Today in the Stitched Stuff Spotlight, I am featuring a sand dollar and starfish quilt pattern called Nantucket which I made several years ago. I somehow got the idea that I wanted to do an appliqued quilt with starfish and sand dollars. I don’t know why but I just had an image in my mind with a couple of simple blocks repeated in a simple quilt design. Then I found a striped fabric that I loved and that set the palette. I don’t know why, but the first name that came to mind was “Nantucket”- although I’ve never been there!

I also thought it would be nice to do the sand dollars with reverse applique- the center part (that looks kind of like a flower) is actually the background fabric peeking through. I almost always do machine applique, but I hand appliqued this- the fact that the blocks are all almost identical made the prep work go pretty easily.

I mentioned the stripe fabric that inspired the palette. While I designed the quilt with the striped borders at the top and bottom of the quilt, I actually put it on the bed at our beach house with the stripe on the side of the bed, so it’s the first thing you see when you walk in the room:

Once I decided on the stripe fabric, it was pretty easy to find some kind of “dusty” colored fabrics to go with it- the light brown has a batik feel to it, and the blue dots reminded me of bubbles! The pink reminded me of the inside of a seashell, and the dark brown adds a richness and “grounds” the entire quilt.

My long-arm quilter included a couple of different “wave” motifs in the borders- perfect for a beach-y quilt design!

Now… for the fun part- You can make your own Nantucket quilt… This quilt pattern is available as a PDF for immediate download over in my online shop! You can download it today and start some summer stitching right away.

 Click here to get your copy today.

In my next couple of posts, I will share more photos of the beach bedroom shown above, as well as an easy project to get a high-end look for pennies! Stay tuned!