At long last, the Rainbow Burst Quilt pattern is here!

Using beginner-friendly techniques to make four big blocks, the Rainbow Burst quilt is a celebration of colour and shape. Have a play and spin your blocks around to create different effects, and lots of very different quilts!

The pattern is jam packed with helpful tips and diagrams and includes lots of ideas for different colour schemes and layouts as well as colouring pages to help you choose your fabric layout and colours. Best of all? it’s Fat Eighth, Fat Quarter and scrap friendly, so grab that bundle you’ve been hoarding or head to your LQS for a little shopping - we all know you can never have too much fabric!

Choosing my fabric

When I was designing the Rainbow Burst pattern, the first colourway I mocked up was a rainbow (did you really expect anything else from this total rainbow addict?). You may remember from my Resonance wallhanging back in February that I fell head over heels in love with the Spectrastic II collection by Giucy Giuce after splurging on a full collection FQ bundle from my LQS last autumn. What you don’t know is that that particular FQ bundle is magic - this Rainbow Burst quilt is the THIRD quilt I’ve made and I still have most of it left! This is definitely one of my favourite collections of all time and I could honestly sew with just this for a year and be totally happy (spoiler - four months in and it looks like I am so far!).

The fabrics I used are in the Rainbow Burst quilt are:

Rainbow: Mars* // Terracotta // Bicycle // Spearmint // Moss // Turquoise // Aquatic // Old Amethyst*

Background: Moda Bella White Bleached

Binding: Perfect Grey

*from the Spectrastic I collection

Fabric requirements

Make it your own with some colour and layout inspiration

One of my favourite things about this pattern is just how many options it has! It includes instructions for two layouts, but the possibilities don’t stop there - have a play and spin the blocks to find a layout that you love.

I know how much you all love switching up colours in patterns, so I just had to have a little play and came up with a few different colourways to inspire you! Plus I couldn’t resist playing around with the blocks and coming up with a couple of extra layout options to inspire you - this really is a quilt-you-own-adventure pattern!

Still looking for more inspiration? I’ve got you covered - the pattern includes lots of ideas for different colour schemes and colouring pages to help you choose your fabric layout and colours for your perfect Rainbow Burst Quilt.

Piecing

While this quilt looks a little complicated, it’s actually built on the classic flying geese (or should that be flying goose?) and half-square triangle blocks set in a grid assembly so it’s a lot easier (and faster!) than it looks. And who doesn’t love a pattern that looks more impressive to make than it actually is?

With step by step instructions and diagrams for four at a time flying geese and two at a time HSTs, even if you’ve never done any patchwork before they’ll be flying off your machine in no time (sorry, I can never resist that joke!). Chain piecing really helps speed things up for this quilt, especially in the early steps - if you’ve not chain pieced before check out my previous blog for some handy tips to get you on your way.

Quilting plan

For this quilt I knew I wanted to do a lot of custom quilting to play with the shapes and that I wanted to play with thread colour as well, but instead of my usual MO of coming up with a carefully thought out plan and sticking to it, I decided to wing it! The only directions I gave myself were to (naturally) start in the middle and work out, use a mix of walking foot and free motion quilting, and to listen to the what the quilt needs rather than imposing a specific vision.

I really wanted the middle diamond to work as a focal point for the quilting so I chose a geometric swirl (I first used this design on my Triangle Dreams quilt and love the simple texture it gives) with pink and purple threads interlocking. Working out, the next shape to work with were the fish. Fun fact, when I designed this particular layout I didn’t see the fish shapes until my partner said “oh there’s fish” and now I can’t un-see them! Straight lines didn’t feel right for a fish so I swapped over to FMQ and had some fun meandering all over them in a lovely bright blue.

The “arrows” in each corner (it might just be me who seems them!) proved a little trickier as I wanted to use green and yellow thread but I eventually settled on a classic crosshatch grid. Swapping colours at the midpoint meant I had to go slowly for extra precision, and there were a LOT of threads to bury (top tip, bury threads as you go a section at a time so that future you doesn’t despair at having to do the whole lot in one) but I like the gentle colour transition so it was worth it.

Orange stars in the corner squares then a simple border in white around the edge finished it off nicely. I kept the spacing at a regular 1” throughout the quilt for each colour to help with visual cohesiveness, and I just love the different textures the quilting creates. It definitely fits the play with colour and thread brief! It gives me quite strong quilt-as-playmat vibes, and luckily I have friend expecting a baby later this year to gift it to.

The Aurifil thread colours I used are:

Orange - 1133 // Yellow - 1135 // Green - 1231 // Blue - 5005 // Purple - 2510 // Pink - 2452 // 2021 - White

As always, my cat co-workers Lyra and Aurora were very “helpful” throughout the whole process. They were especially helpful when I was tying to quilt - for some reason they were convinced it was the best bed ever!

And there you have it - the Rainbow Burst Quilt!

You can get your own copy of the pattern now by clicking the button below. Remember, I absolutely love to see your makes, so don’t forget to share your projects with #RainbowBurstQuilt and #caitlisledesigns!