I started working on this design in July of 2022. It is now May 2024. That means that this design has been in the works for nearly two years! I am so excited to (finally) share this design with you!
This design was inspired by a carving on the front door (hence the quilt name!) of an AirBNB my family stayed at in Americus, GA. The carving was of a flower surrounded by leaves on each side. I snapped one (blurry) photo of the front door – I loved the simplicity of the design and wanted to translate it into a quilt! I knew that orange peels would be a perfect way to emulate the leaf designs, and I used a snowball technique to build out the flowers. I had fun playing with the arrangement of these motifs on each size option that I built out while designing and writing the pattern.
One of the things they teach you in classes about desigining quilt patterns is that your samples should be different, so you can showcase how the pattern looks with different colors or prints. I accidentally made both of my samples for this proejct with a purple flower, green leaves, and an off-white background. OOPS!
In reality, I absolutely love the combination of purple and green, so for a flower quilt, I was easily drawn to that combination. I didn’t even realize until after both were done, that I had used the exact same color scheme for both. So while the fabric selection may not show of versatility of the pattern, I did include some extra mockups that show off the potential for the design. I would absolutely LOVE to see this pattern with a deep blue background, pale flowers, and sage green leaves.
Finishing up this project has been a labor of love and dedication toward getting this across the finish line. Shortly after finding my inspiration carving, my husband had a major surgery. And though the surgery and recovery went exactly as planned, and he is healthy and well now, the whole process really rocked our family and I found it very difficult to make progress on much of anything, much less a mostly-for-fun quilting project. I also had some major proejcts come up at work that became all-consuming, which ended up going on for months and months to the point where I took a sabbatical from my job to just be with my family. And even though I wasn’t working, I found it nearly impossible to devote time to quilting. Anyways, I went back to work at the beginning of 2024 and have prioritized getting some quilting projects off my list, and this was one of them!
I am so proud of this design – I think it is beautiful, and I can’t wait to see how you make it your own! I’m also exceedingly proud of myself for finishing it even though it sat for ages and ages untouched.
Thank you for reading this, thank you for being here! I’m grateful for you being a part of this space.
You can find me on instagram at @rrquilts and you can find the Front Door Quilt with the tag #frontdoorquilt.
This pattern offers three sizes: wall hanging (36″ x 14″), baby (48″ x 48″), and throw ( 56″ x 68″). This pattern is considered intermediate due to the precise nature of the curved piecing in the orange peels. Templates are included, but are exact and leave little room for trimming. Fabric requirements are incldued below.
RRQuilts 
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