It's hard to believe that it has almost been 6 years since I launched ProtoQuilt.
For this year's resolution, I'd like to start quilting again and hopefully design some more fun patterns for you guys! To start off this year, I went through my old patterns and decided to give away two patterns that weren't getting a lot of attention.

First one: The Stapler

It fits right into the office space

You can even turn it into a wall organizer!

Second: Antique Key 2

Easy Peasy to make it

A quilt made with the original Antique Key pattern (Handiwork by my mom)

Soon after finding out that my husband's niece is having a baby, I digged into my pandora box of WIP's and found a project that was perfect for soon-to-be born baby boy.

I had finished making half-square triangles with white and blue fabrics a couple years ago. I was originally planning to make a chevron quilt with these, but I got frustrated because the layout wasn't compelling enough. Pinterest is a wonderful platform, and this time I spent a lot of time on Pinterest trying to figure out how to design a more fun, baby-appropriate quilt with these half-square triangles. From there, offset diamond quilts quickly grabbed my attention, and I finally had a direction.

Here is my initial layout of half-square triangles. Plus my lovely Ripley.

My blog has been dead silent for a couple years, but my quilting/designing endeavors have not stopped. This year, I will try to post more about my ongoing quilt projects and pattern designs.

Lately, I have been pretty obsessed with New York Beauty patterns that I've been noticing online. I pieced a compass pattern before, but admittedly curve piecing is super intimidating.
I started drawing a couple variations of New York Beauty and finally convinced myself to give curve piecing a go. These are drawings of New York Beauty patterns I came up with.

It's been a while since I last posted on my blog, and I have some new patterns. The very first patterned I designed this year was a horse pattern, because 2014 is the year of the horse. You can accentuate the horse in the pattern by putting a decorative triangular saddle on it and also by selecting slightly different colors for the mane and tail. As a follow-up, I designed a barn to go with the horse pattern. It is a typical barn shape that you would expect, but you can use the center design to make a window (with a peek-a-boo of a horse) or a barn quilt. It is really up to you to play with the pieces. I made two of each pattern and turned them into a little wall hanging quilt. I chose red and blue to be my main colors, yet this quilt would go well with any country style decor. 

I have made two more patterns for my Christmas collection. This Reindeer pattern is 5"x7", the same dimensions as my Santa Claus pattern. The Christmas Tree pattern is 4"x7." It's the same height as my other patterns, so that they can all go side by side together. You can now download my Christmas Tree pattern from Free Downloads section. 

I am planning to make a series of Christmas-themed paper pieced patterns this year, and the very first one that I am presenting is Santa Claus.  This one is 5"x7", and it is such a fun pattern to put together. Make sure to use different fabric for the white part of his hat from the beard. I chose the color green as the background to make the pattern really festive and colorful, but I could also imagine it being light blue to suggest snow. This pattern would be darling to insert into a quilt, pillow, table runner, and more projects. I hope you enjoy it!