Glow Tiles quilt pattern

I’d like to introduce you to Glow Tiles, my latest pattern available in Quiltmaker‘s July/August 2019 issue!

This quilt was actually originally designed for Modern Patchwork (RIP), who were planning a “small piecing” issue, and this quilt, which I had designed some time ago but was languishing in my “promising designs for some day” folder, seemed to be perfect for it.

The blocks in this quilt consist of 1″ – 1½” finished half square triangles and flying geese blocks—not the tiniest piecing I’ve ever seen, but pretty small!

(Incidentally, I recently discovered a marvelous secret to help you trim half square triangles while making a different quilt. Are you ready? Okay, here goes: CHANGE YOUR ROTARY BLADE FIRST! Now, some of you may be wiser than me and do this on a regular basis, but I always forget, and I know I’m not alone, so for those of you who remember every 6-9 months or so that “oh yeah, I should probably change that,” let me tell you how much easier trimming is when you’re dealing with a brand new blade!)

Anyway. The fabrics in this quilt are the lovely Painter’s Palette Solids from Paintbrush Studio. And, I just discovered, for those of you that like to quilt with Aurifil, that they maintain a list of matching Aurifil colors!

Hobbs kindly sent me some Cotton Supreme batting to try out; this is a relatively new product that is an all-cotton batting with really nice loft. It sheds a bit more than your typical batting, so you have to be careful handling it, but it produces nice texture in the quilting and it’s so soft and cuddly!

To emphasize the zigzags in the piecing, I decided to continue that into the negative space and fill in every now and then with a back-and-forth fill. This is pretty similar to the quilting I used in my Zigzag Fade quilt from a few years ago, except this time I didn’t miscount the number of zigzags between fills!

The piecing I mostly just outlined with ditch stitching, except the center squares which were a little too big to leave unquilted, so I filled those in with some swirls.

By the way, you’ll end up with a few extra flying geese if you make this quilt, so why not use them in the label? (You ARE labeling your quilts, right?)

You can get your copy of the pattern in the current issue of Quiltmaker.

Quilt Stats:
60″ x 72″
Fabrics: Painters Palette solids in Clementine, Maize, Tangerine, Bubblegum, Petunia, Rosebud, and Smoke
Batting: Cotton Supreme from the Tuscany Collection by Hobbs
Thread: Glide 40wt (Lead Grey, Cotton Candy), Superior Magnifico 40wt (#2061)
Stitches: 156,499 at 12 stitches per inch