Aurora Borealis Custom Quilt, Yes Please
Nature-Inspired Aurora Borealis custom King-sized Quilt
This was a fun challenge! I received a custom request for a king-sized Northern Lights-inspired quilt that would capture the awe and drama of this natural arctic phenomenon. I’ve got drama to spare, but could I express it in quilt form? You know I was excited to find out.
These were some of the inspiration photos I was sent during planning. I have been to Iceland and Greenland before, for a quite a long vacation actually, but it was just a tad too early in the year to have witnessed the Aurora Borealis firsthand. Since that time, of course, people even in the not-very-northern United States have been able to see traces of the Northern Lights in our own view of the sky (so funny how it’s easier to detect in photos than with the naked eye here).
designing a celestial quilt with movement in mind
She sent these photos, and having seen my galleries (always a great way to start the custom quilt process), she thought maybe the Brightly quilt pattern (by Cluck Cluck Sew) would be a good fit. So I mocked up some samples of the Brightly, and two other patterns, the Homespun quilt pattern by Modernly Morgan, and a color wash gradient quilt with a basic block. This basic block has a name apparently, that I can never recall. It is a square with two opposing snowballed corners (also called stitch-and-flip corners), and I just call it a Backslash \\ for obvious reasons.
I would have loved making any of these three quilts; they’re stunning. And I think you’ll be able to tell which one we went with, although we made some changes to the fabric choices and color ratios. (Spoiler alert: it’s the backslash color gradient)
Choosing the perfect night sky fabric palette
The next step was fabric choice. When I think of the Aurora Borealis, I imagine a sky full of movement — light shifting and flowing across a dark canvas, a lava lamp come to life. I wanted to translate that into fabric, using color and placement to mimic that ethereal quality. Obviously I can’t make the colors shift in time and space, but I could make your eye shift across the quilt. And I knew I definitely needed some metallic accents to give that celestial sparkle, the twinkle of the stars.
I always say choosing fabrics is the most difficult part of this process. Communicating online is so great and allows me to make custom quilts for people across the country (and around the globe), but trying to choose colors and prints over a screen? TRICKY. Those pixels, they are fickle. And it is definitely difficult to capture a metallic accent’s patina with indoor light and a phone camera.
But of course, we make it work. Through a process of trial and error, my customers eliminate fabrics and colors that don’t appeal to their specific tastes, and choose their non-negotiable favorites to be included. Back and forth we go until the fabric palette is finalized.
The final approved Aurora Borealis stack has a variety of gorgeous solids, all from the Art Gallery Pure Solids collection, and some fabulously quirky prints that I think really increase the awe and majesty factor of the final product.
I can already see how the variety in color depth will make this quilt GLOW.
I have made sure to include highly saturated colors in mostly cool hues, but I made sure to include light and bright variants of each color group. So in the green category, we have everything from deepest emerald to neon yellow. In the plums, we go from a nearly black violet to a hot pink. The variation in depth and intensity will make the quilt seem to glow and move.
I am so glad the customer chose to include the metallic copper goldfish print in deep teal-navy from designer Melody Miller’s Curio collection! It is an absurd element that doesn’t fit with the celestial night sky theme, but makes for an absolutely unique quilt that will bring joy to the person who got to really personalize it to taste.
Sewing the Northern Lights: quilt piecing and color wash technique
My design wall (insulation foam board covered in flannel) is pretty large, maybe 88” square. Even so, this quilt is larger than king size, and before the pieces are sewn together, they of course take up even more room than that. So I had to be very strategic when laying this out. I didn’t have a plan that I was working from, I just laid the blocks out as I went so that I could adapt the placement to get the color gradient to work exactly as it needed to.
I laid out the right bottom quadrant first, then moved it to the far right of the wall so that I could lay out the left bottom quadrant in a way that flowed properly into the right. Then I moved the whole bottom half to the bottom of the wall, laying out the left and then right top quadrants in the same manner. Only one quadrant at a time, and yet I still needed a 2-step step ladder to reach the highest blocks! An unwieldy process, for sure. But it got the job done, while allowing me the flexibility to place the colors and move things around to get the gradient right.
Watch as it gets built. (The top half)
custom finishing touches: That backing though!
Because this quilt is a behemoth (a majestic behemoth), I sent it off to be quilted on by a longarm quilter. It finished at just over the usual size for a king size quilt because all that drama cannot be contained by the usual dimensions. I love to be the sole maker behind my creations, but I know when I need to call in support. A king-sized quilt is unwieldy not just in terms of wrestling it through my domestic quilting and sewing machines, but also during the process of basting (when the quilt is sandwiched with the top, the backing fabric, and the snuggly batting inside). Long arm quilters attach the layers to rollers that stretch them taut, no basting required. Then their giant machines can quilt them up in a fraction of the time that I would take on my sewing machines.
Christina at Piece of Home Quilts did a beautiful job quilting a linear geometric design in a deep teal blue. I chose a simple design that wouldn’t distract from all the movement and color and fabric variety in the quilt top. Surely any design would have looked amazing, but this simple geometric design is clean and modern.
I love seeing those goldfish swimming among the stars!
And then the final piece of the puzzle, that BACKING! The customer chose the Cosmos cotton-sateen wideback fabric from designer Sarah Watts of Ruby Star Society in black and gold. Even though there isn’t any black on the top of the quilt (just very dark shades of blue, purple, and green), this brings the whole quilt into the night sky and creates such a WOW moment when the quilt is folded over.
Custom Quilt Reflections
And the final product! Voila!
And just for laughs and frame of reference for the size of this baby, a behind-the-scenes shot of the double stepladder setup that we used to take a full photo.
Custom quilts are always a unique kind of challenge — in the best way! It is a creative challenge that allows me to step outside of my usual color palettes or patterns, and invites me into someone else’s vision, which I then get to help define. Sometimes clients come with very specific ideas, which can be very helpful; other times, like with this Aurora Borealis quilt, the concept is more abstract and open-ended. This was creatively energizing — a chance to interpret a natural phenomenon through fabric and thread, and to build something that is deeply personal to someone else. There’s a quiet kind of trust in custom work, and I never want to take it for granted.
Obviously, this Aurora Borealis quilt is one-of-a-kind and already spoken for. But I would love to take on your quilty vision and turn it into a reality.
If you liked this post, please feel free to use the buttons on the images to post to Pinterest. I hope you feel inspired to create your own color gradient quilt.
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