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One Block Three Designs - Desert Series Quilt Pattern

One Block | Three Designs Quilt Pattern
Desert Sun
My pattern, One Block | Three Designs – #100 Desert Series, represents childhood visits to my grandma who lived in the Southwest.

My original designs were done in Illustrator, which is not common for me as most start as sketches on paper. I started playing with one block and I saw various designs coming together. The first layout I did was the Desert Utopia quilt. It had a Southwestern feel to me. I continued playing and Desert Trail was born followed by Desert Sun.

My inspiration behind the Desert Series was going for walks with my grandma when we visited her. We only visited a handful of times, as it was an almost 1,000 mile drive, and our family rarely took vacations. But I distinctly remember the landscape and feel of the Southwest, including the sun.

The Southwestern Sunset quilt
I made for my grandma
This is not the first quilt(s) I made to represent my memories of our time together. My grandma died of ALS after years of being misdiagnosed. When they finally figured out what was wrong, it had already rapidly advanced. She only lived a handful of months after. I had just learned to quilt in the past six months and even though I had made five or six quilts already, I was scared to make one for her. I wanted to send her one so that she would be wrapped in my love, but I had to make it very quickly. To be honest, it is terribly constructed (my hands shook most of the time and I was in a rush) from a piecing and quilting perspective. However, despite its appearance, it was made with an extreme amount of love. The quilt is called Southwestern Sunset – and it represents going for evening walks with grandma. I only have one so-poorly-taken photo of the quilt, shown here.

This side story is to say that as soon as I saw Desert Sun take shape, I immediately thought of the quilt I made her when she dying and my walks with grandma. This particular design layout is in honor of her.

One Block | Three Designs Quilt Pattern
Desert Trail
The Desert Trail quilt reminds me both of my walks with her, as well as a specific trip my husband and I took to the Southwest during one of the Polar Vortex’s in the Midwest. We went hiking and mountain biking – and there’s a hilarious story of how I thought I heard some rustling, freaked out that it was probably a rattlesnake (it wasn’t), I couldn’t unclip from my pedal and fell down a small hill, taking the bike into my chin and needing a few stitches. But for once, this usually non-badass girl got right back up (after crying a little) and rode the remaining two hours of our ride before stopping off at Urgent Care. There were several switchbacks on this trail, including where I fell, and those switchbacks are represented in the quilt.

One Block | Three Designs Quilt Pattern
Desert Utopia
All of my quilts are personal and they all have stories 😄

The final layout, Desert Utopia, combines all of things I love about the Southwest into one quilt, which is why I named it utopia.

I hope you enjoy making one – or all three – of these quilts! And I hope that it makes you take a moment to think about something joyful or something you appreciate in your life.

Use the hashtag #oneblockthreedesignsquilt and the quilt name you made #desertutopiaquilt #deserttrailquilt or #desertsunquilt – and tag me @maeberrysquare on Instagram! I’d love to see your work!

The pattern will launch on 8/8/19 in my Etsy shop!

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