Magic Squared

During the pandemic, April Rosenthal designed a follow up collection to her very adorable Midnight Magic Halloween collection from a year or two earlier. I'm not generally a big Halloween fan, but I really loved (a lot of) that line, especially the florals. It was Halloween, but not overly cutesy, not overly Halloween-esque, and just really nice. However, the fabric faced major delays, and apparently, a lot of shops cancelled their orders. When I saw Abby Latimer had precuts, I ordered a jelly roll and a charm pack to make sure I had at least some of the fabric, and luckily, a local quilt shop got most of the line in yardage so I was able to buy some cuts of the best prints, especially the florals. 

But, what to do with the precuts? I don't usually use precuts. I feel wasteful if I don't use the entire piece of fabric, so trimming a charm square down to 3 or 4 inches is out of the question. I thought about a simple star block, using the charm squares as centers and the jelly roll to make flying geese for the points, but I didn't love the math. And then I saw a quilt on the cover of a book, and realized it would be perfect. I had seen the book at my mom's, but it was simple enough I was able to do the math myself. 

I cut some 2-1/2" strips from some of my Halloween fabric to mix in because I don't love quilts made from just one line of fabric, and got to work. It came together really quickly and I love it!

Apparently, other people loved it too. My quilter, Abby Latimer, posted a picture of it on Instagram and lots of people asked what the pattern was. Abby didn't know, I responded to one person who tagged me and gave the details, but I couldn't believe how rude some people were. "Why post a quilt without posting the pattern information??" or some such variation. Berating a longarm quilter for not providing detailed information she didn't have just seemed very rude. I hopped back onto the post to check out the comment section when I received a DM from someone I don't know who asked if I sold patterns because Abby wouldn't respond to her questions. I was appalled at how she had berated Abby, telling her she was so unprofessional and how could she possibly run a quilting business like this...Abby was more patient than I would have been, and I didn't dare respond because I didn't think I could without being rude back. However, a simple glance through the comments would have revealed my source for the design, and if she'd spent as much time scrolling through comments as she did berating Abby, she would have seen the answer to her question. Sigh. The internet has killed civility. 

I backed it with an amazing Halloween print I found on Hawthorne Supply Co on clearance. Love that! I think it's Art Gallery, but I'm not totally sure...

Magic Squared, long arm quilted by Abby Latimer, completed 2022