Merry Pinwheels Baby Quilt

Sunday, March 3, 2024

 Hi there!  Today I want to share a baby quilt that I actually finished a couple of months ago.
The pattern is called Merry Pinwheels and this is the second Merry Pinwheels quilt I've made.  If you're curious, you can check out the original one HERE.


 I made this because I really wanted to see what this pattern looked like in non-Christmasy colors! 
Plus, I thought a pinwheel quilt would be so cute for a baby.


I based the color scheme on the sweet yellow, pink, and copper-brown ditzy floral print in the middle row above. I just love that print and thought it would make for a unique color palette for a baby girl quilt.


I tried to use a nice variety of prints including florals, plaids, checks, stripes, and geometrics.


I had everything in my stash for this quilt except the binding fabric. I love it when I get to make a quilt predominantly out of my stash.  Feels so good to use up what I have!

I inherited this pink stripe fabric from my grandmother after she passed away.
I love incorporating pieces of her fabrics into my quilts!


This copper-brown floral fabric is a favorite. And the yellow background fabric is 
from my first fabric collection, Treasured Threads.


The quilting was done by Jen Ostler in Highland, Utah.  She is awesome.
Jen used one of my favorite, go-to pantos called Interlocking Orange Peel by Karlee Porter Designs.


When I was making the quilt top, it was a little tricky to spread out similar colors and prints to achieve balance.  But I just kept moving the blocks around until I found a layout I was happy with.


I really enjoyed working with this color palette and all of the sweet prints.


Merry Pinwheels is perfect for confident beginners and comes with instructions for 5 different-size quilts. You can use your stash (like I did here) or 2-1/2" x 40" wide precut strips.  It's very versatile!
You can grab the Merry Pinwheels pdf pattern HERE or the paper pattern HERE.


I'd love to hear what you think about this baby quilt version of Merry Pinwheels!
Thanks for stopping by today and happy quilting!

Cherish - A Gigi's Thimble Quilt Pattern

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Hello friends!  Today I want to introduce to you my new quilt pattern, Cherish.
It's a scrap-friendly pattern that features lots of patchwork hearts and a scalloped border.
There are 3 size options included: lap, throw, and full.


This was my original fabric pull - all from my stash.


The pattern is perfect for using your stash, scraps, or precuts.  
I love simple patchwork; these hearts are so fun to make.


 I would describe the skill level for this pattern as advanced beginner/intermediate.
The hearts are rather simple and surprisingly, the appliqued border is too.


The scallop is a very simple shape that doesn't have points so this is a great pattern to learn the art of applique.  For reference, each scallop took me about 7 minutes to applique. My pattern includes lots of diagrams and tips so I definitely want to encourage you to give it a try if you have never appliqued before.  BUT, if applique isn't your thing, you can totally leave off the scalloped border!  I think it would be just as cute and I plan to make another version soon (without the scalloped border) to show you!

Note: If you want to omit the scalloped border, I would just do the cream inner border and then call it quits. So don't buy the red scalloped border fabric.  And only buy 2-3/4 yards of cream background fabric for the lap-size quilt, 4-1/2 yards for the throw-size quilt, and 5-1/4 yards for the full-size quilt.


I thought this quilt would be beautiful with some custom quilting (mostly because of the scalloped border) so I took it to my friend Linda Childs in Alpine, Utah.

I asked her to do dense crosshatching in the center of the quilt and I am in LOVE!!!


I left her to do whatever she wanted on the borders and I think the design she came up with really enhanced the scallops and feel of this quilt!


I love the red and white plaid binding that was already printed on the bias.  And the pink floral print on the back really gives it that Valentine's Day feel!  The labels are from Ever Emblem.  I've been getting them for years and love them.  So convenient and easy to attach!  I get the 2" cotton, fold-over, sew-in labels.  You'll have to choose a label and customize it from there.  


This was a really fun quilt to make.  If you want to snag a Cherish pattern for yourself, you can grab the paper pattern HERE or the PDF pattern HERE.


Let me know if you have any questions about Cherish or just what you think about this new pattern of mine.  Thank you for stopping by today and happy quilting!

Scrappy Snow Village Quilt

Saturday, January 13, 2024

 I'm happy to finally be sharing my scrappy Snow Village quilt today!
Be prepared for lots of photos!


The timeline for this project was:
I started this project last January, made most of the house blocks at a Christmas in July party last summer, finished the quilt top at a retreat I went to in August, and finally bound it (and added the rest of the embellishments) in December.


The original Snow Village pattern is really simple so I thought it would be nice to add a little pizazz to the blocks with some embellishments!  The above block was my first one.  I love wreaths in windows at Christmastime so I embroidered some onto cream wool and then top stitched them onto the house to create windows.  The little pom poms reminded me of Christmas lights!


I found some brick-print fabric online, which I thought would be great for chimneys (check out the bottom of this post for a tutorial on how to add those).  And the fussy-cut Santa in a window was an easy embellishment.  This was such a fun project to just let loose on and be creative!


