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| Carnival Quilt |
Discover the Magic of the Carnival Quilt by Jinny Beyer
I love being a quilter and finding patterns that push my abilities and create eye-catching and jaw-dropping blocks. For some projects that combine a creative and brilliant design with eye-catching visual movement, you simply must check out Carnival Quilt by the legendary Jinny Beyer.
I love being a quilter and finding patterns that push my abilities and create eye-catching and jaw-dropping blocks. For some projects that combine a creative and brilliant design with eye-catching visual movement, you simply must check out Carnival Quilt by the legendary Jinny Beyer.
The Carnival Quilt is a piece of stunning fabric manipulation and shading using color inspired by the mesmerizing and complex designs created by kaleidoscopes. If you're thinking about your next heirloom quilt or perhaps to simply add more to your quilting collection, let's explore the reasons for this pattern and what you should expect before cutting your first piece.
An Ingenious, Block-Free Construction
The architecture of the Carnival Quilt is very interesting. The method used to create this quilt is very different from those used for traditional quilt patterns, which are typically made using blocks of a square or geometric form.
- The Wedges: You will assemble twelve large wedges–six regular, six reversed (or “mirror” wedges).
- Final Size: All the lovely strip-sets and big fussy cut fabrics are put together and the quilt is a generous 75½" x 84"." A wonderful size for a bed quilt as well as an amazing show piece.
Techniques you will master:
The pattern assumes basic quiltmaking abilities, but you'll need to stretch out particular quilting muscles. The quilt is a great skill builder for intermediate and ambitious quilters:
- Fussy Cutting: This pattern uses much of the fussy cutting to generate the kaleidoscopic effect. Using full size and larger templates, you will carefully extract individual motifs from larger prints and border prints.
- Strip-Sets: You will be creating beautiful color gradients with strip-sets that are offset to the left and right of your strip-sets which will lend a great deal of visual depth to the final triangular wedges.
- Handling Bias Edges: There are lots of bias edges to deal with due to the wedge construction. Quilter's hint: Be careful not to stretch your fabric when pinning and sewing. This is where a small amount of spray starch can come in handy!
- Perfect Mitered Borders: The pattern includes Jinny Beyer's signature "no-math" technique for mitering an edge around a quilt, which means that your elaborate border prints will go around corners beautifully.
Define the fabric requirements and selection.
The fabric is the real life of the Carnival Quilt. The pattern uses 11 different fabrics, from ¼ yard for accents to 4 ¾ yards for the main border print (Fabric 11). Combining large scale paisleys, gradient shading fabrics and symmetrical border prints are the keys to the design's song. Jinny Beyer's border prints are made with these symmetrical patterns in mind and will guarantee a perfect mirror image after fussy cutting.
Final Thought
The Carnival Quilt is more than a sewing project – it's an optical illusion, precision and a fabric placement adventure! The ingenious wedge construction allows the actual piecing to go a surprisingly fluid way, although it does take a lot of patience to prepare the template and fussy cut the pieces. The Carnival Quilt is definitely worth the trip if you are looking for an heirloom quilt made of unusual beauty that appears to be too complicated to do by the average person. Use your template plastic, starch your yardage and let the magic happen at your sewing machine!
Full Pattern: Carnival Quilt Free PDF Pattern 🎁
