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Quilt pattern: Stay Centered (free download)
If you are looking for a “dull moment” you will never find it at Sparrow Quilt Company! Between raising a big family, running a successful longarm business and serving as the National Canadian Sales Manager for APQS, Matt and Bradie Sparrow have mastered the delicate art of maintaining “balance” in their lives.
So it seems very appropriate that Sparrow Quilt Company employee Sheila Van Der Linden named this quilt “Stay Centered!”
Sheila’s quilt evolved from a challenge from Bradie to design an original quilt. Surrounded by the beauty of quilting every day at Sparrow Quilt Company, it wasn’t long before magic happened and inspiration hit for Sheila!
Sheila chose the log cabin block “simply because I like chain piecing, and I know many quilters like a fast and easily understood pattern.” The fabric variations in the Mimosa line of fabrics by Windham Fabrics dictated how many rows there would be in the quilt since it had five distinct colorways.
As Sheila pieced the colored squares, she modified the design to add a pop of color on the white background squares. Bradie had given her a variety of tone-on-tone white fabrics to use, but the original intent was to have solid white fabric strips above each color bar. However, Sheila was afraid the quilt’s texture would become unbalanced, so she converted the white fabric strips into log cabin blocks as well.
The colored squares in the white blocks gives those Log Cabin blocks a purpose and added just the right amount of color splash. The simplicity of the design, the clean lines and the sense of order and completeness comes through with this attractive quilt.
Sheila chose an overall quilting design and used the APQS Quilt Path automated quilting system to stitch the loop pattern (quilting pattern is Loop the Loop by Barbara Becker). It is the perfect complement to the straight lines the pattern presents, and it blends fabulously with the backing fabric.
Enjoy!
