Tara Faughnan is a quilter, teacher and pattern designer who began quilting in 2001. For many years she worked for companies such as Michael Miller Fabrics and Riley Blake, creating textile designs. Tara was the featured artist at this year's QuiltCon show, presented by the Modern Quilt Guild. It was fascinating to see her work in person! We hope you enjoy these photos.
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Railyard (2022-24), 60" square, by Tara Faughnan
Different angles of the regular and irregular triangles create so much movement in this design! Tara says that she wanted to work with triangles that were non-uniform, but still had points. "After a few attempts at free form piecing, I realized it was more work than fun, so I created foundations to piece this quilt." Railyard is machine pieced and hand quilted.
Pineburr (2015), 52 x 54", by Tara Faughnan
Pine Burr quilts are constructed of folded triangles (prairie points) sewn side-by-side onto a foundation. Tara says, "I have long been enamored with Pine Burr quilts (it's the official quilt of Alabama), and this is my second attempt at making one. This is such a heavy quilt, that I had to make it in pieces and attach them to a backing fabric as I went, not being able to plan or foresee the pattern beforehand, but designing it row by row."
Beautiful solid colors were chosen for this quilt. Each row was quilted down and the next row added on top, hiding the
quilting on the front. Made from cottons and poly blends, machine
pieced and quilted.
Diamonds (2015), 59 x 69", by Tara Faughnan
Tara says that Diamonds was started as a quick color study. "Working intuitively, this was one of my early investigations into how shape informs color and value interaction." "I cut and arranged all the pieces over the course of a couple of days, and didn't make too many changes to the layout when I pieced it together. If you look in the top center, you will see a "hole" where the values are close together. I purposely kept this in the quilt, as a beautiful reminder to respect the intuitive process of design, that there are no "mistakes" and that "balance" is overrated. Machine pieced, hand and machine quilted.
Quilts made of triangles arranged in rows are also known as Thousand Pyramids. Scroll down for a link to our Free Pattern Day!*
Hourglass #2 (2025), 60" square, by Tara Faughnan
This quilt is infused with rich, dark hues. Tara says, "I run a membership for 1/2 the year, and we play with curated (but limited) palettes each month. And every year when the membership closes for the season, I have a visceral desire to use all the colors, and use them with abandon. I chose the Hourglass block to work with, as I love the structure of a simple repeated block, giving me room to play with color and value." Hourglass was machine pieced and hand quilted.
Image credits: Photos of Tara Faughnan's quilts were taken by Quilt Inspiration at the 2025 QuiltCon show in Phoenix, Arizona.