Arrowheads in the Desert and a FREE Pattern

In 2017 Windham Fabrics released a line called Mesa and they asked me to design a western theme quilt. I dug around in my thousands of digital files and rediscovered some appliqué patterns from a few years past: a cowboy boot and a cactus. I combined these with my Arrowheads Block and came up with Arrowheads in the Desert. What do you think?

Arrowheads in the Desert: 62" x 62"

I love the main print and used it as the backing. Who would want to chop this up?

Mesa print

Let's see those Arrowhead Blocks. I think they're pretty awesome. You can make them with the templates in the pattern or, if you have a set of Tri-Recs rulers (with an 8" height), or my own Arrowheads rulers, or even the Creative Grids triangle rulers. Just two triangles creates these blocks. (These are NOT 60 DEGREE angles!)

Cut triangles and piece a "triangle in a square" block

This technique is popular, but no one makes them as I do, nor do they seem to want to make the resulting blocks square. I have simplified the cutting and piecing and by adding side strips to square up the units, they can now "flip flop" across the face of the quilt.

Adding strips to make the block square

Here are four of the blocks made using some of the Mesa fabrics. See what I mean?

Four Arrowheads blocks, each 12" x 12" finished

Here is one of my first quilts (2012) made with some pink Windham batiks. I actually still have this quilt. I taught this as a workshop about a dozen times.

Pink Batik Arrowheads (12" blocks)

And just using the small triangle (instead of both):

Shark's Teeth

Take a visit to the Windham Fabrics site and see the Mesa Collection. Then download my Arrowheads in the Desert with full size templates for the boot, cactus and those triangles!

I just pulled out the quilt top of 16 blocks (8 Arrowheads, 4 Cactus, 4 modified cowboy boot blocks). And, can you believe it? I made them using only the set of fat quarters Windham sent. Believe me, there was some hair pulling in my studio, but that's the kind of fun I like to have with my fabric! Here it is:

My version of Arrowheads in the Desert: 56" x 56"