New York Beauty Sunflower Quilt

     "Many block patterns have multiple names, making documentation even more challenging for the quilt historian. The New York Beauty quilt was known by several names in the nineteenth century: "Rocky Mountain Road", "Rocky Mountain", ”Rail Through The Mountains”, "Crown of Thorns", and "The Great Divide". In the 1930s, the “New York Beauty” title was adopted by Stearns and Foster Mountain Mist^® company for an old quilt pattern to be published as a new design. It hadn’t been popular in New York in the previous century but it was in Tennessee.  The traditional design includes four-quarter circles, or arcs, with points radiating outward from the curved seams.  It is widely considered one of the most advanced pieced quilt patterns."

      - I Love New York Beauties: A Brief History of an Iconic Quilt Pattern (The Quilt Index)

Quilting has a very rich and interesting history, I mean there are museums dedicated to quilts! I googled quickly and found 12, including one in South Korea (my bucket list just got longer).

Let's get into the design!  I made two YouTube videos this week: 

15 Minute Version

2 Hour Real Time Version

One of the difficulties of designing these types of quilts is the limitations the little spikes present.  Because we don't want to run a design across the seams and potentially detract from the meticulous piecework.  So inevitably we are confined to the tiny little spaces.  luckily for me this quilt was arranged into a bouquet of sunflowers and it was fairly simple to keep to the tried and true dot-to-dot designs that fit so nicely into these shapes. 

I opted to use both straight edge and curved dot-to-dot to add a little more shape to the "flower petals" I planned for a half feather and some pebbles for the center, a simple classic design.  Where I decided to add some extra effort was into some ghost quilting (building designs using quilting that complements or adds to the piecework without being a part of the original design).  

I planned the ghost quilting to extend some of the flowers behind others. To achieve this I ended up pulling out every round ruler I had!  I always like to audition my rulers before I commit to a design so I am sure I have the right tool for the job.   These rulers are no longer being made but others like them can be found, they are called "nested circle rulers".

The background fabric of this quilt was a very dark forest green, after matching a thread colour I knew I was in for a little trouble, quilting dark thread on dark fabric can be challenging to see.  I do have a side window in my studio for this reason which allows me to create a perfect lighting situation for these circumstances, if you want more info you can watch my first-ever YouTube video on this subject:

3 Tips for Quilting Dark Quilt Tops

I decided to make my life simple and stick to what I do best pebbles and swirls, you will see in the video I opted to go with more swirls than pebbles because they go a little faster and use less thread. 

Finally, I was ready to quilt!  Here were the rulers I chose to help me. 

 I also decided to modify the center of the sunflowers to a cross-hatch instead of the planned pebbles, I thought that there were already a lot of pebbles going on in the background and I wanted to make sure that the centers of the flowers had a contrasting design that wouldn't get lost in the ghost quilting.  When I do cross-hatching I like to mark the lines because it is much easier to get the lines to be straight and perfectly aligned. 

 I'm really happy with how this quilt came together and thanks so much to Sandra for trusting me with her beautiful piecework.  I am going to be teaching about designing these types of quilts (Quiltworx, Be Colourful, New York Beauty) on a Caribbean cruise with two other amazing quilters you've probably heard of, Susan Smith (our hostess) and Bethanne Nemesh.  This cruise is booked to set sail in January 2025 and I would love for you to join us! This cruise is super unique because it will be filmed and the videos will be available for you to brush up on for months after the cruise! Use my name at checkout and let's go cruise!

BEST QUILT CRUISE EVER LINK!

Here are some links to some of the tools and supplies I used, I do get a small commission if you purchase these  items using my links or codes:

Chalk Marking Pencil

Rocket Ruler

Code 10% Off - creativecurve2024

Charming Ruler

Code 10% Off - creativecurve2024