"Snowflake" Quilt

The sky was dark with an impending storm as I sewed the last two rows of the “Snowflake” quilt together. I hurried and ran outside and hung it up on the not-quite-tall-enough-fence to get a photo before the weather hit. It seemed appropriate to be photographing this quilt on a February day when the sun wasn’t shining!

This quilt pattern called “Snowflake” was designed by Nicole Dakwiewicz and is available for purchase on her website, MODERNHANDCRAFT.com. You really do need the pattern to make this quilt. More than once I got lost in the design, even with the pattern right in front of me! But don’t worry, that was just me—the pattern is well written.

Nicole has instructions for 3 variations: One-color (plus white) , Three-color (plus white), and Scrappy.

I picked the One-color version but planned to use a stack of blue and green fabrics. But I didn’t want to have a background of squares like the scrappy version. I struggled with how to use my collection of fabrics, but eventually choose to improv-piece the background, using pieces cutto similar sizes as pieces found in and around the white snowflake. It took me a lot more time, but I really like it. This is a very popular quilt pattern, but the background makes this quilt uniquely mine,

As you might image, there are a lot of quirky seams in this quilt. In each large block I pressed some seams to one side, spun some of them like a four-patch block, and opened some of the seams flat (as in garment sewing), trying to get a the flatest block possible. But in the final quilt assembly, I ended up with a number seams that just couldn’t be nested. If I made this quilt again, I would press all the seams open. I almost never do that with quilts, but I think that will give the best results in this pattern.

I found a great blue fabric with a large linear design for the quilt back. Still thinking about how to quilt it!