Get Amped Up: Windsuit Is Now Available!

Today has been a long time in the making; I first came up with the idea for my Windsuit quilt pattern in July of 2022 when I was watching the Season 4 Part 2 release of Stranger Things.  At the time, I even called it my "Stranger" pattern, but that sounded just a little too sinister so I decided to go with Windsuit instead in honor of the wonderful early 1990s fashion trend.

I took a little trip down memory lane (any other Xennials still have stacks and stack of old photo albums?) and found many, many examples of my family (both kids and adults) wearing these comfy, noisy, coordinating two-piece sets.  The swish, swish, swish of the nylon as you walked was just so satisfying!  I had several, but the blue one in the first picture was my absolute favorite, and, as you can see, they were versatile enough that my grandparents chose to wear them on Christmas Eve 1992!

You could even wear just the jacket if you wanted to show off your cool acid-wash jeans while you were apple picking!  That being said, there's really no wrong color combination you can use when making a Windsuit quilt.  Bright, bold, pastel, clashing - it's all fair game.  My first version was a mini quilt made from solids in my stash.

My son was making a clay Mindflayer at the exact same time that I was making my mini Stranger quilt and it was a perfect match when it came time to take photos.  I'm a chronic over-quilter, but I decided to take things easy and just do a series of vertical lines in the ditch and centers of the block, then add in some diagonals in one direction only since the 1980s were all about asymmetry!  I finished the mini quilt off by brown bagging it and the whole thing reminds me of the bedspread I had when I was a kid.  Totally awesome!

The throw-sized Windsuit quilt embraces another late-80s/early-90s trend: dyed denim!  I love a good blender and these Phosphor prints from Libs Elliot do not disappoint (Phosphor is also the background fabric on my Christmas Zephyr and she has more colors coming out soon).  Windsuit is a pattern that's full of life due to the off-set rows in it and I can totally see this pattern walking down the street as part of a matching jacket and pants nylon combo.  And of course, the only appropriate place to take a photo of a Stranger Things-inspired quilt is in the forest!

More often than not, I back my quilts in flannel now, but I couldn't resist this fun retro cassette tape print (you've seen it before; I used some of the offcuts to make a hair scrunchie that I wear all the time!).  I did, however, stick with my normal black binding.  I used the same quilting plan as I did with the mini Stranger quilt described above.  Despite not being backed in flannel, this dark, moody quilt is a favorite with my family and is frequently in use when the kids are hanging out in the family room.

The Windsuit pattern is beginner-friendly and contains instructions for both traditional piecing and strip piecing the blocks.  It has instructions for both a throw and baby-sized quilt, but can be easily scaled to create any size quilt you desire.  You can also easily customize it to create a quilt that's entirely yours - I'll be back later with this week with a post showing how I did just that with my baby-size version!

I hope you enjoyed this trip back to the 1980s with me and are thinking about making your own Windsuit (or track suit or shell suit - if you call it something else let me know!) quilt in your own fun color scheme!

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Pattern: Windsuit

Sizes Included: Baby (40" x 48") and Throw (60" x 80")

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Pattern Sale!  To celebrate the release of Windsuit, all patterns in my pattern storefront are on sale for 10% off and Windsuit itself is on sale for 24% off!  No code needed, sale prices will show up in shopping cart automatically.  Sale ends May 3, 2024 and is valid at www.bluepipdesigns.com only.

See more Windsuit:

Baby Windsuit