Sometimes inspiration comes from the strangest places. For the Atlantic herring quilt, it started with a plate.
Growing up, my grandma used to serve food on tableware with whimsical fish swimming around the edge of a square plate with rounded corners. She had quite a few pieces from this set, and I remember loving the different placements of the fish and their companions—onion and dill—on each item. The colors also stuck with me: soft teals, deep blues, and mustard yellows. They’re still my favorite colors today—you might have noticed them in my logo!
As an adult, I learned that this was actually a true Norwegian design classic. The Clupea series was designed by Turi Gramstad Oliver, a Norwegian designer who worked for Figgjo in the 1960s and ’70s. She created several iconic tableware lines, but Clupea is the one I keep coming back to. The playful illustrations of fish, herbs, and onions were both fun and a little silly—in the best possible way. I loved how every piece had the same elements, just arranged a little differently.
Clupea is Latin for herring, which was once harvested in huge amounts along the Norwegian coast. In fact, the herring fisheries were at their peak from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, before the stocks collapsed in the late 1960s due to overfishing. I remember seeing old black-and-white photos from Ålesund’s narrow harbor, packed with boats hauling in herring by the ton.
Funny thing is, we didn’t even eat much herring in my family—apart from the pickled kind at Christmas breakfast (which I absolutely hated—still do). But fish in general? Definitely. Especially cod, salmon, and the occasional mackerel in summer. Eating fish is just part of growing up by the sea.
When I started designing the Atlantic herring quilt, I knew I wanted to create something that felt like that tableware: playful, graphic, and full of movement.
So I designed a quilt full of stylized fish, using Half Rectangle Triangles and Half Square Triangles. It’s a medallion-style layout, with the fish swimming in borders around the center. Instead of onions and dill, there’s an on-point square made of HSTs. And where the fish on the plate are round and organic, the quilt is geometric and a bit more structured. I also played with color blocking in the fish to add even more movement and give the illusion of swimming.
I used the original Clupea colors for my cover version, as a little nod to the inspiration. But the design works beautifully in other palettes too. My pattern testers went in completely different directions—one made pink fish on a light background, the other went bold with tropical tones on dark blue. It changes the vibe completely—like going from a fishing village to a coral reef!
Atlantic herring isn’t one of my beginner-friendly patterns, but if you enjoy precision piecing and working with HRTs, you’ll have a lot of fun. And the pattern holds your hand through the process of getting those perfect HRTs. (By the way—have you downloaded my free HRT ruler hack workbook yet?)
Today, Clupea is highly sought after by collectors and often sells for high prices—both here in Norway, but also internationally. So if you ever spot a piece at a flea market or online, grab it! (Or call me! 😊) Big thanks to Turi Gramstad Oliver for adding a bit of playfulness to my breakfast table every single day. 💙