Iris: An Alteration

by Jennifer Jones March 21, 2023

You might have seen the new Iris I made this month for my Pattern of the Month highlight over on Instagram. I used Ruby Star Society's Warp and Weft Crossweaves from the new Honey line as well as a dreamy woven, all from Lamb and Loom, to create a bright and cheerful Iris.

I love these fabrics so much. They're vibrant and saturated as well as soft to the touch and easy to sew with! Alexia Abegg truly designs the most lovely fabrics to sew with!

But for this one, I wanted to play around with an idea I'd had for Iris for a while. If you're not familiar with this pattern (found here), it's one I created back in 2020 using a tube method of assembly. If you haven't tried this method (think scrappy trip around the world quilt), it is so fun. Every time I make Iris I'm reminded of how fun it is. Here's the original design:

So the original Iris has a line of horizontal symmetry right in the middle of the quilt, making the center kind of elongated...

My thought was, what if we didn't stretch that center so much, but let it remain a bit more balanced, like this...

It was such an easy change! All I did was change a small thing on step 8, page 6 of the pattern. After you've unpicked your tubes, lay them out for the top and bottom quadrants. Set the bottom quadrant aside, and then take out one unit from the bottom part of each top quadrant tube. That's a confusing sentence...let me show you...

This is *before* you sew your tubes together! Just pick out one little unit! Now your quilt is balanced around that center row rather than two equal quadrants.

This certainly isn't a necessary change, but I really like it! And I mostly like revisiting these old patterns and giving them a new creative approach.

If you haven't made Iris yet, I want to encourage you to give it a try! There are even some videos from the quilt along saved on my YouTube channel if you need a little extra help!

And if you love this fabric, head over to Lamb and Loom and see if she still has some kits available!

Thanks for reading!!

xo,

Jennifer