I’m just going to say it up front. I don’t like purple. I’m not sure why – probably because it clashes terribly with my red hair.

When my 10 year old requested I sew him a purple quilt, I wondered could I sew a quilt with purple? Could I spend weeks frolicking amongst the purple or would it just be too much for me? (I tried to talk him into a quilt with his second fave colour, orange, but he wasn’t having a word of it.)

I’m happy to report that I was indeed able to quilt with purple. I even like the final quilt!

Diamonds in the Deep QAL

I made my purple quilt as part of the Diamonds in the Deep Quilt Along I hosted, which provided the encouragement I needed.

You can find the Diamonds in the Deep PDF pattern here in my shop.

The Quilt Along began back in July and just wrapped up, and I’d love to show what some of the participants (including me) have produced.

My Diamonds in the Deep quilt is twin size, and I made it with Kona Snow* and a purple fabric called Icon Elements in Titan Violet* by Art Gallery Fabrics.

The Icon Elements* range comes in a few different colours – they are great for the Diamonds in the Deep pattern as they have a small scale pattern that adds some subtle interest to the quilt. The AGF Decostitch range is also very pretty (and would have been my preference except they didn’t have a purple) – the low volume fabrics* are especially lovely.

The log cabin blocks for the Diamonds in the Deep pattern are very easy to sew. I recommend sewing with a scant quarter inch seam so that the blocks are a tad oversized when finished. Then you can trim them back to get very accurately sized blocks.

When you quilt with purple, what colour thread do you quilt with?

This is such a common question. I’ve made a quilt with X colour fabric – what colour thread should I use to quilt it?

The answer is almost always: dove grey.

It doesn’t matter what colour your fabrics are, dove grey (a light, flat, matt grey) is going the blend in beautifully with it. It’s especially good when you have lots of different coloured fabrics in your quilt. Or when you have a pattern like Diamonds in the Deep, which relies on contrast between the two fabrics, guaranteeing that either colour would be stand out too much on the other fabric.

The dove grey is just right – you still get all the lovely texture of the quilting (on both white and colour fabrics) but it doesn’t try and steal the show. It’s definitely become my go-to quilting thread colour (second favourite is a similar flat, matt, beigey-tan, for when I use more brown tinted neutrals).

As for the quilting pattern – I went with swirly spirals. I’m very fond of the way curves look against the angles of the log cabin blocks, which is why I chose this pattern (many thanks to Lyn of Lyn’s Quilt Cottage for the lovely long-arming).

If you struggle with choosing a binding fabric, you’ll love the Diamonds in the Deep pattern as it’s an easy one to bind. Just choose the same fabric that you use for the outer edges of your log cabin blocks and it will blend in beautifully.

I used my zigzag binding tutorial to machine bind this quilt. As is often the case, I couldn’t find a thread that matched the purple fabric exactly. One thread was a shade darker while another was a shade lighter. In these cases I tend to choose the lighter thread. To me it doesn’t stand out as much and blends in better (just my opinion).

For my backing fabric I searched for something with a touch of the purple in it. That way I knew it would match the purple binding (and thread). This wideback fabric was just the ticket. It’s called Lava Lamp and the purple matched nicely (it’s a very useful wideback – it would match many different quilt tops).

Alright, enough purple already. Time to see some more gorgeous Diamonds in the Deep quilts in other colours.

Your beautiful quilts!

Leigh also made a twin sized quilt using a mix of 8 Tula Pink fabrics that were heavy on the orange with a touch of pink. I think you’ll agree they blend beautifully to create a very orderly, scrappy effect.

Pat sewed up a lovely teal and low volume version of the pattern. I love the wee pattern in the low volume – very delicate.

Julia made a classic navy and white, with the additon of a navy border.

Leanne went for a beautifully vibrant red and white version:

Kathy also went striking red and white with a grunge style fabric:

Cheryl also made a purple quilt, teaming it with a lovely grey and multi-coloured centre squares. It’s so eye catching.

Gloria paired two tone-on-tone fabrics to give a lovely textured feel to her quilt:

I do so enjoy seeing all the different colour combinations people come up with for this quilt pattern. You’re all so clever and I thank you so much for sharing your work with me (well, with us all). Don’t stop sewing, and keep sending in those photos (or tag me on Instagram and Facebook).

If you’d like to make a Diamonds in the Deep quilt of your own, you can find the pattern here in the shop.

Happy sewing!

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You can read all about the Snowball Party quilt pattern in this previous blog post.

You can purchase the pattern here in my shop.

Today I have some other versions of the quilt pattern to show you.

This baby size quilt was sewn as part of a new fabric release. Kristy from Quiet Play has a new fabric line, called Create, with Riley Blake Fabrics.

It’s such a bright, happy rainbow line and it was a joy to sew with.

Riley Blake sent me a F8 bundle of Create. There are 30 fabrics in the line, but the baby size quilt only has 24 snowball pairs. So I trimmed my bundle down to my favourite, brightest prints and used them in the quilt.

For the background fabric I used another Riley Blake staple, Bee Backgrounds by Lori Holt, Cross Stitch in Brown (you can also find it in a lovely light grey on Etsy).

The Snowball Party quilt pattern gives you the option of using scrappy accents in your snowball blocks, or a single fabric. I went with the scrappy option and also cut my accents from the F8s I had selected.

When it came time to decide which accent colour went with each snowball colour, I tried to keep them within one step on the colour wheel. So yellow with green, green with blue, orange with red, that sort of thing. I did swap some out when I thought I needed more contrast, but I also kinda like when they blend in a bit.

