Upscale Plaid Quilt - the Shamrock version
Well hello there and thanks for stopping by! It is a warm, early March day and I'm excited to share about my finished "Shamrock" Upscale Plaid quilt that I made during our Quilt Along earlier this year. If you joined in, thank you. :) It was a ton of fun! If you didn't join in, never fear....we have all of our Quilt Along content, including video tutorials saved here. Feel free to go through the QAL at your own pace!
If you're not familiar with Upscale Plaid, it's one of our newer patterns in the shop. There are 7 sizes, 5 layouts, and the construction method is just so fun. If you haven't seen the other Upscale Plaid quilts that I've made, be sure to check those out here. Otherwise, let's dive in!
This version uses shades of green and gray with a little pop of cedar. It feels earthy, neutral and quite frankly, I love it. :)
The fabrics are:
- Background: AGF Ginger
- A1: Kona Snow
- A2: AGF Sienna Brick
- A3: Kona Doeskin
- B1: AGF Smooth Pebble
- B2: AGF Caviar
- B3: AGF Balsam Fir
- C1: Kona Dill
- C2: AGF Juniper
- C3: AGF Fresh Sage
We have quilt kits to make this exact quilt (including binding and backing) in the shop!
If you've played around with Upscale Plaid on PreQuilt, then you know that certain colors within this quilt interact with each other. Because of this, I jumped around from Kona to Art Gallery Fabrics for the various shades that I needed for this quilt. I'm not afraid to mix fabric manufacturers, if necessary. I love Kona and AGF, but they do have a different feel to them. Again, I haven't let that stop me before...sometimes its necessary to get the exact shade that you're looking for.
If you followed along with the Quilt Along, then you've already seen this quilt come to life. It's really fun to watch the progression of strip piecing paired with simple sewing of squares and rectangles. The quilt top assembly is very straight forward and easy with a clever twist. I think you'll enjoy putting it together!
I finished this quilt top about a week before QuiltCon in February. We sent it off for it's beauty treatment with Sara of Stitch Lab Quilting, then she brought the quilt to QuiltCon for us to display it in our booth. For this quilt, I wanted a pantograph that felt edge-y and geometric with lots of movement and texture. We ended up going with "Vista" by Leisha Farnsworth using a medium gray thread.
For the backing, I used one of my favorite fabrics, Festoon Umber by Katarina Rocella for Art Gallery Fabrics. It's from her Botanist collection, which we actually used to make a Nightingale quilt about a year ago (seen here). It gives a nice contrast to the front of the quilt, which is a little bit unexpected, but overall, I like that it adds a floral element to the quilt. Ya'll know that I love florals!
For the binding, I used Backroads Three by Bonnie Christine for Art Gallery Fabrics. This is a re-coloring of one of her older stripe prints called Backroads Umber, which I have used on many MANY quilt bindings. This version, however, is a dark forest green color that reads almost charcoal with a hint of pigment. It's a good one!
Don't forget, you can add on this backing and binding to the quilt kits in our shop!
Thanks for reading about this quilt. I hope that you love it as much as I do. :)
Happy sewing!
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