This week I am featuring the quilt that started me writing patterns. This goes all the way back to 2003 I think. This fabric line from Robyn Pandolph came out and I loved it. It was supposed to be a Christmas line and I remember thinking how daring it was to have teal in with the red and green – now we see that all the time.

I purchased the whole fat quarter stack and wanted a quilt that used the whole fat quarter but still wanted some kind of pattern to it. I have always liked pinwheels, and that seemed to be the most logical place to start. So the fat quarters got cut up, big pinwheel blocks were made, and the scrappy border is pieced from leftovers from the fat quarters.

One of the things I like most about the pinwheel block, is how, when you put them together with no smashing, they merge and blend in with each other and secondary patterns emerge. Depending on where your eye lands, broken dishes blocks will show up. There’s always something to look at with this block and the quilt seems much more detailed than it actually is.

The colors in this gave way to the name – Strawberry Wine. I wrote it up and it was my first pattern that I sold to a quilt shop. What I really need to do is update the pattern and make it an electronic pattern in my shop, but you know, all this free time on my hands….. We all have that problem.

I still hang this quilt up in my house every year around the holidays. It makes me smile and it reminds me that I really do love to design and write patterns. There are just so many ideas in my head!