The Bright And Cheery Colored Glass Quilt

Colored Glass is my modern quilt pattern inspired by the stained glass windows in the churches and cathedrals of Europe. This pattern looks great in patterned or solid fabric. It's also a great skill building quilt pattern for the beginner quilter. Colored Glass uses Flying Geese and "square in a square" blocks to create a fun, modern quilt pattern.

You can find a copy of the Colored Glass quilt pattern here.

About the Pattern

As a kid my family was lucky enough to visit Europe several times to visit relatives and to sight see. I remember touring so many beautiful cathedrals, the Vatican, and peaceful countryside churches. I have also been able to take my children to Europe twice. The beauty of the places of worship inspired the Colored Glass quilt pattern.

The Colored Glass modern quilt pattern is intended to look like a stained glass window, while also using easy enough piecing that a beginner quilter could sew it. Most of the piecing in the Colored Glass quilt uses square pieces with a couple skill building units added in.

The quilt is made up of two different blocks, this adds some variety to the sewing process and makes the quilt more interesting to look at.

If you are a beginning quilter and you haven't sewn Flying Geese before, now is the time to start! Flying Geese are used in half of the blocks in the Colored Glass quilt pattern. However, with a little practice, and if it's your first time sewing Flying Geese then I do suggest you practice first, you will have Flying Geese down in no time.

I even wrote a blog post to help you out. You can find it here. the post goes over the No Waste Method of Flying Geese and how to trim them, as well as a couple tricks I've learned along the way.

The Colored Glass quilt pattern uses fat quarters. In fact, I love this pattern because there is barely any waste! Each fat quarter is almost fully used, so you will have very little scraps or waste from this quilt.

The pattern is written for the most efficient use of the fabrics. However, adding extra colors using scraps to the quilt is also easy since many squares are the same size. I have not made a scrappy version of Colored Glass, but I think it would look so great!  If you make one please share it with me!

I wrote this pattern to have all the sizes for you. That means Colored Glass has five sizes! Let's go over the sizes and dimensions:

• Baby Size (48 in. x 48 in.)
• Throw Size (60 in. x 60 in.)
• Twin Size (72 in. x 96 in.)
• Queen Size (96 in. x 108 in.)
• King Size (108 in. x 108 in.)

The pattern includes a coloring sheet with all the sizes.  This helps you get a good idea of what your quilt will look like before you make it. Or you can just color for the fun of coloring. :)

I listed this pattern as a beginner. But it is important to be able to sew a consistent 1/4 inch seam. This is important when adding the flying geese and the "square in a square" into the quilt. An inconsistent seam can cut off the points on both of these units and cause a lot of frustration. So test your sewing skills first if you are a beginner or consider using a seam guide. I almost always use a seam guide to make sure my seams are consistent. There is no shame in a little help.

 

About this Quilt

This version of Color Glass was intended to be bright and cheerful while pulling all pieces from my stash. I think I accomplished my goals. I dug through my fabric cabinet and pulled out anything that was bright and I thought might go together. I had a hard time telling yellows and greens apart in this quilt so I had to call in some backup (being colorblind is a pain). However, the final fabrics were the happy combination I was going for.

When choosing fabrics for this quilt I wanted to make sure to keep the main colors red, yellow, green, blue, pink and orange. I wanted each fabric to have a different modern pattern accented in white. I think two fabrics ended up having the same print, but other than that I was also able to choose fabrics with varying levels of patterns. I don't like it when my quilts look too busy with too many busy prints compounded in one area. For this reason I like to use a variety of more "blender" type of fabrics to balance everything out. This helps even out the quilt when the fabrics are spread evenly throughout.

I also made sure that I included varying shades and tones of each color. The variety of fabrics made piecing the quilt easy. I organized the fabrics for each plus block so each block had colors sets I liked. But all "square in a square" blocks I randomly sewed together and figured out as I went. That's my favorite kind of quilting. 

 

 Another reason I love the Colored Glass modern quilt pattern is there is no sashing! People tend to either love or hate sashing. I don't love it. Once I finish my blocks I just want to sew them all together, not add sashing between.  This pattern has no sashing, which means one less step and less background fabric!

This bright and cheery version of the quilt is a throw version which turns out square. I realized after making this I am not a huge fan of square quilts. They just kind of feel wrong to me. So next time I make this quilt I could easily add in a little more background fabric and a couple more fat quarters to add one more row. This would make a nice large throw and the rectangle shape that I love.

However, this quilt reminds me of the perfect picnic quilt. I think maybe it's the red check fabric throughout. But I think I might need to take it out for a picnic with my little girls.

I spray basted this quilt on my kitchen table in sections. This is the fastest and best way I have found to baste my small to medium sized quilts. I prefer to spray baste because there is less of a chance of the batting and fabric shifting while quilting. However, I also pin baste when I run out of basting spray.

I have been quilting straight lines more lately. It's fast and I like to do it every 1/2 inch. I think it gives quilts a nice classic and simple look.

 

Colored Glass is such a fun quilt pattern. It's easy, has variety and uses fat quarters. This version is going to be used and loved like crazy. Just having it out brightens the room. I have made three Colored Glass so far, but I have a feeling I'll be making another soon... they are that fun to make.