Cindy's Creative Process for Friendship Mountains

​Dawna thought with the introduction of my quilt pattern, “Friendship Mountains”, I should write a little bit about my creative process for this pattern. So my process started with an idea: I wanted to make a mountain scene with all Friendship Stars for the blocks. 

​Once I had this idea in my head I started sketching.  I made a grid of Friendship Stars but was stuck on how to make the peaks.  I had to let this idea stew in my mind which truthfully, I was stumped for some time, then I finally got another idea.  I pulled out my colored pencils and started coloring and defining my mountain edges.  Thankfully my colored pencils were erasable colored pencils as there was lots of trial and error while I felt my way along.

​Next I took my graphs and entered the info into Electric Quilt 8 software.  Here I used various colors and fabric swatches before settling on a design.  I made rules for myself regarding the Friendship Stars.  First I wanted to keep the light and dark fabric colors consistent to keep the integrity of the stars, even when there were more than 2 colors within a star block.  Another rule was that the star points all needed to be going in the same direction.

​After showing my design to Dawna, it was time to choose my fabrics.  We discussed choices and settled on “Grunge” fabric as it would define some extra texture and subtle color changes.  Dawna said she wished we could find a wildflower fabric.  After one search on Google for “wildflower fabric”, I’d found an image of Sentimental Studios Wildflowers Basics – Summer by Moda.  I loved the brightness of the colors and the flowers included, especially the columbine, absolutely perfect in my mind.

​Next the task of writing the pattern.  This took some time, not only in finding the right words, proof reading and ensuring the accuracy of the numbers and dimensions needed, as well as the readability of the pattern.

This was my creative process for this pattern.  I am probably slower than most, but this process for me took about a year from idea to publication.  Next time you are looking at a quilt pattern, please keep in mind all a designer has gone through to write that pattern and give the designer his or her due. 

Remember to be #ContinuouslyCreative and thanks for reading!  Cindy Healey

Friendship Mountains