Working in a Series - Kate Colleran Designs

Hi friends!

I had the best time last Thursday! First I spent part of the day with some ladies from the Material Girls quilt club teaching them to make Sgt. Stanley. Such a fun block and it has so many possibilities for the settings.

Sgt. Stanley was part of a series of quilt patterns that Elizabeth and I did a few years back. Each quilt had one block and each block was able to be be rotated and placed in different settings to create a different look.

Tiger Lily Quilt — *Tiger Lily- another one block quilt – art of the Cat Nap series*

It got me to thinking about working in series. I don’t usually work on quilts that have a similar plan or design inspiration. At least I didn’t think I did until I really thought about it!

First series was those one block quilts that we called our Cat Nap series- you know, you lay out a quilt and within moments, there is a cat on it! We also called them that as they were all named after cats! Sgt Stanley was named after Elizabeth’s cat.

Second series may have been the triangle quilts. It started with the one in Quilts and More magazine and since then I have done a few more for magazines as well as a couple of patterns.

My last Facebook Live in August talked about triangle quilts.

And the ongoing series has been projects using my Braid template. It started with my quilt in the Smash Your precut stash book. And it has just kept evolving from there. I used the template in my quilt Quilt Bee for the border, I used it in our latest BOM quilt, A Road Trip, for the tree blocks plus in a few other patterns.

Then of course, I started with the Mini Braid and I love that template! Sew fun! I am visiting with a guild in November and they asked for some new small projects using the Mini Braid so I have been playing around with new patterns.

One is this cute little pillow pattern called HeadRest.

Two other patterns will be a table runner called Top This! and a small improve quilt called Wing It!

And I have been playing around with a tote bag pattern and I have the small size done- the pattern is called Tote That! And I will have 2 sizes in it with an optional zipper closure. Once I get the larger size figured out, it will be ready to go.

So I guess I do work in series! I even do that with my knitting! Right now I am working on 2 projects, and one is a scarf. Because I seem to always be making a scarf or cowl. Really? How many scarves does one neck need? Maybe I should switch to hats- what about this hat book from Malabrigo?

I used to look at quilt books that were all about one technique or one color scheme and think- why? And now I know the answer- because it is fun to explore a topic or style and see what different things you can do!