Breezy - A Rachel Rossi Design

Last week I showed you my versions of Rachel Rossi's Breezy pattern and told you how much I enjoyed testing the pattern and that I really like this quilt.

I liked it so much that I not only made the king version above, but I also made two baby size quilts using a panel.

I'm thrilled to announce that Rachel has released the pattern for sale and I strongly urge all of you to hop over there and snatch up your own copy. The pattern includes instructions for three sizes: Baby, Throw, and King.

Here's Rachel's blog post about the pattern. Not only does she talk about the pattern, but she provides some absolutely wonderful pictures too. It's amazing how different and amazing each of these quilts looks! There are some fabric choices that I would never have considered, only to find them stunning. I'm already thinking that I just might have to make another one (or more) of these quilts.  😀

This pattern is very well-written and the quilt was such a pleasure to make! Please do not let the many half square triangles (HST) scare. Rachel includes extremely clear and straight forward instructions on all aspects of this quilt, but especially for the HST and pinwheels. I know that you will love the magic eight method of making the HST and all the tips she provides. Yes, it can get tedious to trim all those HST, but it is so worth it!

I devised a system where I did all the sewing first and then separated the huge pile into smaller stacks for trimming. I will admit that I was so excited to see how the pinwheels were going to look that I did sew, immediately trim, and then sew the pinwheels together for the first couple rows of one quadrant. Once I knew that I was going to love it and the fabrics were going to work, I took a few minutes to collect my thoughts and make a plan. The "break it up" plan worked great for me and was much less daunting than seeing a huge stack of HST that needed trimmed. Another advantage to doing this is that it provided a built in timetable to take a quick break to grab a drink or stretch my legs. 

Not only does the pattern include overall great instructions, it provides a wonderful explanation on the magic 8 method of HST, AND some awesome tips and techniques to make sure your points are perfect and that the pinwheels lay perfectly flat. That alone is worth the price of the pattern! If you don't believe me, ask any longarm quilter.  😊

I enjoyed making this quilt and know you will too. You can purchase this pattern, as well as Rachel's other patterns HERE. I know you won't be sorry!

Breezy Quilts - Original and Two Variations

As promised, here are pictures of the Breezy quilt completed. You can see the story about this quilt HERE and HERE. 

I really like this quilt! 

The quilting was done by my friend Judy and she did an awesome job. I think this pantograph, Zephyr, is perfect. 

I was worried about the low-contrast part of the pinwheel, but I like it now. 

I did change the border from the original one in the pattern; but I believe that this border option will be written into the final pattern, which will be released later this month.

I knew that I wanted to make a baby size version of this quilt and when I saw one of the other pattern testers use a panel, I decided to use my Skylines panel by Hoffman Fabrics. Of course I also had to make two quilts, because what else would I do with the other half of the panel?

I made a few modifications to the pinwheel sides of these quilts. On one of the quilts, I added a barrier strip of fabric between the two halves because I was running low on the pinwheel fabrics. 

I used a single fabric for most of the pinwheels, but then added a few pinwheels made from musical notes fabric. (I may have to call this "Whistle While You Work."

The panel side is quilted in random vertical lines with grey thread, while the pinwheel side is quilted in the ditch of the pinwheels with the same grey thread.

The second quilt was made using a variety of background and pinwheel fabrics and it "moves" from a racing flag fabric in the bottom right up through the stages of a busy day in the city all the way to the colorful and fun nightlife.

 

I quilted the panel side with a variety of thread colors in random vertical lines, and the pinwheel side is quilted with meandering stitches in thread to match the background fabrics.  

I love this colorful gradation binding!

I wanted to see what it looked like with the quilts together, as I was originally playing with the idea of combining them into one larger quilt, but decided against it.

I had so much fun with these two quilts and can't decide if I like them better than the king version.

Breezy - A Few More Pictures

As I said in my last post (where I initially misspelled the word peek - YIKES!), I'll be reviewing Rachel Rossi's Breezy pattern when it is released later this month. In the mean time, I'm providing a few sneak peeks. 

Jack liked the pattern from the get-go and was happy that I was making the large version. He picked the fabrics and initially, I just was not sold on his choices. He said to trust him; and since the quilt was for him, I did and I'm glad! (I'm really not sure why I doubt his choices. He is just about always right.)

This picture shows all the fabrics used in the quilt. I was worried about the one section in which there is not much contrast; but in the overall quilt, it looks great and provides an interesting feature. (You'll see what I mean in a couple of days.)

Here's the center of the quilt. This also provides a close up of some of the quilting done my by friend Judy. (At 100" square, this quilt is too large for my frame.) The quilting design is called Zephyr, by Lorien Quilting and I think it's perfect.

I had to find a resting spot for the quilt while I was moving things around. As you can tell, it's been kind of wet, windy, and rainy here. After days of rain and a busy schedule that required me to be away from home, I finally just gave in and took pictures while it was drizzling. I was happy that it was not a full out rain and actually like the dark sky in the background. 

Sneak Peek

As I mentioned the other day, Jack helped me take pictures of a couple quilts last week. Because I'm still editing pictures and writing a pattern review, I'm just going to give a sneak peak at the king Breezy quilt I made for Rachel Rossi.

Jack's prepping the quilt for me. I don't enjoy heights at all, so even looking at this picture makes my heart race.
In retrospect, I don't think the heart racing is because of the height. I think it's Jack.  😍

I draped this over a tree, hoping to stage it a little, but the rain started to really come down so I had to abandon the picture taking. Even so, I like this picture!

As I mentioned yesterday, changes are coming to the blog. They will be somewhat slow in arriving, but I'm just excited and had to share.

Have a great week!