Sunsparks Quilt

My completed Sunsparks quilt was a long time coming! I shared more about the pattern — which you can purchase in my shop — a few months ago but today I’m finally sharing a more detailed post about the design and the quilt itself. Techhhhnically, this is my first 2024 quilt finish. But I’m filing it under 2023 because I made the top and published the pattern in 2023…and in the future I’ll always think of it as a 2023 quilt.

(Also I make the rules!)

This quilt began with the fat quarter bundle of Rashida Coleman Hale’s Sunbeam collection that I picked up at Quilt Market in fall 2022. At the time, the fabrics hadn’t been released yet and I had grand plans of making a quilt with the bundle and releasing the pattern in first part of last year.

But time for making is somewhat scarce, as I’ve discussed, and I also was quite wishy-washy on what to make with this bundle. I mocked up several different designs, but nothing felt quite right. I wanted something simple, something that leaned traditional, something that was fat quarter bundle friendly.

After many rounds of designing something, then stepping away for a few weeks, I FINALLY settled on what became Sunsparks. The basic block is the traditional Crow’s Foot quilt block. I played a bit with the foreground and background fabric placement until I had something I felt was more visually interesting, and got to work. This photo is from April 27, and you can see some components on my sewing table amidst many other projects:

There are a LOT of small half-square triangles in this quilt, and making HSTs can be a bit tedious for sure. But by using the 8-at-a-time method and batch sewing, I was able to make steady progress last spring. But then summer arrived, and I had to work on a different quilt, and we had family vacations and swim meets and summer things, and my blocks sat for a while. In September, I finally pulled the blocks back out and put together the quilt top:

A couple fun bonus videos of block construction and quilt top layout that I posted as Instagram reels:

I knew I wanted to use some sort of loopy motif for the quilting, and had originally planned to have a fellow Houston MQG member quilt it for me. But then I started working towards my new longarm, and so my finished Sunsparks top lingered while my attention was elsewhere. After getting my new longarm and practicing a hand-guided pantograph on this quilt, I finally quilted Sunsparks. It’s not perfect — there’s one spot where I missed the alignment by a bit — but overall I’m very happy with how it turned out, and the bobbles really aren’t noticeable at all. (And since this was never intended to be a show quilt, I don’t care as much about bobbles in the first place.)

Despite the timeline, I’m glad to have this quilt finished and finally documented! And remember, the pattern is available in both print and PDF formats.

The stats:

• Quilt measures 58″ x 71″.
• Pattern is Sunsparks by me!
• Fabrics are from the Sunbeam collection by Rashida Coleman Hale for Ruby Star Society.
• Background and binding are Moda Bella Solid in Soil.
• Backing fabric is Moonscape Wideback in Flax by Dear Stella.
• Batting is Hobbs Heirloom Premium 80/20 cotton/poly.
• Pieced with Aurifil 50 wt thread in #2600 (Dove) and #2360 (Chocolate)
• Quilted on my APQS Millie with Glide thread in Military Gold.
• Pantograph is Calder from Urban Elementz.