Sew Solid with the Fat Quarter Shop: Castle Bow Holder Tutorial and Giveaway!

I am excited to be joining in for the Fat Quarter Shop's first Sew Solid hop of the year! Today we're showing off the new Castle pattern!

Click here to see the video tutorial! They have kits all ready to go for you to make your own pillow in the pink "queen" colorway above or in a blue "king" colorway!

When I saw this castle pattern, I immediately thought of all of the little princesses in my life and set out to make something especially fun for a little girl's room -- a princess bow holder!

To make it, you'll want to follow the cutting directions in the castle pillow pattern, but omit the pieces set aside for the pillow backing. I used teal blue, yellow, and pink fat quarters for my castle.

Once you've constructed your castle, layer with your desired backing and batting, then quilt. I used an all over meander for mine. Trim as if ready for binding.

I then cut 5 pieces of pink ribbon slightly longer than each of the places that I wanted to add ribbon. I folded the ends under and sewed the ribbon to the mini quilt with a few forward and backward stitches across the width of the ribbon. For each of the four short pieces, I tacked the ribbon down at each end. For the long piece of ribbon, I tacked the ribbon down at each end and at two places along the length.

Add a hanging sleeve and bind as desired. I used a pink, yellow, and blue print from my stash.

And voila -- your princess's bows have a royal place to stay neat and organized!

Check out all of the quilters participating in today's hop!

Peta of She Quilts Alot

Jenn of Mommy Sew

Alison of Little Bunny Quilts

Lisa of Sweet Little Pretties

Taunja of Carried Away Quilting

Interested in making your own Castle Pillow or just feeding your fabric addiction from the Fat Quarter Shop? Comment below with what is on your quilting wish list for a chance to win a $25 Fat Quarter Shop gift certificate!

Edit: The giveaway is now closed and our winner is #34 Patti!

Stitched Stars

I've been able to make a little bit of progress over the last week on quilting my star quilt -- two more completed! Last week I did the two stars on the "left" side of the quilt.

Left column #2

Center star: Wandering clover with four petals instead of three

Outer star: A combination of Shadow Waves and Striated Earth

Left column #3

Center star: Lightning Bolt

Outer Star: Mussel Shell

This week while I've been snowed in, I got one more large star done.

Right column #3

Center star: Pointsettia

Outer Star: Originally invisioned this as Sea Algae but it ended up more like Cucumber Vine

These patterns were all fun to do! The lightning blot gives some very fun texture and it might be fun to try it on a little larger scale. I'm getting a little burned out on all of that pebbling so I've had to take some breaks from it. The next section I will be working on are 8 small stars.

Linking up at WIP Wednesday and Let's Bee Social!

Snowzilla

On Friday, you might have seen me post this picture on Instagram:

I was standing in line at the cutting counter line at Joann's to get flannel cut for the backing of my Summer Breeze baby quilt. I also picked up a cross stitch kit as a quiet project so I didn't drive my sweet husband insane with the sound of the sewing machine. Totally normal pre-snowstorm prepping activities.

I'm in Frederick, MD -- which is an hour northwest of DC and an hour west of Balitmore -- and the snow here started at 2 PM Friday and finally quit around 10 PM Saturday night. Here's what it looked like at 6 AM on Saturday in our parking lot:

And here's what it looked like Sunday at 7 AM:

Here's some pictures I took while we were digging out our cars later Sunday morning:

But being snowed in since Friday ain't bad when you're a quilter. I started working on the blocks for my Rainbow Mini Swap:

I have all of my little rainbow wedges sewn together so hopefully you'll see more of these string hexies very soon!

Stay warm and stay safe!

Blue Breeze {WIP}

My blue Summer Breeze quilt has continued to be a good break from all of that FMQ that I have been doing on my star quilt.

Here are the little pinwheels:

Here they are in the finished blocks -- these were super zippy to put together!

Here's the top all laid out together -- somehow I miscounted and ended up with four extra rail fence blocks!

While I was slightly interrupted and had to stack all the blocks up before I put the top together, I managed to keep everything in order perfectly -- check out the adorable-ness that is this quilt top!

I am about 90% set that I will be using navy blue to back and bind this one to tone it down a little bit. I will definitely quilt it in white or light blue on the front, but I think that if I do a navy backing, I might also use navy in my bobbins. What do you think -- do you like to quilt with two different colors front and back or do you mainly stick with one color for both?

Sharing at WIP Wednesday!

Finished Taffy Quilt

Another cuddly baby quilt finished!

I quilted this whole quilt in one sitting last weekend and just finished up the binding last night while we watched football.

Here it is pre- quilting, post-pinning:

And here it is all finished!

For the quilting, I did free motion swirls all over the quilt. The scale ended up being slightly smaller than I originally intended, but I am very happy with the quilting, nonetheless. Here's the front and back post-quilting, in the middle of finishing the binding yesterday:

Since I didn't have enough strips left over from the jelly roll to bind the quilt, I bound it with some green vine yardage in my stash -- I am pretty sure it is from the Honey Honey line.

And as usual, I backed with flannel -- this time I used grey since I was having a hard time finding a green or blue that went well with these fabrics.

This one is in the mail to it's rightful owner!

Quick Stats:
Pattern: adapted from Salt Water Taffy baby quilts on Moda Bake Shop
Size: 39 x 52 inches
Fabric: jelly roll of Road 15 by Sweetwater
Backing: grey snuggle flannel
Quilting: Swirls in off white thread
Binding: green vine from Honey Honey

Linking up at Fabric Tuesday and Finish it up Friday!