When I’d completed my blocks I laid them out in a rough colour order, progressing down the quilt.

I have the perfect red hippo fabric to use for the backing. I’m sure the resulting quilt will make a great addition to a nursery.

And now I have two beautiful tester’s versions to show you.

First up is Cynthia’s dreamy baby quilt, made from a collection of 30s/40s repro scraps she had on hand. She focussed on the purple fabrics and teamed them with an olive green solid for the accents. I think the single accent fabric does a great job of tying all the different prints together. Some of the purples are red based, others are blue based, but the single accent fabric allows them to work really well together without feeling chaotic.

This quilt is very sweet and the purple/green combo reminds me of Spring flowers in meadows. (Cynthia left the borders off this one as it’s destined for a charity with a smaller size requirement than the pattern. It still looks great without the border.)

Secondly, Julie has made a bright baby quilt from 8 FQs. She has also gone with a single accent fabric, but has very cleverly fussy cut them to match the stripes. She decided to split up her snowball pairs and went with a diagonal layout instead. It makes for a very fun, playful quilt!

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing some other versions of the Snowball Party quilt pattern. There’s a lot of fun to be had playing with fabrics, accents and block layout.

If you’d like to make one for yourself, you can find the Snowball Party quilt pattern here in my shop.

Happy sewing!

*affiliate link. Thank you for supporting Bonjour Quilts!

To purchase the Snowball Party quilt pattern, click here.

I’ve something new for you today – a snowball quilt pattern!

This snowball quilt pattern is called Snowball Party and can be found in my shop right here.

To me it looks like a room full of snowballs all chatting to each other and having a great time. Hence the name Snowball Party!

And let’s be honest, this is the only type of party most of us can have right now given social distancing requirements. A snowball party is better than no party at all, yes?

This pattern is perfect for a beginner with a few starter quilts under their belt.

The pattern has instructions for 4 quilt sizes: baby, throw, twin and queen/king.

There are two block size options in the pattern. The baby size uses FQs to create smaller blocks while the larger 3 quilt sizes use half yards.

I also have tips on how to use F8s and scraps for the small blocks and scraps and FQs for the larger blocks. So you can use this pattern to stash bust from scraps, through to F8s, FQs and half yards. You could even combine different fabric cuts in the one quilt if you want.

And there’s even a bonus mini quilt pattern included as well, to help clear out those pesky small scraps. Yay for mini quilts!

You’ll notice my quilt has scrappy accent blocks, while this mini has accent blocks all in the one fabric. The pattern gives you instructions to use either method for all of the quilt sizes.

I made my version here with a sunset selection of solids from my stash. They are a mix of Kona solids, Essex linen (candy pink) and Art Gallery Fabrics (burnt orangey-coral).

I wasn’t sure I’d have a good selection of such colours in my stash (as I’m more a blue/green lover). But shock horror, it would seem I have more fabric than I thought in that cupboard! (Can you hear my husband rolling his eyes from there?)

My background fabric is called Essex Yarn Dyed Linen in Oyster (here on Etsy*). It’s a dreamy not-quite beige, not-quite grey colour that changes depending which colour fabrics are next to it. A lovely, super useful neutral.

When it came time to quilt such a loud, happy snowball quilt pattern I felt I wanted to keep it simple. I went with cross hatch quilting, using the corners of the snowball blocks as my guide.

I did use my hera marker to mark some lines in the borders as I felt I might list off course a bit without them. I’m really happy with how it turned out. (Do you see that little tuck in the quilting of the orange block down the bottom? There was a time that would’ve driven me wild. These days I’m like “aw, go out there and live your best life, tiny tuck”. 2020 has mellowed me out, man.)

For binding I considered scrappy binding with the leftover solids, but decided on a Carolyn Friedlander tangerine cross hatch fabric.

The binding fabric is also appears in my quilt backing which I pieced primarily from orange low volume fabrics from stash. As an aside, you know your stash is getting out of hand when you can separate your low volumes into colour groups!

I didn’t have time to hand bind this one so I used my zigzag binding tutorial to finish it off.

I pulled out some orange thread first but actually found it a bit too bright. The baby pink was much more subtle and the look I was going for.

This method of machine binding is very forgiving and also very sturdy. A win-win in my eyes.

Oh, there’s also a colour-in sheet in the pattern for those who like to audition fabric colours before sewing. You could also use the colour-in sheet to play with the number of blocks in your quilt, in case you want to add a row/column or two.

Here’s two alternate layouts I considered with my blocks before settling on my random layout.

This one is just each colour on its own line. I quite liked this one, actually. It would look really great in a rainbow colour scheme, too.

This second layout was more of an ombré effect. I started with the blocks in colour order (like my fabric layout order you saw earlier). I filled in the layout from the top right corner down to the bottom left. It’s not a perfect ombré, but it does look pretty groovy.

But in the end I went with random (where random = blocks auditioned endlessly in position to make sure they appeared random).

Feel like making you own snowball quilt? Put your scraps or stash to good use and grab yourself a copy of the Snowball Party quilt pattern, right here. The shop listing also shows you the quilt sizes and fabric requirements.

I’ll have another post shortly showing a rainbow version I’ve also sewn, as well as some gorgeous pattern testers’ versions.

Until then, happy sewing!

* affiliate link. Thank you for supporting Bonjour Quilts!