Clover Patch Quilt — The One for Baby Clover
Before Clover Patch ever had fabric pulled for Starry, before there was an alternating block version, before any of it was a finished pattern at all — there was this quilt.
But, in case you haven’t seen either of those versions yet, here links to the other Clover Patch blog posts:
I designed Clover Patch the way I design most things these days: on a digital artboard rather than a physical design wall. Same process, same decisions, just made on a screen instead of pinned to a wall — testing layouts, swapping colors, moving things around until it felt right, before moving to my sewing studio and proving all my math works in the real world.
I made this particular quilt for a baby named Clover. Her dad and I worked together as graphic designers for years and became like my younger brother — so when he and his wife became pregnant, I knew I wanted to make something for her before I even fully had a pattern to make it from. With this quilt on my digital design wall, it only made sense to let my tester quilt be the one I gifted them. The block's shape loosely echoes a four-leaf clover, and once I knew her name, it felt like the only name this quilt could ever have. I added "Patch" because, well — it's a quilt patch. And also a patch of clover in a field. Both felt right.
This quilt is just a little scrappy! I worked from my own stash, consulting with my friend on colors along the way, and ended up using several different Ruby Star Society prints rather than just one or two. The diamond shapes in the center of each block alternate between two specific fabrics, the way the pattern intends — but the outer plus-sign shapes hold to a hue rather than a single fabric, since I didn't have enough of any one print to fill that much space. In a couple of spots, I even had to piece scraps together just to get a patch big enough to work with! You do what you have to do!!
That's part of why I love this particular quilt so much. It's not the polished, perfect version — it's the one that proved the design actually worked, made with whatever I had on hand, to celebrate my friend’s daughter.
