Cosmic Waterfall Quilt

Earlier this year I was thrilled to be a pattern tester for Radha of Sewing Through Fog as part of her Cosmic Waterfall pattern launch. This was my first pattern testing experience and it was a great one! Radha set up an IG chat where she & the testers could share progress & feedback, ask opinions and technical questions, and, crucially, share photos of our cats and dogs.

Having just completed a Solar Flare quilt (pattern by Alderwood Studios), I was feeling pretty confident in my strip piecing skills. This pattern was actually easier to strip pice than I expected, for a couple reasons. First, none of the strips are super long. Second, Radha instructs you to cut length-of-fabric strips, as opposed to the traditional width of fabric, or WOF, strips. This directional shift meant that the skinny strips were much less prone to stretching!

My inspiration for this quilt was the Firefall phenomenon at Yosemite National Park. I’ve not yet actually seen it in person, but I thought it would be good to use some colors I don’t often use to evoke a fiery look. I used all fabrics from my stash for this quilt - there are some Art Gallery and Colorworks solids, some prints from Beyond the Reef, a bit of RSS Speckled because of course, some prints handed down from my mom and some others given to me by friends, and some solids that I’m sure were from the remnant bin at that big-box store.

I opted for organic wavy line quilting, one of my favorite walking foot quilting motifs, using my trusty Juki domestic. As always, I used Aurifil 50wt, and as usual, I chose a variegated top thread - they are my absolute favorite for quilting!