Clair de Lune Quilt (HMQG Minimalist Challenge)

Five years ago, I embarked on a personal project to write a quilt pattern each month for 6 months. I had never written a pattern at the time but wanted to learn, and since I’m often motivated by goals to do X number of things in Y amount of time, making a “pattern of the month” sounded like fun. And it was!

My fifth quilt in that series was Quarter Moon, based on a matchbook design I saw floating around the internet. I really liked the design, but never actually made the quilt. One of the big caveats from my pattern-writing exercise back then was that I didn’t necessarily edit or test any of them (and they were free because of that).

A couple years later in 2017, I revisited this pattern idea for that year’s Pantone quilt challenge, playing with the shape and layout to turn it into something even more modern and minimalist. And while I ended up going in a different direction that year (and made this quilt), the “quarter moon” ideas lingered in my folder of quilt ideas.

Then last month, the Houston Modern Quilt Guild announced a short minimalist design challenge. And I realized that the time had finally come to make a version of this quilt! I changed the colors to two deep shades of blue, and for once I knew how I would quilt it even before I cut any fabric!

This was such a fun little project — and fast too. I started cutting fabric on Tuesday and put the final stitch in the binding on Thursday. In the last six months, I have learned SO much about the value of small projects as a way to keep my creativity flowing despite so many other stresses.

The stats:

• Mini quilt measures 24″ square.
• Fabrics are Kona White, Maize, Riviera, and Nightfall.
• Backing is a piece of leftover fabric from another project, one of the Horizon Ombres by Christina Cameli for Maywood Studios.
• Machine quilted with a walking foot using Aurifil monofilament thread in the needle and 50 wt navy blue for the vertical lines, plus 50 wt white for the accent quilting.
• Binding is the same two shades of blue, matched to the background.

p.s. I’ve pulled down the original Quarter Moon pattern because it wasn’t written to my current standard. If there’s interest in reviving it, drop me a comment or a note on Instagram. It might be fun to give this one a refresh!