My second quilt pattern has just been published in issue 179 of Down Under Quilts! Even though I submitted my first two patterns to different magazines a few months apart, they ended up coming out within a week of each other.

Interstellar was inspired by Sunday sketch #23, which featured strips and squares cascading down the page.

Translating a design into a pattern isn’t always easy. I don’t usually think about how each Sunday sketch could be made as a quilt until after I’ve finished the design – sometimes the construction ends up being fairly simple, while other times it’s more complicated or even too difficult to contemplate.

As I thought about how to make this design into a pattern, I realised that following my sketch faithfully would require too many partial seams and fabric pieces of different sizes. I’m sure there are many advanced quilters out there who’d relish the challenge, but I’m not one of them. So instead, I refined the design to minimise the number of fabric pieces and make the piecing a bit simpler. It might still look complicated, but the pattern actually comes together really quickly and easily.

Depending on the colour scheme and gradation, it could be a waterfall (blues and whites), a comet tail (bright whites on a dark background), a burst of fireworks (saturated colours against a night sky) or even unicorn barf (a rainbow of bright colours against a light background):

Interstellar is perfect for solids or patterned fabrics, and an ideal way to use up some of your scraps. Issue 179 of Down Under Quilts is on sale now!