instead of gray with white. And the squares are the correct size!

4. Patterns that are adapable to what I have in my fabric stash. Do I need a jelly roll, or charm packs? Fat quarters? Layer cakes? Can I easily swap pre cuts for yardage? Can I make it bigger or smaller without doing fancy computing?

This cute little quilt was a challenge quilt for Sandra and is even easier to make when you substitute a solid back ground. It also has instructions for a pillow and is easy to resize.
I added a couple birds, because quilts need birds. And I used up a bunch of applique fabric leftovers.

Patterns I keep thinking I am going to make…

We all have patterns that caught our eye that we think we are going to make. Are they friend or foe? Who knows? Until we try it’s a mystery. This is one that I look at each year and have not yet attemped. I have some layer cakes lying around. Is this year??

Happy quilting and pattern hunting!

Lennea

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