Winterflake quilt SAL-week 1

Hi there and huge WELCOME to my first ever QUILT sew-ALONG!

Last year, when I created and released my Winterflake quilt pattern that was featuring my Botanist fabric collection, the response was amazing and I am so happy to talk a bit more about it again, now in form of this sew-along event. What I am truly excited about is that I will be recreating this quilt pattern with my newest fabric collection - Wintertale that is actually a Christmas collection and that’s why I love to see this sewing event as a sort of Christmas in July. 

I am hoping that we can get to learn, share, and create together. 

The Winterflake quilt pattern should be appealing to a wide range of skill levels although all my patterns are written for the beginner to advanced beginner/ intermediate sewer. The pattern has front and back cover and 18 pages, completed with many helpful diagrams.

Here is the Winterflake quilt pattern SAL schedule with pages covered from the pattern:

• Week One, June 19 -  Prep: Choose  + Cut Fabrics: page 1 and 2
• Week Two, June 26 - Make strip sets: page 3, 4 and 5
• Week Three, July 3 -  Make Quarters : page 6, 7 and 8
• Week Four, July 10 - Make Blocks: page 9 
• Week Five, July 17 - Quilt top assembly: page 10, 11 and 12
• Week Six, July 24 -  Finishing: page 14 and 15

As everything is going to be posted through my Instagram and this blog space, you don't need any other sign-ups. You can eventually subscribe to my newsletter, but only if you wish to obtain some freebies, coupon codes and news (which can be pretty amazing too☺️). 

So what will you need, alongside excitement of making something new in a good company?

You will need some fabrics and tools.

And you will need the quilt pattern, that can be purchased in my Etsy shop.

Here is the back cover of my Winterflake quilt pattern that has some great suggestions and basic information about tools, materials, techniques involved and quilt sizes.

To make the process easy, accurate and fast, most of the units necessary for the log-cabin constructed blocks are assembled with strip piecing technique.

So these are some of the techniques, or better say methods that we will be using and hopefully improving through the process of making this quilt pattern:  strip piecing and log cabin block making.

Strip Piecing is a time-saving method and patchwork technique created by sewing multiple fabric strips together to create a composite unit (a strip set) that is then cut to obtain smaller,

multi-piece segments. Strip piecing eliminates the need to work with small, individual pieces of fabric. Prior to cutting your fabric into strips, it is important to check if the fabric edges are straight. To check the edges, fold the fabric in half, matching the selvedges. Start cutting strips after ensuring a straight edge at 90° between the WOF and the selvage. Having an accurate seam allowance is necessary for obtaining precise strip sets (SS), especially where multiple strips are sewn together.

I always suggest to read the pattern before starting to pick and cut the necessary fabrics.

While I have only PDF patterns available, there are some quilt shops that like to buy the printing license from me (available in my Etsy shop as well) and they print the patterns on paper to provide them for their customers that prefer to buy the paper pattern and the fabrics together. 

Here are some quilt shops that have the fabric kits available:

• Wild Blooms Quilt co - Wintertale THROW size fabric kit
Winterflake THROW size kit in AGF solids 

• Sewing Arts - Wintertale THROW size fabric kit

• The Grey Finch company - Wintertale THROW size fabric kit

Before, finally posting the video for you to watch, I just want to THANK you so much for joining me in this quilt sew-along event and I hope that you will enjoy sewing with me and other makers! 

I can not wait to see your creations!

Please feel free to contact me with any questions, suggestions or comments either here or on Instagram.

Although most of you will watch the video only, I thought I should also include some captions from the video, maybe they can be helpful too, as I am sure that there are parts in the video where my English could sound confusing. And sometimes I might try to explain something, only by bringing more confusion 😅, so if that was the case, here are maybe some better explanations.

 Choosing fabrics 

While choosing fabrics for quilts for some people can be the best and most exciting part, this process can be pretty challenging and sometimes even overwhelming for some others, so that’s why fabric kits and curated fabric bundles can be pretty good option for starting and planning to make the new quilt pattern. Another fabric testing option can be the coloring page that most patterns have and in this pattern it is on the page 13.

The most basic and safe option when choosing fabrics for a quilt project is being guided by the contrast, especially with the quilt patterns like this one with lot of negative space, where there’s very distinctive line between the background and the foreground (or the shape-figure that is created by the block). The contrast basically means “difference” and that means that you will have your blocks pop against the background when selecting contrasting fabrics. The most common contrast is light-dark and warm-cool colors.

