annual holiday sale!

For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had the most wonderful holiday yesterday with family and friends! 

I'm so thankful for all of you---friends, blog readers, and customers---and in celebration of you, I'm offering a special discount! Now through the end of the day on Monday, simply enter the code "THANKS" at checkout in the Salty Oat Etsy shop and receive 20% off your purchase. This is my biggest sale of the year, and it's the perfect time to snag a handmade quilt or stock up on fabrics for your own holiday gift-making. I just added some new swatch packs (grab one while you can!) and a custom, embroidered quilt label option to the shop, so I hope you'll stop by!

do. Good Stitches: A Circle of Geese Quilt

Every few months, it's my turn to select a pattern and color palette for a quilt for the members of the Wish Circle of do. Good Stitches to put together. Last week, I finally finished and photographed a quilt that our members started in May, and I'm completely smitten with it.

Using the Circle of Geese pattern---which Christina of Sometimes Crafter featured a paper-piecing tutorial for on her blog back in 2009---our circle members pieced together triangles in shades of mustard, pink, and black, using these two pins I shared for color inspiration.

After piecing the top, I assembled the back, surrounding two of the blocks with pink and black prints which have been sitting in my stash for many moons, waiting for the perfect project.

I quilted it in a one-inch cross-hatch grid, with various shades of pink thread, and bound it with a scrappy black binding.

Our quilt will soon be heading off to the Raleigh chapter of Project Linus, and my group members have already started assembling blocks for our next quilt, using this pretty color palette for inspiration.

my go-to quilt pattern

Do you have a quilt pattern that you return to over and over again? I do. For the past year and a half, one of the patterns that I keep coming back to is for the Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt by Bonnie of Quiltville. Each quilt I've made from the pattern is different, and each time I've been able to experiment with fabric placement, color palettes, and block layouts.  I've used bright, colorful prints for one, and white and cream solids with pops of saturated colors for another.

For this most recent iteration, I pulled white, cream, and light blue strips from my scrap bins. I incorporated some unexpected fabrics, including a vintage eyelet, a hand-printed fabric I received in a swap, and a lightweight linen-cotton canvas.

I pieced the back using largish scraps from my stash, and quilted it in light blue thread with a cross-hatch pattern. It's now for sale in the Etsy shop, if you'd like to take a look.

And this is not my last pass at this pattern---I already have blocks made from bright solids ready to be turned into a quilt top!

All quilt photos by Caroline Okun.