Back in the 2010s, I bought the entire 1/2 yard bundle of fabric designer Heather Ross’s line called Tiger Lily. At the time, my daughter was young and it felt like it was the perfect collection for a little girl. Plus her middle name is Lily. The internal reference was too hard to ignore. Also, I had just gotten into quilting on a much deeper level. I had just opened my shop, La Rue de Fleurs, and every fabric purchase seemed like a great idea! All I wanted was to buy fabric and build my stash to play with! Well, the shop got too busy for extracurricular quilt making, and my daughter never got her personal Heather Ross Tiger Lily quilt. Yet, I never wanted to use the fabric for a client project either. I had bought it for my tiger “Lily” and it seemed wrong to use it up on a stranger. So it has sat as a bundle on my shelf for the next several years. Still beautiful and beloved, but useless. Let’s take this old Heather Ross fabric and use it up on my new Geometry Dash pattern! But first, a little back story.
Using a Beloved Fabric Collection
Heather Ross fabrics are very popular, I think for several reasons. She has a very charming hand-drawn look to her work which feels like you’re peering into someone’s vibrant dream of a sketchbook. Her color choices are bold and saturated. Many of the prints are small icons perfect for cutting up into little squares for quilts. I also enjoy the storytelling that seems to go along with each collection. She recently released her 20th-anniversary collection with Windham Fabrics, compiling some of her favorite prints from two decades of work. Not only do they all work together to tell the tale of her design career, the stories that go along with each tell of a wonderful life full of inspiration. I am always a sucker for a great “where I get my inspiration” story! (Seriously, go read some of the backstories that go along with the fabric collections.)
Anyway, back to the collection I own collecting dust on my shelf….At the time, Tiger Lily especially caught my eye because it told the tale of a young girl’s childhood climbing trees, picking wildflowers, dancing, and playing with cats. All themes my daughter could directly relate to. The colors were a bold, organic mix of golden yellow, orange, brown, green, and pink. Feminine, but not too “baby girl.” I felt as though any quilt I might make would stand the test of time- or at least be loved well into the tween years.
Gah! See what I mean! That’s some of the fabric collection above, with two additional unicorn prints I pulled in. The little girl riding on the unicorn is from the Heather Ross Chloé collection and the other unicorns are from a Ruby Star Society print, both of which are, sadly, now out of print.
Besides missing the perfect timing to create a quilt for my daughter from the collection, I could never quite figure out which quilt pattern I had ever seen that would work with some of the larger scenic prints in the Tiger Lily collection. I mean, if I cut up the girls swinging in the trees, would you even be able to tell what was going on? It may just look like odd trunks akimbo!
Finding the Perfect Pattern
Then, last year, I was tasked by We Like Sewing Magazine to create an updated version of the classic log cabin quilt block. My version of a log cabin had the more modern “open floor plan” with a large central rectangle then surrounded by the traditional “logs” and ending with corners that make the whole block sit on point. I called the pattern “Geometry Dash” after a popular video game my son loved at the time because it looked like some of the building elements of the game mods.
Originally, the pattern was designed for their Christmas issue, as you can see above. They wanted me to use red and green plaid fabrics in the sample for the article. I thought the interior large rectangle would also be great for holiday prints, which I also notice have rather large scenic prints or large icons that make little sense to the eye when chopped up too small.
The deal with magazines, or at least this publisher, is they purchase the rights to your designs for a certain amount of time. Therefore, for a while, I don’t own my intellectual property and can’t publish it for myself. But, after the release period, all of the rights revert back to me and I can do whatever I want with the materials. So, now I can release my Geometry Dash Quilt Pattern to you!
This pattern is the one I will be using with my Heather Ross Tiger Lily bundle to finally, finally, get it off my shelf and into a quilt as the quilt Gods intended! If you’ve been looking for a pattern to use up one of your hoarded and beloved collections with large feature prints, pop over to the link HERE and grab the Geometry Dash Pattern PDF download and quilt along with me all month!
All the Beautiful Fabrics!
Okay, now that we have our core group of fabrics, the Heather Ross Tiger Lily bundle, it is time to build out the bundle with a bunch of other prints to complete the blocks. In the PDF directions, you will receive all of the fabric requirements and cutting dimensions, as well as a coloring planning page to help you choose colors for your quilt before you cut or sew. As an artist, I am obviously a very visual person, so I particularly love coloring the planning page so I can see the possibilities before I start cutting. I find it also helps to see which fabrics I might want to use and if I already have enough yardage or scraps, or if I need to purchase additional.
I always start pulling fabrics from my stash before I purchase more for any project. For the Tiger Lily bundle, I started by hitting up my yellow, orange, pink and green fabric scrap bins and stash shelves to see if I have fabrics that work with the color and tones of the collection.
After color and tone, I look for fabrics that would meet the size requirement for the pieces I need to cut. Like, would it even be large enough? Lastly, I check to see if the fabric feels “on theme.” Do the print icons and style work with my main fabrics? It doesn’t have to match – in this case, nothing would be quite like Heather’s sketchy style – but it shouldn’t have a formal feeling if the rest of the quilt is very whimsical.
Here you can see all of the fabrics I pulled in the warm colors of the bundle. I will not end up using everything, but I pull (and iron) all of the possibilities as I work my way through the process. I find this approach really helps me use up scrap fabrics. It also has the added benefit of making each one of my quilts unique. No one, even someone who’s hoarded their Tiger Lily collection for 10 years, will have the exact same mix of fabrics in this quilt!
Side note: I also noticed when I was taking pictures, how well this fabric bundle went with my seasonal gourds. Ha!
I did buy *just a few *new fat quarters for this project. I mean, the new Rifle Paper Co. Bramble fabric with the little music notes is just too beautiful not to get (for literally any excuse). I apologize if I am now enabling your spending and stash building, but I HAD TO! While I was at Bobbie Lou Fabric picking up the Bramble fabric, there was a sale. It always makes more sense to buy the extra fabric than pay for shipping, so….obviously, I added a few new things to this bundle and a few things for my stash as well.
If you’d like to watch all about the fabrics I pulled and plan to use for the Tiger Lily Geometry Dash Quilt, enjoy this video:
I hope you’ll join me all month long as I work my way through the quilt and share my process. If you’d like to keep up, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and sign up for my newsletter for the latest posts. If you’d like to play along with one of your much loved, but underused collections, grab the Geometry Dash Quilt Pattern HERE, which will be on sale for a limited time.
If you join in with the Geometry Dash Tiger Lily series or create the Geometry Dash Quilt on your own, don’t forget to share your work with the La Rue de Fleurs community by tagging me on IG @laruedefleurs and using the hashtags #geometrydashquilt and #laruedefleurspatterns. I hope you’ll join me and have some fun with large prints and bold colors!
As always, thank you for reading, and stay creative, friends!
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