Color is one of Joanne best friends. You’ll get to know that once you read through her interview.

Her style and design is fun and quirky with a pile of color on top– but the color is usually restricted to a few and not many in one project or quilt. She also isn’t afraid of using dark color for the background to add a little more interest.  Along with the traditional patchwork she also designs in paper piecing- her most recent features snowflakes.

Don’t forget to check out her pattern this month – I’m sure you are going to really like it!

Here’s a bit more about Joanne:

Joanne was bitten by the quilting bug almost 20 years ago, paper piecing and hand quilting her first quilt over the course of a year and a half. Her speed has improved since then, though enjoying the process ranks higher than speed in her book!

She enjoys playing with shapes, colours and layouts, and figuring out the math that goes with them. While she has been dabbling in quilt design for at least 15 years, she only started sharing them as patterns in 2013. She has since had designs published in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine and begun speaking and teaching about quilting.

She draws on previous experiences studying Physics and working in museum education programming to create clear, organized patterns and to plan her quilting classes, and thinks she has finally figured out what she wants to be when she grows up: a quilter!

About the project for the quilt group: 

I used my Scavenger Hunt BOM block as my starting point. When I finally settled on a design with three stars, my astronomer husband said it was a triple star system, so I went looking for more information about those. If there was a planet associated with a triple star system, the stars would be its suns and it would have three sunsets, one as each sun set. Triple Sunset seemed like just the right name for this quilt! I hope you will like the simple, crisp lines of this 51″x 68″ small throw.

Triple Sunset

Finished size: 51 ½” x 68 ½”

Materials:

Background: 3 1/2 yards; Dark print or solid: 3/8 yards; Medium print or solid: 1/2 yard; Light print or solid: 3/8 yards. Binding: 1/2 yard (for straight grain binding); Backing 3 1/2″ yards; Batting 56″ x 73″

Download the Pattern: login to access

The Night Sky Mystery Quilt Block

It was originally inspired by an IAQ member’s post about her challenges in choosing what fabrics to put where in a block. I thought it would be a fun exercise to make a block using dark, medium and light values and shuffle those values around to see how it would change the look and feeling of the block. I encourage your members to play with value in this block and see what they like best!

Grab the quilt block here: login to access

~ Enjoy her interview ~

How did you get your start in sewing?

My husband’s great-aunt was a quilter, and though I met her only once, the quilts she gave us for our wedding and for our children inspired me. When I needed a wedding present for my brother I decided to spend the gift budget on quilting tools and supplies to make him a quilt. A friend who dabbled in many crafts showed me the basics, pointed me to a book on the subject and I plunged in. The wedding gift was delivered very late, but I loved the process.

What inspires you? Colors! I love them all! I think I tend to be drawn to the brighter hues, as you’ll see if you spend any time browsing my blog.I like crisp designs, geometric shapes and contrast. Thinking in terms of quilting styles, I think my tastes lie right between traditional and modern. The geometry and symmetry of traditional quilt blocks and units definitely appeal to me, but I also like asymmetrical settings and negative space more common in modern quilts.

Do you have a favorite notion? Does the rotary cutter count? I wouldn’t be quilting if I had to trace templates and cut with scissors! I also use my Quilter’s Strip Ticket a lot. One side has instructions for the bias tube method of making bias binding and the other has charts telling me what size square yields how much binding of various widths.

What’s coming up for you that we can check out~ I’m working on a pattern for my Simply Snow quilt. You can see pictures of it on my blog, Instagram or Facebook. That project has been simmering for several years so I am excited to have finally turned it into a quilt!

Quirky or fun fact about yourself? Over the course of two years several years ago I went from being paid to wear a Star Trek Federation Science Officer uniform at work, to being paid to wear 1850’s garb, petticoats and all!

COUPON and GIVEAWAY! And, Joanne has so generously offered both a coupon and a giveaway for IAQ Members! Login to access the code and the details of the giveaway.

Where can you find her?

Blog

Shop

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