New pattern, Grey Gardens!

I’m on a bias-strip appliqué kick...along with last weekend’s Sewing Party class (such fun chatting with all the quilters who stopped by!), I’ve just got the PDF version of my Grey Gardens quilt pattern finished up and ready for the world.

The pattern includes full instructions and templates for two different blocks using the same easy machine appliqué technique, so you can choose your favorite version (or make both!).

The idea came from the perforated concrete blocks often used to build garden walls, and the way those blocks stack together to make secondary circle patterns. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same idea that sparked the Cordova Table Runner in my book, The Quilter’s Appliqué Workshop. But the block designs in Grey Gardens are different (they’re named La Fiesta and La Costa, after their concrete progenitors). They’re a compatible size, though, so you could do a mashup and make a runner with one of the new blocks.

The gentle curves of these blocks make them quite easy to sew, and the pattern sheets ensure perfect placement so the strips meet in the right places. Trust me when I say it wasn’t as easy as it looks to make the geometry work out—but the pattern’s done that all for you, so you can get straight to the fun parts. For me, that was picking out which fabrics to have peeping through the bias lattices—I had such fun with it that I couldn’t stop with just making one quilt.

The Grey Gardens pattern is available for download from my online shop, and the book is available from the usual suspects. As always, I’d love to see photos of what you make from Cordova or Grey Gardens! And if you’ve already got your copy of The Quilter’s Appliqué Workshop, I’d be delighted if you reviewed it on Amazon—it really helps!