Supernova Quilt

The bandwagon is a real thing, and it fuels the quilting industry. We all feel the pressure to make all the pretty things, in the latest must-have fabrics, which seem to come out at an ever-faster pace. I have a closet full of good intentions: fabrics I had to have, haphazardly organized by color with assorted stacks pulled out for future projects. At any moment, I have 3-5 quilt projects in my queue, which doesn't include the other projects I have planned, some with fabric purchased/selected, some waiting for just the right moment. My stash has finally reached the stage of burdensome, where it doesn't fit in my drawers any longer and it feels heavy--like I need to put a dent in it. Truthfully, I sew almost entirely from my stash. It's kind of awkward when a well-meaning, friendly employee asks what I'm making while she cuts my purchases. I rarely shy away from saying my stash, and I try to not feel badly about that because when it's time to make a quilt, I don't go to the shop to buy what I can find that hopefully will be perfect--I open my drawers and audition fabric I already have. It makes my quilts so personal, a reflection of my stash and my preferences.

While I AM feeling heavy and burdened right now, for the most part, my method works really well for me. I love the way my quilts work out, I love pulling fabric from my stash, remembering where I bought it and how much I love it. But, it also means I'm really not much of a bandwagon quilter. With the exception of my last quilt, the Snap Happy quilt, I rarely make quilts from recently released patterns. I guess my Glare quilt is also a fairly new release, since Latifah has been teaching it but not really promoting the pattern until now, but that was for a class I took. I just don't sew brand new designs. 

So with that habit I have, it should be no surprise that I'm over 10 years late to the Supernova bandwagon. This patten comes from Quilting Modern, the book by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pederson. The quilt is one of the most dramatic in the book, and certainly the most frequently made. And I think Jacquie taught the quilt as a class. So, the internet is full of beautiful Supernova quilts. I loved it when I first saw the book, and added it to my mental bucket list. But I only finally got around to it. I don't know what took me so long, except that maybe other things were just more important; or maybe I was intimidated by the improv nature of the piecing, though it's really not difficult; or maybe I hadn't been inspired by a color palette. For whatever reason, I just never did it. And then, I found a fabric pull that I liked. It's been waiting its turn patiently for a few months, long enough that I can't really remember what inspired it. And when I was ready, I started it, at long last. 

I wish the instructions had been a little more fleshed out, to be honest. I would have appreciated more specific suggestions for how angled to make the pieces, and I feel like it created a lot more scraps than necessary. I mean, I'm a quilter so I'm not going to turn down scraps, but it felt like I cut up my fabric more than I needed to. Still, it was an easy pattern to make, and I appreciated the chart with how many of each layout you needed, although there was a typo that didn't match the suggested layout. But it's improv so it's fine! 

I love that I used the turtle fussy cut for the center. Maybe that was where the inspiration for this quilt came from. That might actually be it. Whether it is or not, it does kinda symbolize me and my quilting: slow and steady. It may have taken me 10 years to get to this quilt, but I love it now that I've made it.