The same squares as a simple checkerboard, arranged so the color crosses the quilt twice.
Bracken is 208 charm squares, thirteen across and sixteen down, finishing at 58 1/2 by 72 inches. Every column holds the same run of colors; the start point moves further each time, so instead of one peak the run rises, falls, and rises again across the width. Two waves where Sumac has one.
That extra turn is what makes it read as fabric rather than as a grid. At arm's length it is squares. From the far side of the room the color folds.
Download the Bracken pattern
Ten pages, free to print, use and teach from. The quilt drawn square by square, the sorting, chain piecing a column off its pile, pressing so the seams nest, the counts for four sizes, and the arithmetic for a size of your own.
Download the free Bracken quilt pattern PDF
The fabric for this quilt is put together as the precut-friendly kit, counted for this pattern.
Everything you need to make this quilt
What you need
Seven packs of Canvas 5 inch squares, 42 to a pack, which is 294 squares. The throw takes 208 of them, thirteen across and sixteen down, and the rest are spares. Backing and batting are 66 1/2 by 80 inches. There is nothing to cut for the top and nothing to trim afterward.
What a color run is
Sort your squares into the order of a rainbow and keep going past the purples back to the reds. That ring is the color run. Number the piles 1 to 16 and every square in the quilt comes out of one of them.
Each column of the quilt holds that same run in that same order. The only thing that changes from one column to the next is where the run starts. Shift the start by a square or two each time and the eye reads a wave traveling across a grid that has no curves in it at all.
Because the run is a ring, where you cut into it is yours to choose. Start at the blues instead of the reds and the quilt is a different quilt with the same arithmetic. Use half the ring, six teals from pale to deep, and you get the same shape without the noise.
You do not need a design wall
The pattern has the whole quilt drawn out, square by square, with the pile number inside every cell and the columns and rows numbered around the edge. You read one column off the map, stack those sixteen squares in order, and sew them straight off the pile. Then the next column. Finished strips go on a bed or on the floor as you go.
If you do have a design wall there is a note on how to use it instead, but the pattern is written for the kitchen table.
Four sizes, and why not five
Baby is 40 1/2 by 49 1/2 inches and takes 5 packs. Throw is 58 1/2 by 72 and takes 7. Twin is 72 by 90 and takes 8. Queen is 85 1/2 by 90 and takes 10.
There is no king, and the reason is arithmetic rather than taste. The number of colors in the run has to divide the number of rows exactly, so that every column holds each color the same number of times. A king would be 23 rows deep, 23 is prime, and the run would need 23 colors when an assorted charm pack carries 21.
Read the map, not the chart
A color run wraps. Column five might start at position fifteen, which means that column runs 15, 16, 1, 2, 3 and on from there. Counting that in your head sixteen times, for thirteen columns, is how a pleasant afternoon turns into an unpicking session. So the pattern gives you the quilt drawn out in full, every cell numbered, and you never count anything. The compact chart is still in there for the other sizes, at the back where it belongs.
Sumac is the same quilt with a single peak and Larkspur with one long soft wave, if you want a quieter version. More in our free quilt patterns.
