Summer Sampler 10: A free weekly block pattern series
I have a very exciting announcement this morning! Over the next 3 months, I’m joining with Katie Blakesley of Swim Bike Quilt and Faith Jones of Fresh Lemons Quilts to re-release some of our favorite classic block patterns … entirely for free!
This year marks the 10th anniversary of our Summer Sampler Series quilt-alongs. To celebrate, we’re re-releasing all 12 block patterns from the original 2011 Summer Sampler Series. We’ll be publishing one FREE block pattern per week, beginning next Wednesday, Feb. 17!
In 2011, Katie had a great idea for a quilt-along: Teach modern quilters about traditional block designs. Back then, quilt-alongs weren’t conducted on Instagram or in Facebook groups, there were no live broadcasts, and nobody was doing video tutorials …. heck, we barely even provided fabric requirements. 😂 It was a whole different world, y’all. But that informal, off-the-cuff series gave rise to a book (Vintage Quilt Revival) and an annual quilt-along that grew and evolved beyond our wildest expectations. And of course, these 10 years wouldn’t have been the same without all of you participating and sewing along with us, so we’d like to give something back by re-releasing the full series from that original 2011 quilt-along!
All of the block patterns will be posted as blog posts, just like the original in 2011. But along the way, we’ll be improving on our 10-year-old instructions, adding better photos and graphics, and offering new video tutorials for some of the blocks. (If you would prefer a printable PDF version of these block patterns, you can purchase it right here.)
And I’m happy to say that I’ll be remaking all of the blocks in new fabrics and colors, because some of my fabric choices from 2011 are … um … interesting, to say the least. 😂
Want to make these blocks along with us? We’re not doing the full deluxe quilt-along treatment for this one, so no Facebook group, etc., this time around. But we hope you’ll make the blocks along with us as we re-release them, and post them on Instagram with the hashtag #summersamplerturns10. What a great warm-up for Summer Sampler 2021, right? And … it’s free. Can’t beat that price!
Click here for our complete re-release schedule of all the blocks (plus links to the original 2011 posts if you want to get a jump on it). You can also click here to sign up for our Summer Sampler 10th Anniversary newsletter and be notified each time a new block is posted.
Fabric requirements:
• The equivalent of about 1/4 yard for each block, so about 3 yards of fabric total
• If you plan to use the same background color for every block, we recommend about 2 yards of background fabric, plus 8-12 fat eighths in various colors/prints
Finishing instructions:
While there aren’t any finishing instructions for this 2011 version of Summer Sampler, the finishing instructions from any of our other Summer Sampler patterns (2016-2020) are easily adaptable to these blocks.
See you next week on Katie’s website for our first block, Star of Virginia! If you’re sewing along with us, don’t forget to post your blocks on Instagram with the hashtag #summersamplerturns10!