2026 A Year of Quilts by Studio 180 Design - Introduction

Each year I try to choose a challenge for my quilting studio. 2025 was a year to finish, to get myself organized and to plan for the future.   This year, 2026, I'm challenging myself to use the studio 180 design calendar for 2026 as inspiration for making a quilt.

Have you seen it? This lovely wall calendar features a different quilt pattern each month. Some of them are quite involved and challenging and some and quite straight forward.

The challenging patterns are such because they may have more than 1 different unit to piece, or there may be a lot of units to piece for the quilt size, or you may need to pay attention to fabric and colour placement.  BUT, once you know what you are doing, constructing the blocks and making the quilt is straight forward.

What makes studio 180 design tools different

• multi-sized rulers - the tools allow you to make a variety of different sized units.

• each tool includes instructions for making the units. There are also free instruction downloads from the website. 

• left and right handed cutting

• precision - we cut over sized pieces, sew then trim to precise sizes

• I'm going to show you how to SPIT (sew, press, trim)

The tools and patterns are available from your local quilt shop as well as from the Studio 180 Design website. The patterns are also available as a digital download from the web site.

Each month I am going to choose a unit or block from the calendar pattern and use the required tool and instructions to make the smallest sized unit available and add borders around a centre block. I'll add a 1" zinger border between each round to hlep set off the pieced units.

I've dyed some yardage for the background of the quilt and am going to try to use up some of my hand dyed scraps as well.

I hope to encourage you to use studio 180 tools and try some of the patterns.

I'll write a monthly blog post (published on the 2nd Tuesday of the month) and share it with you via email and post to social media. I'll also add a link to the bottom of the introduction post for each mouth.

Join me as I demonstrate the steps for unit construction each month and think about picking up the different tools as sewing along with me.