Science, Baby! quilt pattern

I am so thrilled to introduce you to my newest quilt pattern called Science, Baby! This pattern will be published in the 2022 Quilter’s Planner, and it’s got some awesome science in it, even if it doesn’t look like it at first glance! Before I tell you all about that, though, I have to tell you a little bit about how the design process.

I’ve had patterns in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the planner, and so when Lorinda, the owner, contacted me about a pattern for next year’s edition, I was super excited. She specifically brought up the idea of a science-inspired baby quilt, which obviously was just up my alley! My first thought was of all the questions that little kids, who are natural little scientists, ask about the world around them, so I drafted a design that focused on that. I added in a few stars because those are one of the first things that inspire wonder (and, for many of us, continue to do so no matter how long it’s been since we were children).

The realities of collaborating on a pattern for a publication intruded at that point, as there wasn’t likely to be enough room to print all the templates that would be necessary. Lorinda suggested keeping just “stay curious” and perhaps adding more stars to cut down on the space needed for the pattern. There had also been some discussion of negative space, since that’s another thing up my alley, and that’s when inspiration really hit.

The arrangement of stars in the quilt that I came up with is that of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a graph that’s really important to astronomers. If you’ve been following me for a while, this quilt might have looked a little familiar because I have actually made a quilt inspired by this graph before. I never wrote a pattern for that one, though, as it was a bee quilt, so I’m really excited to finally be able to release a pattern that features this scientific concept.

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What this diagram, and this quilt, are showing you, is how the color of stars changes with their temperature, and with their brightness. From top to bottom, brightness decreases, and from left to right, temperature decreases. So bright, hot stars in the upper left are bluish in color; cool, dim stars are reddish in color. (Focus just on the main diagonal line in the graph—there are exceptions for very large and small stars. That main diagonal is the “main sequence,” which was the title of my previous quilt!) Our sun is a yellow star, right smack in the middle, which explains why we all draw it with the yellow crayon!

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Now, about the quilt itself! It’s a baby quilt, so it finishes at 36″ square. The techniques are fusible raw-edge appliqué for the lettering and traditional piecing for the stars. I used solids for most of it, but the background felt like it needed something extra, so I used Andover’s Moon and Stars in Navy to add to the celestial theme.

To quilt it, I did some basic lines in the stars, and then a mix of big and little swirls in the background. I did stitch around the appliqué, mostly so that the navy quilting thread wouldn’t detract from it in the photos, but if you’re making this for a baby, you could definitely just stitch over top of it to secure it a little more. I didn’t get a photo of the back before I sent it off, but I had just enough of the rocket ship print backing from the first quilt left over to back most of this one.

I hope you love this design as much as I do! I’m so happy we had to rethink the original, because I really love the way this one turned out. The Quilter’s Planner is on pre-sale from August 16, so be sure to grab your copy so you can stay organized while you make awesome quilts.