Quarter Moon Quilt – Memento Version

It’s somewhat unusual for me to make the same pattern twice, but I recently had the opportunity to make a new version of my Quarter Moon quilt — this time using fabric from one of my favorite designers! Carolyn Friedlander has a new collection, Memento, coming out this fall in cooperation with Ruby Star Society, and I was thrilled to have my pattern selected to support the fabric release.

This quilt came together in three distinct phases with travel between each one! I began working on it right before QuiltCon in February, and was able to get everything cut before I went to Raleigh — no small feat because the cutting for this pattern is admittedly time-consuming. (There are a few different fabric groupings, and each one is cut different depending on where that fabric falls in the quilt top and whether it appears more than once.) I pieced the blocks after I got back from QuiltCon, and then put together the top after we got back from our family spring break trip in early/mid March.

As I loaded this quilt onto my longarm, I was planning to use linen thread — nice and neutral and calm. But as I opened up my thread bin, neon yellow started yelling at me. I had never used this color, but one of the fabrics was printed with neon yellow ink. If not now, then when?? It didn’t take me long to pivot to using bright yellow neon and I LOVED IT SO MUCH. Like, so much that I immediately ordered additional spools of neon pink and blue and green. Neon era, here I come…

On the first version of this quilt, I leaned into the “ocean” theme and used a pantograph with long curving vertical lines. This time I wanted to try something different, and ended up choosing the Oil Spill pantograph. The organic lines echoed one of the fabric motifs and provided really nice all-over texture.