Patternista Story

This is the story of Patternista. She is my most complicated quilt that I've made so far in my quilting journey that started as a frenzy last fall. Each day, I get an email from a little quilt business in Hamilton, MO, advertising their "Daily Deal". They give a great discount on one item in their inventory, with the hope that you'll buy something else fill out your purchase to get enough fabric to complete a project. I must admit, I almost needed an intervention to keep me from daily purchase of the daily deals! But when I saw this pattern of fabric, there was no helping me, I HAD TO HAVE IT! It is called Patternista, and the designs in the fabrics just spoke to my soul. The patterns were retro inspired, and "Spirograph" comes to mind for many of them. The colors were batik quality, purples, roses, soft and bright greens and blues, with a pop of yellow and orange. What's not to love? My creative juices started to flow big time! My little quilt business, Missouri Star Quilt Company, also does online free tutorials on how to use their precut fabrics. This precut is called a jelly roll, which has 40 strips of fabric from the entire line cut in 2-1/2" strips across the width of fabric. There are endless patterns available for using jelly roll, but the one pattern I found that I liked was making an 8 pointed star, using the jelly roll strips and a background fabric.

So I set to work making my blocks out of the strips and fabric. Here is what I created my first session of fooling around with the pattern. The actual quilt that Jenny Doan showed in her tutorial was based on making intertwining stars that look like this. I made blocks, but then couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make the stars intertwine. The name of the pattern is "Stars Aligned". Now, I can usually figure out how to put blocks together, but I couldn't figure this one out. I had to purchase the pattern to find out how to do it.

It turns out that you need to build the intertwining stars as you add sashing. Figuring out where to put the colors and which colors to use was somewhat complicated, so I laid them out in color patterns to keep my thinking straight. The quilt ended up very beautiful. I took a picture of the completed top, and sent it to Missouri Star. They actually posted my picture on their Facebook page advertising the fabric pattern. I decided to bite the bullet and have it professionally quilted by Missour Star, and when I got it back, Jenny had written me a personal note saying how pretty she thought it was. I was so flattered! I bound it and put it on the bed with its collection of pillows. I felt like a princess laying on a bed so gloriously decorated.

I finished it and put it on the bed, and of course, Al the cat went on it immediately! He had to make it his own. This is what was in my future to keep it looking nice.

I needed to use this at least twice a day to keep the quilt looking pretty. Al deposited a great deal of blonde fur on the quilt as he lolled around taking his 11 2-hour naps a day. I was gone over the weekend, and you should have seen it after 4 days of no lint rolling! It was a mess! While I was gone last weekend, I got to actually visit Missouri Star Quilt Company twice, once on Friday and once on Monday, on my way to and from Des Moines Iowa to visit my son and his family. My visit on Friday was so fun, because they showed me the entire place, including the back room with the shelves piled to the ceiling with all the beautiful fabrics they stock. The only thing that I missed was seeing Jenny, because she was at the quilt market that weekend. The girls invited me back on Monday to see Jenny.

When I came back Monday, Jenny and Ron, her husband, were right outside their new building. You see, this little business is growing so much, they had to get a new place to expand their business. Meghan took me on a tour of the new store, which has been completely refurbished from the studs out for their new retail space. The old smaller building will hold all of the fabrics they sell in their online business. More "Daily Deals" for us customers! I got to spend about an hour chatting with Jenny. She was like my long-lost best friend, she is the "real deal", and I love and respect her so much for what she has done for quilters around the world. So many have learned from her, and now support her business because it is based on "family-friendly service", and great products. Jenny mentioned in our chat how much she loved my quilt and wished I could make one for her shop.

Since the black quilt is no longer on my bed, and is looking for a home, Jenny said she would adopt it! It is now on its way to Hamilton, MO, to take its place among the other beautiful samples displayed at the Missouri Star company store, soon to be opened in their new digs. I am so honored to have it there, and Patternista has had quite a journey! To my readers--I don't write like this. Blogger updated its format about a month ago, and it will not paragraph! Sorry for such a globby mess of writing. I'm ready to go to a new format for my blogs, unless they change this!