This house block (above - middle) is probably my favorite block.  I love the floral trim that someone brought to our Christmas in July party.  I used it at the bottom of some gray wool "windows" that I quilted diagonal grids on so that they looked like flower boxes.  Then I cut out a green wool circle with my pinking shears and sewed it to the front door so it looked like a wreath!


Linda Childs quilted it for me.  She is a longarm quilter based in Alpine, Utah.  I go to her whenever I need custom quilting and she always does an amazing job!  


I don't usually like surprises when it comes to longarm quilting but this time I told Linda to just "go to town" and have fun with the quilting.  I trusted her and didn't need or want anything particular.  She quilted each house block differently and each snowflake block with the same motif.  The sashing and border feature a variety of different snowflakes.  It's perfect!


I love looking around and finding new favorite details on the house blocks.  


I added the button "doorknobs" after it was quilted.


Can you see the black "smoke" I added to the chimney here (above)?  I added a piece of sashing to the block and then free-handed the smoke with my sewing machine.  I only did that on 3 blocks.



I added one of the super handy quilt labels I get from Everemblem to the back of the quilt.  I get the 2" cotton, fold-over, sew-in labels. If you go to their site, you'll have to pick a cotton label and customize it from there.  I've loved the ease of these labels.  It's time for me to get some new ones for 2024.



This quilt was so fun to make!  I have a lot of joy thinking of the memories I made with my quilt group as we worked on these together at our awesome Christmas in July party.  I also love looking at all the details on this quilt.  It's not very often that you want to inspect every square inch of a quilt to see the fun fabrics and quilting!


And finally, here's a quick little demo if you want to add chimneys to a scrappy Snow Village quilt.  These are so easy; they're just top stitched on (raw-edge applique!)

First, cut out a 1-1/2" x 3" rectangle for the chimney.  Take a square that will be used for the background corner of the roof unit and fold it in half diagonally to create a crease that will indicate your stitching line.  Place the chimney rectangle on the background square leaving 1/2" of space at the top.  You can move the rectangle right or left just make sure the bottom-right corner of the rectangle covers the crease by at least 1/4" as shown.


Pin and top-stitch the rectangle in place.  You don't need to top stitch the bottom of the rectangle as that will be sewn into the seam allowance when you attach this square to create the roof.  Trim the threads.


After you've top-stitched the chimney in place, place the square on one end of the roof rectangle.  Make sure the chimney will be lying in the correct position once it's sewn on.  Trim and press the seam allowances toward the roof.


That's it!  Easy peasy!

You can grab the Snow Village paper pattern, HERE.  
Or, the PDF pattern, HERE.
Click HERE to read all about the Christmas in July Party! 

Have you added embellishments to a quilt before?  I'd love to hear what you think about this project.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Quilty Christmas in July Party!

 This is my Snow Village quilt pattern.  It's very simple.  All the houses are the same.  And that is not like me.  I usually like scrappy quilts! The whole pattern had been screaming at me for a while to make it scrappy and add some embellishments.


So one day last January I finally tested my idea.  I embroidered some little wreaths on pieces of wool and top-stitched them to the front of a house for "windows".  I added in some little pom poms under the roof and planned on adding a button for a "door knob" on the front door. 



I thought, how fun would it be to make a bunch of house blocks with my local quilt group!?!  In fact, we could make a whole "Christmas in July" party out of it!  I checked with our guild president and she thought it was a fun idea too, so we made plans for our first annual Sassy Stitcher's Christmas in July party!

A few months later we met at our usual sew day spot and the fun began.  Everyone brought their favorite Christmas treat and an embellishment to share.



We even shared Christmas fabric!


We started off the day with a demo by yours truly.  I showed everyone how to add chimneys to the roof units.  See the bottom of THIS post for a tutorial on how to do that.


It was fun to see everyone's embellishing ideas, color palettes, and creativity!





And it wouldn't be a Christmas party without some Minute-To-Win-It games, right?
We had a "snowball toss" with big marshmallows and red Solo cups (played in teams).  Whoever had the most marshmallows in their cup by the end of the minute, won.


We built snowmen (the first team to finish wrapping someone with a roll of toilet paper, won). I'm pretty sure we had a hat and scarf they had to finish their "snowman" off with but don't have any pictures of that.  As you can see things got pretty wild; this was the funniest game of the 3 we played.







The last game was Name That Tune and we had prizes for all the winners of all the games, of course.


Even lunch was festive!


It was such a fun day that we decided we want to have a Christmas in July party every year!  We think it will be a fun tradition but we'll mix up the project and activities each year.  My friend and I are over the "traditions" committee so we're already scheming for that!  If you have any suggestions please leave them in the comment section below.  I'd love to hear them!


This post is so long already so I am going to share my finished scrappy Snow Village quilt in a separate post.  If you want to see it, click HERE.  And if you want to grab the Snow Village paper pattern, click HERE.  Or click HERE for the PDF pattern.

I hope this encourages you to have your own Christmas in July party with your quilty friends.  It was so fun and quilters love any excuse to sew, munch and mingle, am I right?   

Thanks for stopping by and happy quilting!