My First Magazine Quilt!

The title for this post is a little bit decieving. While it is my magazine quilt, it’s not a new thing. That magazine issue, Simply Modern #35 actually came out in December of 2023, almost two years ago now. I just never put it on the blog. A few things made me think about blogging about this one. I recently talked a little bit about this one in my first episode of “Quilt Tours” on my YouTube channel. I’m also going to be releasing it as a pattern in my own format soon. So, here’s a little bit about this quilt, and it’s only a couple years late!

My initial idea for this design came from the idea of a star blowing up and breaking, pulling the star apart and leaving pieces missing. The secondary stars with the sashing corner squares as the centers were a nice surprise. Sometimes you can picture a design in your head, but it’s hard to know exactly how it will look until you draw it out or make the quilt top. I actually didn’t see the secondary stars until I started playing with the colorways. BUT, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

This one was my first big block design. The finished size for each blocks is 18″. Before this design, my biggest blocks were the common 12″ size. I’m actually addicted to the big blocks now with most of my blocks being 18″or bigger.

This design was rejected twice before it was accepted to Simply Modern. The first one was just a rejection with no explaination, not that they owed me one… I didn’t even get a personal rejection letter. I was part of a mailing list for people who submit designs, and I got the “we’ve notified the people who were selected” email with all the others who weren’t selected. The second rejection was a little more positive in that they said they liked the design but had recently published another star design. I was actually surprised when the third answer came back that they wanted to use it.

The moral of the story is not to give up. If you have a design that you want to submit to magazines, you may get rejected before you get accepted. You can never be exactly sure what each magazine is looking for at any given time. They may like your design, but it doesn’t fit with what they need at that moment. Also, just because one editor doesn’t like it, that doesn’t mean someone else won’t.

I used Sharon Holland’s fabric line, “Kindred” for this quilt. This design idea had been in my head for a while, and when I saw that fabric line, I knew that this is what I wanted to make with it. For the quilting, I decided to go with paisleys. This has become one of my go to designs for when I want to make something look a little fancier and add lots of texture. BUT, at the time, I had only had one successful attempt at an all over paisley design. Quilting a magazine quilt with a design I’d only ever succeeded at once before was sort of a silly thing to do, but I think it worked out ok.