The Rotation Series

I had an interesting interaction on Instagram today about this quilt, and thought I’d address it here. I’m so intimately acquainted with Rotation, having lived with it for four years now, that I forget that not everyone has this pattern living in their heads. One of my favorite parts of it is how different it can look with different fabric combos and placement. I’ve done four versions so far, and they all look so different! Let’s take a look at my Rotation quilt series, and I’ll talk about some more ideas I have for playing around with it.

The first version I made used a Furocious Friends from Island Batik. I mixed all the fabrics up and used up an entire fat quarter bundle. This was my original design, and the goal was to use up every bit of a fat quarter bundle for the quilt. I had a strip of fabric about 3″ x 18″ left from each fat quarter. You can read more about it here.

My next version used Redux by Giucy Giuce for Andover Fabrics and was published in the May 2020 issue of Love of Quilting. As you can see, it is exactly the same layout – the centers match the background of each block. For this one, I also pieced the binding from the fat quarters, so there was even less fabric sent to the scrap bin.

These next two versions do not completely consume a fat quarter bundle. So, I’m a little bummed that they add to the scrap heap, but that makes them perfect for those super-precious bundles you can’t bear to part with. You will still have plenty of fabric left over to play with in another project.

Last year I made this version, using Sew Good by Deb Fisher for Windham Fabrics. I changed it up this time, using a single background to give a more cohesive look. Part of the deal with being in the Look Book (fabric launch guide that goes out to shops when sales reps are selling new fabric to them) was that I had to have a print version of the pattern available to sell. So, Rotation has been the first pattern I have published in print. Publishing quilting patterns is a tremendous amount of work.

On the plus side, I now have 4 quilt shops that carry my pattern, along with it being available in my Etsy shop. If you want to make this exact version of Rotation, Gotham Quilts has it available as a kit!

Finally, I made my latest version using Seaside Serenity by AJ’s Watercolor Studios for Blank Quilting Corporation. This one uses my “minimalist” layout, where the background and centers are all a single fabric. I love the combination of the calm color palette and the creamy background. It looks so different from all of the other versions!

I have more mock-ups and ideas on how to make simple changes to the quilt for different effects. I’m looking forward to trying out new things with this pattern. Next up is flipping some blocks around, so they spin the other way. Not all of them, just some. How would it look if I did the rows with a half-drop? Also, I want to play with making the blocks in smaller sizes, using my AccuQuilt system. I think it could be a fantastic scrap buster.

Are you tempted to try it out? You can get a copy of the Rotation pattern at the following shops:

• Gotham Quilts – New York City, NY
• Pennington Quilt Works – Pennington, NJ
• Sew Inspired – Simsbury, CT
• Inspirations Quilt Shop – Fort Morgan, CO

You can also get it from me in my Etsy shop. I make more money if you purchase it from me, but it is very important to me that you support your local quilt shops whenever possible.

**Thanks to Irene Roderick for her piece in Issue 19 of Curated Quilts. She discusses working in a series, and after reading it, I realized that I do this all the time. I just tangle all of my series up over the years. I make a quilt, and it lives in my mind asking me questions until I make it again.