Many of you know that Marie Bostwick and I have a long standing friendship as well as professional relationship. We blogged about our history and friendship earlier (you can check out that post here if you missed it). But as happens in so many friendships, we eventually began to meet each other's friends, and our circle of friends grows. And that's what happened for us when we were working on our most recent collaborative project, Stormy Stars.
So for those of you unfamiliar with our collaborative work, over the past 7 years when Marie has released a new book, I have designed several quilts to coordinate with the story. One project is in the form of a free download posted on Marie's website and a second project is in the form of a full pattern available from my business, Studio 180 Design.
When working on the quilt design for Marie's 2017 book, "The Promise Girls", our thoughts immediately went to the traditional Storm at Sea quilt design as a starting point. I promptly created a small wall quilt using all the standard units involved in a Storm at Sea design. Of course I put my own person touch to the arrangement of colors and values so the wall hanging looked like a star in the middle of a curved medallion. Fabrics were pulled from my stash to bring the design to life and written instructions for the free pattern download were sent to and posted on Marie's site.
Now for the Studio 180 Design project, I firmly believed that this design was deserving of a more involved and larger layout. I readjusted a few value positions in order to multiply the wall hanging blocks into a cohesive large quilt design then immediately began to think about choosing fabric.
If you've been following my pattern releases over the last couple of years, you've probably noticed out that I have made a number of collaborative projects with Island Batik fabrics. I had seen that Jackie Kunkle would be releasing a new line of fabric with Island Batik, "Blue Moon", and I believed that it would be the perfect match for my upsized Storm at Sea design. I've known Jackie for a number of years and actually met her through Marie. As stated earlier - friends of friends become new friends! So it seemed like a perfectly logical approach to the project.
Little did I realize the extent to which this collaboration would extend. Marie and Jackie were on board immediately, as well as Island Batik. Unbeknownst to me, Aurifil was creating a coordinating designer thread collection for the Blue Moon fabric line and they too would become involved by supplying beautiful thread for the piecing and quilting of the actual quilt.
So all that remained was to create a physical version of the sketched and planned Stormy Stars design, which I did several times over in fact! I could pull off the construction of two full size quilts and a few of the smaller wall quilts so quickly because of my Studio 180 Design tools, the Diamond Rects and Square Squared. These two patented tools make the construction of the needed units easy, accurate, and fast! And let me assure you, they will do the same for you if you decide you too would like to try your hand at my Stormy Stars design.
I also pulled a couple of additional friends into the group by asking two of my very talented Certified Instructors, Pam Goggans and Karen Overton, to put their machine quilting artistry to work in order to finish the quilts (thank you both for making the quilts look sooo good).
Well there you have it, the history behind the collaboration. Of course you can be certain that this is not the end of the story. It was so much fun working with everyone that we are already planning to do it again soon. So keep in touch with us on our social media to be in the loop on our future projects. And remeber to send us your photos if you decide to try your hand at a Stormy Stars project, our favorite day at the office is when we get to see a "show and tell"!
Finally, to say thanks for reading, we'd like to offer you a chance to win the Stormy Stars pattern and associated tools (the Diamond Rects and Square Squared tools), or a complete set of Deb Tucker & Marie Bostwick collaborative patterns (Star Crossed Love, Providence, Take two, Deep in the Heart, Garden Dance, Stormy Stars). Just follow the instructions below!
