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Last weekend I attended a fun new quilt show at Thanksgiving Point, called Garden of Quilts.  The quilt show was part of Riley Blake’s 10th Anniversary celebration.  It featured quilts from their collection as well as the Fat Quarter Shop collection, in addition to quilts submitted by individuals and a few other special exhibits.


The Ashton Gardens at Thanksgiving Point are a gorgeous, 55 acre collection of gardens located in Lehi, Utah.  I have always loved walking through them.  Gardens and quilts:  can there be a more beautiful combination?


I submitted four quilts to the show and it was fun to wander until I found all of them.


My Prosper in Solids Quilt was in a pretty spot.


I wish I had a backdrop like this every time I photographed a quilt!


I found my Indigo Lone Star quilt hanging among some trees, and the moment I snapped this photo was perfect.  Do you see the dappled sunlight in a circle, highlighting the lighter ring of the star?  Perfect moment!


My Light quilt top is now a finished quilt, finished in time to submit to the show.  I was thrilled to find it with two of my dear friends who also worked on it.  I’ll share more of this quilt soon, as well as the fourth quilt I submitted.


In addition to hundreds of beautiful quilts and acres of lovely flowers and shrubs, The Ashton Gardens also feature a special Light of the World Garden.  The time I spent there was the most peaceful of all, among masterful statues of Jesus Christ, my Savior.


There were a few quilts that caught my eye, like this antique flag quilt in the Secret Garden, part of the private Ashton quilt collection.  The blue fabric faded, but the red is still vivid.






Watch for Garden of Quilts again next year.  I heard it will return, bigger and better, and I’m excited to see it.  I love being a part of the quilting community!

Once upon a time (or, nearly five years ago) I found a vintage quilt block that struck a chord with me.  That tiny image – called the prosperity block – became a project.  I eliminated y-seams and enlarged the block, sewed it all together and shipped my new quilt design off to Quilty Magazine.  To my complete surprise it ended up on the cover and I was elated.  Almost immediately followed a challenge in our family that rocked us and my creativity just dried up.  I couldn’t sew for months.  And so I never wrote my own pattern for the quilt.  Until now.  The Prosper Quilt Pattern is here !


In these photos I have remade the quilt using fabrics from Conservatory by Anna Maria Horner, chapter one release.  I wanted everything fresh in my mind while writing the pattern and using these three small collections was a great challenge for me.  These backlit photos create a lovely stained glass feeling that fits the mood of the Conservatory fabrics.


The Prosper Quilt Pattern is available for download in my Etsy shop.  When Quilty wrote the pattern for the magazine, they changed the fabric requirements.  I have kept my original requirements, making this a fat quarter friendly quilt.  Fabric cutting must be done carefully but I’ve made several of these and have always had success with fat quarters.  I named this pattern Prosper as well, one more way to preserve the vision and intent of my original design .


The blocks are gorgeous and so much fun to make.  The original quilt can be viewed here , and this is an all-solids version with different background colors .  I doubled the block size to make this barn style version and I’m working on a Christmas version that I’ll share soon.  The Prosper Quilt pattern is perfect for any style.  Purchase yours today!

Alison Glass is hosting a sew-along for her pattern, Trinket.  The pattern is one I’ve had my eye on for months, so when she made the announcement I signed up immediately.  I am excited to improve my foundation paper piecing skills through this project, as well as to work on color and fussy cutting.  In preparation I dusted off my favorite tools for foundation paper piecing and printed the blocks.


I debated with myself over fabric choices as well as block size and decided to make two trinket quilts during the trinket sew-along.  For the first I am using my Alison Glass fabrics and scraps to make the original sized blocks.  I will make 2-3 of each block.  I considered some color scheme or designer to use that would be different from the quilt featured in the pattern, but since I’ve never made a quilt in the signature Alison Glass style, I will try it.


The more I thought about the name of the quilt, “trinket”, the more I thought about the trinkets I’ve collected.  Most of them are connected to memories of the beach.  This sew-along will be a fun opportunity to make a quilt honoring my favorite place and some treasured memories.  For this second version I enlarged the blocks approximately 140% and I will make just one of each block.


I started with this quilt with the Zuma fabric collection by Tula Pink.  It’s saturated with bold color and gorgeous artwork.  I’ll mix in other designers but for now these blocks make me smile.


The Trinket pattern is, so far, easy to follow.  The first block is simple and the blocks increase in difficulty as you sew through them.  I am glad that the first blocks are fast and easy. Hopefully my skills improve as the sew-along continues!