Soda Pop Shop Quilt Top

Late last fall I was scrolling through coming collections on the Riley Blake website when I came across the most adorable set of fabrics called Perfect Party by my friend Lindsay (the Cottage Mama). I immediately wrote to our RBD blog tour coordinator and said, "I HAVE to be on this tour!"

I'm completely in love with this fabric collection. The little animals enjoying birthday celebrations together, the border prints, the ribbon flowers, even the colorful plaid designs are all so playful and sweet. And don't even get me started on the panel that includes birthday bunting and larger animal squares that are just perfect for pillows. I can't wait to get my hands on it!

A collection this cute called for something special, so I decided to make my first attempt at a vintage soda pop bottle quilt block. Blocks this large actually come together surprisingly quickly, and I really love the way they look, especially with the novelty prints as soda bottle labels. I worked in a few RBD basics too, mostly the striped prints that I used for the bottle caps and the filler blocks, which remind me very much of party straws with little decorations on them.

This quilt top was a joy to design and sew from start to finish. I've decided that I love it so much that I'm going to have it quilted with a longarm, so I'm packing it up tomorrow and sending it off to a pro. Once it comes back to me and I get it bound, I'll have more pictures to share...promise!

Neverland Medallion Quilt

It seems impossible to believe that I'll be turning 40 this December, but there it is in black and white. Most of the birthdays over the years are a blur, but a few stand out in my memory. There was the year that my coworkers at the little grocery store where I worked threw me an impromptu surprise party. There was the year that my hair caught on fire from the candles on my cake (thankfully I only walked away with singed ends and a great story). And then there was the year that I fell in love with Peter Pan. I had asked for the brand new VHS tape of the Disney version for my 12th birthday, which ended up being one of the few years where I was gifted with a nasty cold bug on my big day. I was crushed, but we made the most of it. I wound up spending the whole day in my pajamas on the living room couch watching the movie over and over. It wasn't what I had planned, but somehow Peter Pan has held a special place in my heart ever since. So when I heard that the incredible Jill Howarth was designing a fabric collection called Neverland based on the original book, I immediately emailed Riley Blake and asked if I could be a part of her tour.

This collection couldn't be more charming. I'm an enormous fan of Jill's illustrative work. Her style has so many elements of the mid-century illustrations that I adore, yet she gives it all her own special touch. She brings the Peter Pan story to life with a beautiful mix of designs. My favorites include the iconic flight over London, a sweet floral, and a wonderful map print featuring ships, mermaids, and Neverland island.

I decided right away that I wanted to make a medallion quilt using all the Neverland prints mixed with a rainbow of Riley Blake basics -- mostly Swiss dots with a few stripes and solids. The center of my quilt is the paper pieced Swedish Bloom flower and leaf blocks from my friend Ayumi's book Patchwork, Please! which is still one of my favorite quilting books of all time. I surrounded them with a ring of traditional friendship star blocks and then with a ring of flying geese all pointing outward. For the background fabrics, I used a scrappy mix of low volume prints from the Neverland collection, Swiss dots, and white solids. It all came together to make such a fun quilt top!

After much deliberation, I've decided to quilt this piece by hand. It will take some time, but I'm looking forward to spending my evenings with a needle and thread and a quilt in my hands again. Somehow it seems appropriate that this fabric about a classic journey be quilted the old fashioned way, which is always such a journey in itself for me.

Be sure to visit all the stops on the tour:

October 11 -- Heidi at Fabric Mutt
October 18 -- Melissa at Happy Quilting
November 1 -- Katie at Maytime Moms
November 8 -- Karly at Paisley Roots

Happy sewing, dear friends!

Delighted

The Scrappy Stash quilt top is finished, and I'm officially in love.

There is something so wonderful about putting a quilt top together. Going from here...

...to here...

...to here.

I hadn't expected the top to turn out as large as it did when I first started putting these blocks together. It's just shy of queen size, and my darling husband has said that he doesn't mind a bit if we let this one become the quilt for our bed that I've been meaning to make for almost a year now. I am so delighted at the thought of waking up to the sight of these beautiful colors every morning. 

And now on to the quilt back...

Linking up to WIP Wednesday.

Almost

My Vintage Holiday lap quilt is almost finished. It just needs a border, backing, quilting, and binding. Okay, maybe "almost" is a strong word... At any rate, I'm hoping to have pictures tomorrow since we're delivering it to my grandmother on Friday.

So many wonderful things happening in the blogging sphere right now that I can hardly keep up. But here's a sampling...

Rachel of Stitched in Color has A Skill Assignment for us -- such a great post. I can't wait to steal a few minutes of quiet time this weekend to journal about this one myself.

Amy of During Quiet Time is sharing a free pattern for her new Indie Bag. The bag is darling, and I'm still dying to get my hands on some prints from this gorgeous fabric line which is so perfect for fall.

Kelsey of Kelsey Sews wants us all to do the Hustle -- well, sort of. She's organizing the 100 Day Hustle to help us get all our projects done before the first of the new year. I'm excited to be doing a blog post for the event next month, but mostly I'm just paralyzed at the thought that there are only 100 days left in 2012...

If you love English paper piecing, photography, and color palettes, then you must check out Laura's Travelling Pic-Stitch Blog Hop at Quokka Quilts. I've just started working on my stop on the hop for the first week of October, and this looks like it's going to be a fun project.

If you like color palettes but prefer quilts, Dana is holding a Quilt Challenge Throwdown at the Old Red Barn Co. Prizes abound in all of the above events, so be sure to take a peek.

And now with all that in mind, I need to go work on a very long to-do list... 

Happy Wednesday. :)

Vintage Holiday QAL Week 7: Quilt Top

It was wonderful to finally sew these quilt blocks together into a finished top.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use the blue flowered print as my outside border, but I had debated what color to use for the inside grid. It came down to this multicolored print (which looks grey from a distance) or a variation on a red stripe. When I auditioned the red print, it was just too much red -- all the other colors seemed to drain away. I like the way my final choice allows all the colors to shine. I'm saving the red print for my binding, which I think will be a nice frame around the entire quilt.

Here is my new and improved Block 11 after last week's minor debacle. I'm so glad I caught that mistake before I sewed the blocks together!

I'm excited to start work on the quilt back this week. My plan is to pull together all the leftover pieces from making the blocks and use them to make one or two giant scrappy ornaments on the back. We'll see how it goes. First I need to finish my grandmother's Vintage Holiday lap quilt. I'm hoping to have an update on that one tomorrow, so stay tuned!