Bleach Dyed Kona Cotton—Charleston Square Quilt Pattern by Katie Blakesley swimbikequilt.com

Last week, I finally pulled out the bleach-dyed Kona cottons that I "made" last fall, and pulled some of my favorites. I decided to use them in a baby quilt for a baby who is arriving soon. With the pandemic, I can't snuggle that baby like I would like to, so I figured this was the next best thing.

Also, I had to laugh that I didn’t follow my own instructions when putting on the border, and just sewed approximately right size pieces t

Last fall, after tie-dying some cotton with my kids to make some masks (if that isn’t a 2020 sentence, I don’t know what is) I decided to try bleach dying some Kona Cotton. I pulled a bunch of larger scraps, and went to town. I tested all sorts of variables—percentage of bleach in the solution, time in solution, starting with wet vs. dry fabric, etc. I wrote up the process and results here.

Bleach Dyed Kona Tutorial

I used my Charleston Square Quilt Pattern (PDF), and as I was making the quilt, I decided that I would really rather prefer paper piecing the center Diamond in a Square, so I updated the graphics and instructions, and added an optional paper piecing template (in both sizes)!

This fat quarter friendly pattern is excellent for beginners, and has instructions for making the quilt in two sizes. This 13 page pattern has clear instructions, full color illustrations, a coloring page to help plan your quilt, and optional paper piecing templates. [If you have already purchased the pattern, you will have gotten an email to download the updated pattern.]

lap quilt: 46'' x 50''
throw quilt : 71'' x 80''

Charleston Square quilt Pattern_KatieBlakesley_BleachDye.jpg

I used my Charleston Square Quilt Pattern (PDF), and as I was making the quilt, I decided that I would really rather prefer paper piecing the center Diamond in a Square, so I updated the graphics and instructions, and added an optional paper piecing template (in both sizes)! If you have already purchased the pattern, you should have received an email inviting you to download the updated copy.

The offcuts from this block are so cute, I kind of want to make a mini quilt out of them. And also, I don’t know that I need to do any tiny piecing right now. Maybe I can figure out an improv-type use for them?

The background is Essex Yarn Dyed in Nautical—I had a 2-1/2 yard cut in my stash and it was perfect. I made this awesome Modern Crossing quilt a year or two ago, and ran out of the background. I had to re-order yarn dye, but I didn’t know what color, so I ordered a few. I now have a color card, lol.

Originally, I had planned to make the quilt like the pattern—with two colors in each of the blocks. I put it all up on my design wall and thought—this is intense! Too intense. So I decided to include a single color in each block, and its so much better. Even though these fabrics are all one color (with varying shades/values of the same color), I felt like they were too much together. This is why I love my design wall—its so much easier to figure out that you don’t love something before you start putting it together. You can see that I also added a blue/green print to the final quilt—all of the Kona colors pictured were bleached to lighter colors of the original fabric, but the blue bleached to green.

Want to make your own? Grab the pattern below! Keep reading for more Charleston Square quilts!

Charleston Square Quilt Pattern

Some of my favorite fabrics to use are prints that are tone on tone color, or color + white. These prints from Heather Bailey’s True Colors line worked so well together! It is a rainbow quilt, without being in your face rainbow.

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Charleston Square Quilt Pattern by Katie Blakesley swimbikequilt.com

The original Charleston Square Quilt (shown above in bright solids) was made in 2014—I literally finished machine binding the quilt, snapped a few quick photos, and stuffed it into a box the day movers came to pack up our Alexandria, Virginia home. Since then, this perfectly sized picnic quilt has been to many baseball and soccer games, and trips to the local parks.