Geeky Bobbin

Say hello to Galactic Vortex: A star quilt with BIG swirly blocks that makes BIG quilts fast, in King, Queen, and Throw sizes

For years, every time I did a trunk show, I knew I would get this question about my bestselling Vortex and Arctic Vortex patterns:

"Is it jellyroll friendly???"

For both Vortex and Arctic Vortex, the answer was No.

The longer answer, which I almost never gave, was that I considered designing Vortex with 2½" strips when I first created it back in 2019, but that resulted in VERY large blocks, and a lot of left over waste. As the kids say, the math wasn't mathing.

Fast forward to some time last year, when I was working on a different design for a strip-based quilt, trying to make sure that I made optimal use of WOF strips, and it made me wonder: WHAT IF I made a jelly roll friendly version of Vortex? How many rounds of strips can you get using a 40-ish" x 2½" starting point? And how big of a quilt would that make?

Y'all, the resulting spreadsheets and formulas would make you scream, either in delight or in horror, depending on how you feel about spreadsheets.

The results were absolutely delightful, and thus was born Galactic Vortex!

Similar to its smaller siblings, it has a big center diamond that's perfect for fussy cutting larger prints. It also features step-by-step full-color diagrams, coloring pages, and plenty of tips!

geekybobbin.com/galactic-vortex