“Broken Axle” – A New FREE Pattern

I’m super excited to get to be part of the project hop for this new fabric line! This lovely fabric line is “Always” by my friend Belle at Seams Sew Me. This fabric was SEW much fun to work with. It’s from Benartex, so the quality is lovely! The colors are SEW pretty, and it has a nice pearly shine. You can check out all of the fabulous makers from the project hop HERE. Amanda Whisman from @bemandythings is up after me, so be sure to check out her project tomorrow.

This fabric is perfect for special occasion gifts, and that’s what we were focusing on in the project hop. At 80″ x 80″, this project is definitely not small, but it’s still a quick and easy make, perfect for a wedding, bridal shower, or anniversary gift. This line has some lovely 108″ backs so you can save a little time by not having to piece your backing. You can see the pretty floral backing that I chose in the picture below.

This design was actually the first project I made as a creator for Missouri Star Quilt Company, back in July of 2024. I didn’t make a pattern for it at first, just a free tutorial. But now, about two years later, here we are with a FREE pattern! You can get the pattern straight to your inbox.

GET MY “BROKEN AXLE” PATTERN FREE

A Little Bit About this Pattern

It’s super quick for such a large quilt. I made my quilt top in ONE afternoon! I combined two “easier than it looks” techniques in this design. The top can be made with all layer cake squares and minimal cutting. It has a lot of large pieces, so it’s great for those large scale prints that you don’t want to cut into small pieces.

Warning: You will not have to sew bias seams together for this quilt top, but the top will end up with bias edges. If this is something that bothers you, I do have a few suggestions in the pattern: lots of starch and/or sewing a stay stitch around the quilt top with a 1/8″ seam allowance. For my quilt top I did… neither of those things and had exactly zero trouble because of it. BUT, I also quilted it myself on a domestic machine, meaning I was able to just baste it down and keep the edges cooperative that way. The bias edges may cause a little bit more of a problem on a longarm because of the way the top has to be loaded into the frame. So, you may want to do something about those bias edges if you’re going to send it off to be quitled. Check with your longarmer to see if there are any special instructions you should follow to deal with the bias edges. As always, if your quilter tells you something different than what I say, mind him or her instead of me.

Why the Name?

I tend to have a lot of fun with naming my quilt patterns, but I wasn’t really able to come up with a name for this one back in 2024 when I made the original tutorial. All of the names I wanted to use were already taken. This time around, I was making a mock up using the “Always” fabric and thought the foreground looked sort of like an axle. The “broken” part of the appearance come from the nature of using layer cakes for this type of design. The inclusion of a few “medium volumes” in the foreground make the axle a little less defined in a few places here and there. On top of that, it’s hard to predict where some of the foreground piece will end up. This makes for a few spots where you have same or very similar fabrics touching. This makes the foreground look a little different in those places, but I feel like it adds character to the design. That will all make sense when you read the pattern. You can get the FREE pattern HERE.