Who is ready to sew a Portal Quilt with me? When I designed this quilt, my newest pattern, I knew it was the perfect project to do an online sew along with. Keep reading to get all the details to join us, sew along online, and make one of these beauties!

image by Cate Dingley

I designed this quilt pattern around the Stellar fabric line by Rashida Coleman Hale for Ruby Star Society, shipping to stores now. It has quirky, space-inspired theme in the prints with little touches of shimmery gold.  “Space Junk” “Moon Grid” are 2 of my favorite print names. When designing this quilt, I was inspired by the space idea of these prints and wanted to play with that. A modern spin on the classic Attic Windows quilt block, I designed the blocks to be sort of a peering in to a “porthole” and looking into deep space. The dimensional, “drawing inward” effect is created using my favorite design trick, light and dark color value, along with my favorite design tool, Ruby Ruler™.

image by Cate Dingley

The name “Portal” seemed perfect, because it give the effect of looking into a tube or deep portal or hole. (Look for this line shipping to your local quilt shops and online this month. Keep reading for a list of online quilt shops that currently carry this fabric.) Also, I was lucky enough to have my very talented niece, Cate Dingley, to photograph the Portal quilt while we were in New Mexico in December. I love all the colors against the weathered coyote fence, above.

The result is a beautifully dimensional quilt that is super easy to make!

Which leads me to our sewalong.

Details for the Portal Quilt Sewalong

• Runs for seven weeks, Monday, March 16- Monday, April 27, 2020.
• Happens completely online, and is completely free to join in (well, it would be much easier to make the quilt WITH the pattern, so you will want that.)
• This is a beginner friendly pattern, suitable for a variety of skill levels. Although I will not go over in details the basics of quilting, I will provide lots of good information for beginners.
• All videos links will be delivered via emails, which will go out each Monday. Sign up on this page.
• The first video will go up on Monday, March 16th, 2020. You will get an email with a link. If you don’t get it, please check your spam folder.
• Important hashtags to follow progress of other sewers and to tag your own social media shares- #wisecraftportal #wisecraftstitchalong

I wanted to keep the pace of this dhttps://youtu.be/BHK76zeQ4REoable and not too fast. I think it’ll have a nice flow-

Weekly Breakdown of the Portal Quilt Sewalong with video links

Week 1– Overview: Understanding the pattern, gathering your materials and supplies, sorting your chosen fabrics into value groups,

Week 2– Cutting:  cutting fabrics for the basic block, tips for staying organized.

Week 3– Sewing: Creating the basic block, how to organize your sewing space, chain piecing, squaring up.

Week 4– Centers: 2 options for applying the center blocks.

Week 5- Piecing: Laying out and sewing the blocks together

Week 6– Quilting: Discussing sandwiching the layers, quilting options

Week 7– Squaring up the edges and binding.

Online Shops currently carrying Ruby Star Society’s “Stellar” fabric line-

Fat Quarter Shop

Fabricworm

Hawthorne Supply Co.

Get the Portal Quilt Pattern-

You will need a copy of the pattern to make the quilt, everything else you may already have on hand. (But hey, its always fun to shop for new fabric, right?) The Ruby Ruler™ is not a required tool, but helpful. I will be using mine, and will show you how I use it for this quilt.