Hammerhead Quilt Downloadable Pattern Available In the Shop

I quietly added a new quilt pattern to my shop last week, Hammerhead. I had meant to have it ready much earlier, but somehow deleted the pattern file on my computer and it took me a while to recover from the blow. (Back your files up, folks!) But now it’s here. I wanted to tell you a little bit about it, and why I love it so.

The quilt finishes at 64″ x 80″, a great twin-sized bed quilt, but you can remove or add extra blocks to make a crib sized quilt all the way to a king size. For the cover version, I used Brown Carolina Chambray for the solid and Liberty Tana Lawn prints for the stars. I loved working with this muted palette, its very different from my usual choices.
At the time I began this quilt, I was experimenting with fabric dyeing and coloring, and I wanted to play around with some of those ideas on this quilt. I divided the yardage for each of the prints in half, and did a simple color removal process with half the yardage, leaving the rest of the print as the original. The effect was immediate, a beautifully muted, sun-faded, patina’ed effect. Each star is made up of both versions of the same print. The effect is truly unique and this has become one of my favorite quilts. Below, you can see the prints I used, in each one, the front/lower one is the “faded” version, the one behind it is original.

The color-removal process is easy and the result can be both fun and surprising, which is one of the best parts of the process for me! So much of quilt making can be trusting that the end result will be worth it, and working through moments of uncertainty. I love that this process gives you limited amounts of control in part of the process, surprising you in the end.

There is also a contrast flange around the edge binding that I’ll walk you through making. Such a small detail, but it adds so much to this quilt.

We shot the cover for this quilt at by our friend’s boat on a beautiful summer evening. The quilt contrasted so nicely against the white of the boat.
The Hammerhead pattern can be purchased for immediate download here.