Radiant Quilt Pattern

Hello, hello – here’s all the details on my latest quilt pattern, called Radiant.

This pattern is the sister pattern to Diamonds in the Deep (seen below in purple).

The Radiant quilt pattern has instructions for 5 quilt sizes: baby, throw, twin, queen and king. All the dimensions and fabric requirements can be seen over at the pattern listing in the shop.

Diamonds in the Deep is asymmetrical, with darker diamonds floating up to form lighter ones at the other end of the quilt.

The Radiant quilt pattern is what happened when I asked, hmm, how would this look if it was symmetrical around a centreline?

Rather than diamonds bubbling up from the deep, this pattern was more a strong glow of central diamonds fading away toward the edges. The name Radiant popped up and persisted (a wonderful reader, Rachel, said it reminded her of the cut-out metal lanterns – so Radiant did seem appropriate).

For the throw size version above I used two Art Gallery Fabrics fabrics. The navy fabric is Decostitch Elements in Indio Sky* and the low volume is Soften the Volume Sashiko Mending*.

The similarities between the two patterns

There are similarities between the two patterns –

• they are both based on 4 different log cabin quilt blocks (courtyard steps)
• the log cabin blocks morph from dark-heavy to light-heavy fabrics
• the blocks are on point

The differences between the two patterns

There are plenty of differences between the two patterns. This annoyed me as I was hoping it would be quicker to design but that’s the way it goes!

• The blocks are similar, but are different in their proportions of light to dark fabrics
• There are more of the darker blocks than the lighter blocks in the quilts (compared to Diamonds in the Deep)
• The side setting and corner triangles are made from whole fabric in Radiant, which makes the quilts quicker to sew. Diamonds in the Deep has partial log cabin block triangles that carry the pattern right to the edge of the quilt. Radiant has more of a ‘diamonds floating off a solid background’ look to it. More on how this affects fabric choice considerations further on!

Two-fabric quilts are fantastic

Like Diamonds in the Deep, Radiant was designed to be a two-fabric quilt.

When you find a fabric you really love, it’s so nice to only have to find one complementary fabric and then you’re good to go. That favourite fabric will take centre stage. Two-fabric quilts are also great to sew for people with a favourite sports team or college/university colours.

There are two design options for your two-fabric versions of the Radiant quilt.

The first is to make the darker fabric dominant, as you see in my navy and white version.

If you want to have a different look, you can swap the placement of your dark and light fabrics.

Here’s a mock up where the lighter fabric is dominant. It makes for quite a different quilt, I think. I’ve gone with a darker binding, but binding with the lighter fabric would look great too.

Add some more colour!

Although the Radiant pattern is designed for 2 fabrics, you can easily add a bit more by switching out the centre squares. Just changing the centre column’s squares looks like this:

And of course, now we really need to see it with every centre changed to green:

Just a subtle change there. Then we can invert the centres such that the lightest green goes in the centre column, and it fades out to the darkest green:

I quite like that one too – it’s more glowy/lanterny, I think.

You could also go completely scrappy or multi coloured with the centre squares – placing them randomly. That would be good fun.

A scrappy Radiant baby quilt

Here’s another version I sewed up using a random bunch of pink FQs from my stash.

Those whole fabric setting triangles were spread out amongst the different FQs. If you were super serious about going scrappy, you could piece together some scraps for the side triangles to the size required by the pattern. But keeping it easy with whole fabric is perfectly fine, too. (And quicker!)

One more note on using prints

As mentioned several times, the setting triangles in Radiant are whole fabric, unlike those sewn for the Diamonds in the Deep pattern. So for Diamonds, it really doesn’t matter what fabric you use as it all gets chopped up and sewn back together over the entirety of the quilt.

With the Radiant quilt pattern, non-directional printed fabrics look (in my opinion) the best. By non-directional I mean prints where there is no up or down, it looks right whichever way you rotate the fabric.

I have a couple of examples to show you what I mean.

This first feature fabric is a non-directional floral print, of medium scale. I’ve matched it with a slightly darker tan solid for the second fabric. And then for fun, I looked at using a purple or teal centre square to match the print. Teal won the toss.

I sewed up a corner of the quilt – so 1 log cabin block, 2 side setting triangles and 1 corner triangle.

As you can see above, the fabric does well in all directions. And there are a lot of directions – all four sides of the log cabin, and then off at an angle for the triangles.

Here’s another example I sewed up with a directional fabric. The print has lines of beads that run in 2 directions, so the fabric looks quite different when viewed at 90 degrees.

Here’s the example I sewed up, using a white solid and a cheeky pop of orange to match some of the birds.

The directionality of the main fabric is much more noticeable here. I think it looks quite lively and energetic with all the directions. But I know that some people are picky about stripes all running the same way, etc, so I thought I’d point this out. As always, do whatever makes you happy!

And that’s the Radiant Quilt Pattern

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to put them in the comments below.

If you’d like to make a Radiant quilt of your own, you can find the pattern for sale here in my shop.

Thanks for reading and happy sewing,

Kirsty

*affiliate link. Thank you for supporting Bonjour Quilts!

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