This is long overdue, but this quilt needs more attention as it is very special! This is my original Retro Metro Quilt, the one that kick started my quilt pattern writing journey.  I had always known deep down that I wanted to write quilt patterns and it had been a dream for a long time. Then one bleak day, in the midst of the first lockdown of the pandemic, I sat down and designed this pattern. I didn’t realise it at the time, but it was the escape and focus I needed during one of the hardest points of 2020. 

I had found it so hard to actually sew during lockdown while home-schooling the children. Even though I had recently upgraded my sewing space to my own room, I couldn’t spread out and leave things out as the children had to have somewhere to work – and let’s face it, they are kids, and no matter how hard you try they seem to be able to spread out across the whole house.  I did find picking up my laptop and playing with patterns and shapes much easier. It was so refreshing to do something creative but something new and my mind got hooked and I was obsessed with writing my first quilt pattern!

Retro Metro Quilt is a fun modern quilt pattern that is centred around two different quilt blocks. The ‘birds in the air’ block and the ‘roman stripe’ block. I started playing with these two quilt blocks on EQ8 and this configuration jumped out at me and gave me all the retro vibes. 

Now this was my first quilt pattern and there was a lot to learn. I had figured out how the pattern would look using EQ8 – and even tried the pattern out in a new quilt design app that had launched at the same time called PreQuilt.

PreQuilt have all the Kona Cotton colours within their app and you can import fabric images and place them within the pattern. This was incredibly useful and made me finalise my first fabric pull for my first quilt pattern! I had already fallen in love with the Art Gallery Fabric Legendary collection, so I had pulled Kona Cotton colours from these fabrics to match. 

Fabrics I used for this quilt are:

• Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton: Cerise, Wasabi, Teal Blue, Mediterranean and Snow.

• Art Gallery Fabric; Legendary Collection: Femme Metale Boho and Wonderlust Bold.

I didn’t intend to mix solid fabrics with patterned fabric, but I couldn’t resist with this combination. I split half the Kona Cerise with the Art Gallery Femme Metale Boho fabric. Used the Woderlust Bold, which I had chosen for the backing, for one part and even used Kona Teal Blue and Mediterranean together as I couldn’t decide between the two!

 What sounds like a complicated mess, turned out beautifully - don’t you think?  I like to flex the rules! 

EQ8 and PreQuilt are both fantastic tools for designing the look of the pattern, to test out colours and fabrics in the pattern.But they don’t lay out how the pattern can be made. The instructions needed to be written by me……. no pressure!

The Retro Metro pattern is split in to two sections, first it walks you through through how to make the ‘birds in the air’ block and then how to make the ‘roman stripe’ block. I ended up using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign to write the instructions and draw the diagrams (and a lot of You Tube lessons along the way!!). 

Half of the ‘birds in the air’ quilt block are made up of half-square-triangles and triangles and the other half of the block is a triangle of the background fabric. I loved how easy this block comes together but how effective it is when you place two of these blocks together to form a large point. 

The layout of the half square triangles and triangles of the ‘birds in the air’ block are laid out in two different ways, so throughout the pattern there are two different colour combinations of the block rotated which gives much more depth and interest to the pattern and makes it look less uniform. I did the same for the ‘roman stripe’ blocks as well resulting in four different layouts of the blocks. It’s all these small details that make the pattern unique and full of character. 

When this quilt top was sewn together the colours ‘popped’ against the Kona Cotton Snow background fabric. I love this shade of white for background fabric as it is much more gentle than white but not too creamy to make everything look more yellow. I used the Art Gallery Wonderlust Bold from the Legendary Collection for the backing the binding. It is such a lovely mix of all the colours on the quilt top it finished

Do you ever feel the fear of how to quilt your quilt after you have finished your patchwork top? I do – every time! You spend so long making the quilt top (and also invest in a lot of fabric) and the thought of machine quilting and ruining all your hard work terrifies me – this is why we have seam rippers right?! 

I do think it’s good to feel the fear of quilting your quilt though. I have been known to just ‘stitch in the ditch’ to secure the top with the intention of coming back to it once I knew (have the courage) to quilt it! But this time I needed it to look its best to help sell the pattern so there was no time to waste! 

I decided to go with parallel lines, a safe option, but I followed the direction of the blocks which gave complimented the quilt pattern. Once I had finished the machine quilting, I couldn’t resist adding a few hand stitches too. It added the most beautiful texture and gave me an excuse to slow down and enjoy some hand quilting, I find it really therapeutic. 

The quilt was finished off with hand sewing the binding, it is my preferred way every time as it conceals the stitches and leaves the best finish, even if it does take longer to do. 

By the time this quilt was completely finished, it was the summer and we were escaping our bubble of home that we have been confined to for the majority of the year due to the pandemic and we escaped to go camping! I couldn’t let an opportunity for a ‘quilt in the wild’ picture slip by, so the quilt came with us! The campsite we were staying at had the most beautiful stream running through it. At certain times of the day the light that trickled through the overhanging trees was so beautiful I couldn’t resist getting a picture! 

I would really love to see how you all interpret the Retro Metro Quilt pattern. If you decide to give it a go I would love to see your makes. Please tag me using #retrometroquilt #madejustsewpatterns.