I'm so excited to share this beautiful rainbow take on the Bookmarks Quilt made by my talented friend and pattern tester, Amy! She used Ruby Star Society fabrics to bring this design to life and has shared some of her insights and tips from her quilt-making journey.
Over to you, Amy!
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I love the opportunity to use rainbow fabrics, layer cake friendly patterns, and any ode to BOOKS, which makes Fran’s Bookmark pattern the perfect trifecta.
I have a drawer in my sewing room that holds rows and rows of neatly folded fat quarters, usually organized by collection or color. In the bottom right corner of this drawer, there is a small empty section that I use to squish leftover layer cake pieces from a variety of Ruby Star Society collections, in case I need to find the perfect colour for a layer cake rainbow. Sometimes there is only one piece of a layer cake left and sometimes half of the layer cake remains. Regardless, when I’m ready to add to the layer cake scrap stash, I unfold the stack, add any leftover pieces, fold it back up, and put it in the bottom right corner of the drawer.
As soon as I read through Bookmarks, I knew I wanted to attempt a Ruby Star rainbow so I could highlight some of my very favourites. Enter Clementine, Social, Reverie, Meadow Star, and Hole Punch Dot. I sorted through my layer cake leftovers and found the perfect pieces; pieces that I’d saved for something special.
Next up was choosing the background fabric. I went with a black background for a few reasons. First of all, the fabrics I had selected for the bookmarks were a rainbow of colors from white to dark blue. If I had chosen a white or lighter background, the white bookmarks would have gotten completely lost, and since there were no black bookmarks, it made sense to go the other way. Secondly, I used to be a makeup artist for weddings and events, and one of my favourite tricks was using a black base for colorful eyeshadow. I was always so impressed by the vibrance a color could exude against a black background versus a white one. I had been waiting for an opportunity to use my Ruby Star Honey Pie in Soft Black for something exciting and this was the perfect chance!
Once I had pieced the blocks, it was time to decide how to lay them out. I played around with vertical and horizontal ombré, mixing them all up randomly, and starting the rainbow from the top left corner. Originally I placed the white and pink blocks in the bottom row but it just didn’t feel quite right. I landed on the layout you see here; I loosely dedicated each row to a color family and then jumbled them up within that row. I love how it turned out and I hope infinite pages are bookmarked while readers are cozied up underneath my Bookmarks quilt.
Quilt Information
Maker: Amy Robertson
Quilt Pattern: Bookmarks Quilt by Cotton and Joy
Quilt Top Fabric: Ruby Star Society fabrics
Buy the Quilt Pattern
