I'm all about the quilts lately. I want big ones and little ones and I want lots of 'em. Enough to fill an entire closet so that my kids will never want when it's fort-building time and so that guests will never want when visiting our home. Soon we'll be moving to Virginia where the climate is cooler (and the amount of house you get for the dollar is greater) and I'll need lots of quilts to fill our rooms, so I'm getting started now.
This past week I had fun working with Robyn Pandolph's new Bon Bon Bebe line, due out from RJR fabrics in April. It's a charming collection of sweet florals and darling prints. And because I'm on a bit of a pink/navy kick I couldn't help adding in some dots from Robyn Pandolph's Home Essentials line, and RJR cotton supreme solids (love these... I used Linen White and Denim).
This baby quilt pattern was designed by me (in that I didn't use a pattern and I drew it up from my head, writing down my measurements to share with you). I was hoping that each block would look as if it held four houses around a square of sheep or Miss Bo Peep, but you will only see a house in these blocks if you look really really hard. Seriously squint and you'll see. Bah, but the colors look nice together, right? And what's best is that it's super simple and each block goes together quite quickly. Also, once I realized that I would be quilting this one myself, I kept it neat and tidy at about 42" square. Then I realized that I had no idea how to straight-line quilt this... in a beautiful way. I thought about it overnight. I thought about it for a half day more (oh, the clock was ticking!!!) and finally I got out my Janome manual to decipher which out of all those feet was the Free Motion Quilting foot. Once that was attached, I discovered on page 66 how to lower the feed dogs (there's a switch for that!) I practiced for ten minutes on a sample quilt (it came out not horrible, but not good) and I rallied for help on IG (thank you IG friends for all your help, you girls are the best!) and then… I simply dove in.
And I did a pretty good job! Also, I think I might be in love with FMQ now.
If you'd like to make this quilt ~ I think I'll call it "Rooftops." You can find the Rooftops Pattern here. It's a 5-page PDF file that requires a PDF viewer.
And if you'd like to sew with this sweet fabric, RJR Fabrics has kindly offered to give away a fat quarter bundle of Robyn Pandolph's Bon Bon Bebe to one of you!
To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment here on this post. All may enter and a winner will be chosen randomly. Comments will close Monday, March 9th at midnight. Good luck to you!
xo amy