Colour Explosion Quilt Tutorial

Hello! Are you having a bright, colourful day? If not, I’ve just the thing for you – a Colour Explosion Quilt (or a Color Explosion Quilt, depending on where you’re tuning in from).

This quilt pattern is for a fun baby quilt I recently made; it measures 36″ x 48″ when finished. It’s quick to sew up and easy to adapt to your colour preferences.

Colour Explosion Quilt - a colourful and easy quilt tutorial, perfect for beginners, by Bonjour Quilts
You’ll need 16 fat quarters to make this quilt. I’ve divided my quilt into warm and cool colours, but you could choose whatever you like (this one could work well)*.

One thing to remember though, is that you need to make sure there is contrast between the fabrics in each row. Each fabric should also contrast against the triangles it touches in the row either above or below.

Colour Explosion Quilt - a colourful and easy quilt tutorial, perfect for beginners, by Bonjour Quilts

Here’s my first version of the quilt, which shows you what happens if you don’t take care with the contrast:

Photo 17-07-2016, 12 18 24 PM

You can see the second and outermost rows on the cool side of the quilt don’t have adequate contrast. As a result they read as if they are a solid mass of colour.

To me this quilt is about movement as much as it’s about colour, so I want the eye to move quickly from the centre outwards. The solid rows were an impediment to this and that’s why they had to go. I think the revised version is much better.

Colour Explosion Quilt - a colourful and easy quilt tutorial, perfect for beginners, by Bonjour Quilts

So, 16 fat quarters. 8 cool and 8 warm. Contrast between fabrics that touch each other.

Each row has a flying geese unit and four HST units. The geese, unfinished, measure 6.5″ x 12.5″ and the HSTs 6.5″ square (they are 6″ x 12″ and 6″ square respectively once sewn into a quilt top).

If you have a particular way you like to make your HST and flying geese blocks, please use that method. I like to make oversized units which I then trim back to size (with Bloc_loc rulers).

I decided to quilt this one with straight lines and I really love how it turned out. No marking of lines, I just used the width of my walking foot as my measure and made friends with the word “organic”.

As I came close to my pivot points, I slowed down and used a little ruler to check my distance (the distance from my needle [centred] to the outer edge of my walking foot is half an inch, so I pivoted when I was half an inch out from the next line).

Colour Explosion Quilt - a colourful and easy quilt tutorial, perfect for beginners, by Bonjour Quilts

I quilted lots of V lines in the top and bottom centre portions of the quilt, then either side of that were two U units. Finally, the last little triangles at the very edges of the centre were filled with smaller Vs.

Colour Explosion Quilt - a colourful and easy quilt tutorial, perfect for beginners, by Bonjour Quilts

I used three different colours of thread on each half of the quilt. Tangerine, pink, apricot and then turquoise, light blue and teal.

Colour Explosion Quilt - a colourful and easy quilt tutorial, perfect for beginners, by Bonjour Quilts

Colour Explosion Quilt - a colourful and easy quilt tutorial, perfect for beginners, by Bonjour Quilts

For binding, I went with a navy blue. Half a yard will do it, easily (5 strips 2-1/4″ x WOF). If you prefer 2.5″ binding you’ll still be fine with a half yard.

Colour Explosion PDF Version in 3 Sizes

If you’d like this PDF pattern in baby, twin and queen sizes, I have it here for you.

That’s probably enough from me for today! I hope you’re having a great week and find some time for a little (or a lot) of sewing.

Until next time,
Kirsty

Colour Explosion Quilt - a colourful and easy quilt tutorial, perfect for beginners, by Bonjour Quilts

*This is an affiliate link, which means if you purchase through the link I receive a small, but much appreciated, commission. This is at no cost to you – Amazon pays for it (thanks, Amazon :). These commissions help keep Bonjour Quilts’ website expenses paid, so thank you!

Share or Pin for later:

Leave a comment

You'll be the first to know ;)

Quilting tutorials. Behind-the-scenes fun. Great deals on patterns. Join 14,000+ subscribers & stay in touch.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Bonjour Quilts logo nameplate