This quilt uses combination of 11 fabrics - 1 for the background and 10 for the blocks body. From these 10 colors, each of 2 snowflake blocks has 4 unique colors- 3 for the 90 degrees shapes and 1 for the central, inner borders. One snowflake in my case features warm tones while the other is in cold tones, but this doesn’t have to be your case. The snowflakes shares the colors for little squares that are concentrated in the center and in the block’s corners for the block 1 and 2, while they are just centrally displayed for the blocks 3 and 4. In my case they are white (as my background is rather dark) and Sedona red. In my Wintertale edition that I will be making now, they are solid red and pink (as my background is white with just tiny accents featuring small stars) while all other fabrics are rather with prints from the collection. 

If you are using just 2 to 4 colors, I think that you can’t really go wrong sticking to the contrasting colors, while if you are choosing 11 colors, like determined in the pattern, what I can suggest is to first choose 2 different, distinctive colors that you like the most for the snowflakes (in this Christmas version they would be red and green), then choose other 2 tones for each snowflake that are going to be distinctive by value, meaning that they will be a little bit lighter or little bit darker, so that you can finally obtain 3 shades that will gradually become either lighter or darker. It doesn’t really matter the disposition of those shades, from centre toward the edges or vice a versal – I actually did both, as you can see, as I couldn’t decide myself;)

Cutting fabrics:

I am always using full width of fabrics (WOF), folded once in half so that I can use my 23” ruler for cutting the fabrics first into the strips and then into any needed subcuts. I strongly suggest you to cut the WOF strips first from the yardage, by the order determined in the table: largest strips first (in this pattern they are 12.5" x WOF), going toward the smallest (2" x WOF in this pattern). After cutting all the WOF strips, submit them into smaller units: rectangles and squares. As we are making many strip-sets, that's why many rectangles are rather long-21".

On the fabric requirements and cutting directions page is the table including yardage and subcuts given for all 3 provided quilt sizes. I am using the whole width of the fabric (WOF), which is usually 42” for American fabrics (and that’s the standard for determining cutting requirements), nevertheless AGF fabrics have the 44/45’’ width. I know that there are many of you preferring to use subcuts, like Fat Quarters and if you might ask me if this quilt pattern is FQ friendly, I would say no, unless you would be doing some sort of scrappy version, at least regarding the background which is quite dominant in this pattern. You may use the fat quarters to replace all the 1/4 yard cuts or less, while you can use 2 fat quarters where the 1/2 yard of the fabric is needed, if that makes any sense.

So lets try to look better at this table and demystify the biggest and longest in subcuts needed list, fabric A or background requirements. Even because in all other fabrics you will meet the same sized strips and other subcuts.

The first line gives the yardage needed for each of the sizes. As I am making the throw quilt, I will need the total of 4 ½ yards in fabric A for the background. From that yardage, I will first cut all the needed WOF strips.

If you look at the pink blush fields standing out a bit, these fields are reserved for all the different in length strips x WOF. So we have 12.5” x WOF, 6.5” x WOF, 4.25” x WOF, 3.5” x WOF and lastly 2” x WOF. Then under these pink fields there are furtherly determined the subcuts from each of these strips.

So, for the 12.5” x WOF for the throw size I need 7 strips. From these 7 strips, I will need to cut 8 rectangles measuring 12.5”x 16.25”, 8 squares measuring 12.5” and 4 rectangles measuring 12.5” x 2”. Here we will have some leftovers that will be used for the smallest, 2”x 11" or 10” subcuts.

From two 6.5” x WOF strips I need to cut 4 rectangles measuring 6.5” x 21”.

From two 4.25” x WOF strips I need to cut 4 rectangles measuring 4.25” x 21”.

From four 3.5” x WOF strips I need to cut 8 rectangles measuring 3.5” x 21”.

From fifteen 2” x WOF strips I need to cut 22 rectangles measuring 2” x 21” and 36 rectangles measuring 2” x 11”(actually there will be 32 rectangles measuring 2” x 21” as four of these can be cut to 2” x 10”). These 2” x 10” are needed for the strip sets 5, to save on fabric, for the baby and throw quilt size options.

And lastly, as promised, here are some of the mock-ups with fabric selection (you will find the precise requirements for each of the fabrics in the pattern):

THROW size:

in case you are wondering how it would look if only switching blocks 1 and 2

Here are a few BED sizes, with on point layout:

If you have your fabrics chosen already, please use the hashtag #winterflakequiltSAL so that I can see your pictures and also use this hashtag for all the pictures during this sew-along so that they are visible for all the participants. 

By using this hashtag and posting your picture, you become eligible to enter the giveaway on Instagram and hopefully win the prize that includes:

1. Entire FQ bundle of the Wintertale collection

2. 4 1/2 yds of the Pure Element-Snow White fabric by AGF

3. PDF copy of the Winterflake pattern

This giveaway is open till Friday, June 30 and is open worldwide!

Can’t wait to see your choices and inspiration!

Happy sewing-along,

Katarina