Traditional 11 inch Waldorf Doll Remake

This little sweetie has been waiting in a bin for years to become a real doll. Must have been 6 or 7 years ago when I originally started making her. I think I’d actually almost finished the doll when I decided the head just wasn’t good enough. She had a lot of wrinkles around her neck. I knew they shouldn’t be there but wasn’t a good enough doll maker to be certain how to fix the problem. So I picked out the stitches and made a new head. But this face was sweet, so I put her in the doll-making bin for another time.

I do know how to make nice tight wrinkle-free necks now. The key is in the pouch of wool tied off just under the head. That pouch needs to be tightly enclosed with the skin fabric from the head and so that the pouch is literally pushed up toward the head. Then the neck string can be tied around the doll’s neck—which will be wrinkle free!

I didn’t take any photos while I was working on this doll, but here are a couple of mine from way back. In the first you can see the wool stuffing, the stockinette covering the wool head and the doll skin which will enclosed everything. In the other photo you can see the closed pouch—-not a great example because it wasn’t stuffed tight enough and there are wrinkles below the neck string. Those wrinkles will be hidden the doll’s torso but a well-made head will have NO wrinkles.

So I picked out the stitches on the pouch, stuffed it a bit more resewed it and then retied the head. Perfection on this go-round.

I needed to make her a new body and decided to go with the traditional Waldorf one-piece trunk and legs. I’ve designed my own Waldorf doll patterns but the traditional pattern in Maricristin Sealey’s Making Waldorf Dolls is my favorite doll body at the moment. Only one problem…I needed to match this older skin fabric on the doll’s head with something in my collection of doll skins. That turned out to be very difficult.
I thought I’d found a good match and sewed up the arms and torso. But in different light on a subsequent day, they didn’t match very well.

So, I set that body to one side and tried again. This time I found a small amount of doll skin that was a perfect match. In short order, the doll had a new matching body and a dress. I debated making shoes…they are almost always taken off and just tend to get lost.

I had the perfect 3 year old friend to welcome her home! And, true to form, the first thing she did was remove the doll’s shoes and toss them on the floor! But her Mom is great. They will be tucked away in a safe place for the day the doll HAS to have shoes!

Not a neck wrinkle in sight! (Or out of sight either)!!

Next week I’ll share the doll who got the body that didn’t match today’s doll!

One Block Baby Quilt Completed: Birds Roosting

My One Block Baby Quilt, “Birds Roosting” is all done. It was lots of fun to quilt. Here are some of the details.

• There is scalloped quilting under the birds so it looks like they are sitting on a nest…or a hammock!

• There are uneven scalloping “feathers” in the orange blocks around the central focal square.

• There are free motion quilted bird nests in each of the hot pink cornerstone squares.

• Tracking around the turquoise leafy triangles in a stitch built into my Bernina that always reminds me of bird tracks!

I wasn’t sure i could stitch out the four nests but drew a quick diagram and realized that it was totally doable…not that different from the free motion flowers I stitch often! All four nests are a little different…but then they would be in real life!

The backing in an airy leafy fabric I had in my stash from last summer which is just perfect!

I don’t know if the baby is a girl or a boy. With all the colors, I think the quilt is really gender neutral, but I put on a blue binding to balance off those hot pink cornerstone blocks and the light pink triangles at the edge of the quilt.!

For more information about this quilt and the focus fabric “Roosting Place” see my post from June 9, 2022.

I’m super happy with how this quilt came out!

Embroidering a Dress for Hazel Village's Returning Guest, Ivy

In June this year, the amazingly creative Hazel Village brought back Ivy Goat, one of their guest animals who is not a permanent resident in their shop. I didn’t buy Ivy the first time she was a guest animal, but they changed her ear fabric and in my opinion, she’s a lot cuter now! And Arthur Lamb wanted a friend!

I was out mowing the lawn when Ivy launched on the Hazel Village website. (Mowing is a garden chore best suited for a goat I think)! So I missed the lovely green linen dress that was part of her launch. I really liked the dress but I have other Hazel Village linen dresses, so that was fine.

Checking the basket, I found 2 white linen dresses so decided to embroider some summer flowers on one of them. I attempted to stitch out the purple blues that are next to Ivy in the photo about…with a modicum of success. Not quite how I envisioned it, but close enough! And I added a tiny little ladybug too. The ladybug is so tiny I had to make single loop French knots which were a first for me! But it worked!

Ivy is sitting in the shade, but happily wearing both the bonnet and and blue polka dot bloomers which were part of her Hazel Village wardrobe. It was fun taking a few minutes to embroider a dress especially goat-worthy. I’m sure she thinks LUNCH! when she looks at it!!

Blue and Yellow Quilt with Circles

Here’s another blue and yellow quilt I just completed which will probably go to a refugee from Ukraine at some point in the fall. Like the Hachi Quilt made using Ukrainian blue and yellow fabric which I made this spring, this quilt includes sunflower flowers and storks. The sunflowers are reverse circles peeking through to the top of the quilt and the storks are in the center of both the big Economy Quilt Blocks.

I took the template from one of favorite quilts, “Flying Economy” quilt and adapted it to add reverse circles, circles made using quarter circles blocks and semi-circles. The “Flying Economy” quilt I made in 2018 was inspired by a quilt designed by Sam Hunter called “Fourteen on Point”.

Most of the quilting in this quilt is straight line quilting done with a walking foot. But I know that I’m not any good doing free motion echo quilting around circles, so I hand quilted the circles using perle cotton #12 and a bit of #8 since I only had the bright yellow in the thicker thread.

This rectangular quilt is a nice size to wrap up in, hang on the back of a sofa, or to fold and place at the foot of a bed.

My Take on the Quilters Adventure Playcation Sew Along: Midyear

In January I started doing the weekly improv blocks offered by Cheryl Arkison every Tuesday at 12 noon EST on Instagram. Each week she designs a new improv block and then demonstrates how to make it. When the project is done, we will have 52 improv quilt blocks.

Above is block 26/52. On the left side are scraps made from the blocks we have already sewn. The plain pink patch on the right side signifies the 26 blocks to come.

A few of the blocks have been representational—the Ukrainian Tryzub, the heart on Valentine’s Day, the 2 for 2/22/2022, a span of the the Golden Gate bridge and a smile. But most of the blocks are just modern improv quilt blocks.

Here are all 26 blocks on my design wall. The lighting isn’t great but if I’d laid them out on the deck they would likely have blown off!

Block 1-26/52, NOT in chronological order.

I really didn’t have much of a plan when I started in January. I thought I would use a stack of 10” Kona® white squares and scraps. But after I saw what other folks were doing and what the blocks were like, I opted for a more colorful quilt and started adding novelty fabrics. So this is going to be a one-of-a-kind modern improv I Spy quilt when all is said and done! The blocks are not a uniform size so I will be adding strips of fabric as needed so that the blocks can been sewn together in strips.

This is a whole lot of fun! I can’t wait to find out find out what the next 26 blocks will be.

It’s not too late to join. Check out @cheryl_arkison on Instagram.

"To the Point" Brown Bag Mystery Quilt 2022, With Fabric from My Stash

Last week’s post (June 23, 2022) was about my “official” purchased “To The Point” Brown Bag Mystery Quilt created my Karen Montgomery. The steps seemed quick and easy so I decided to hunt through my stash of fabrics and come up with enough fabric to make a second quilt.

This quilt has gone to the dogs!! One of the fabrics had 2006 date on the selvedge so that gives you an idea about how long these fabrics have been stashed!

Because this was a mystery quilt and I had NO idea what the final quilt would look like, pulling my own fabrics was sort of a double-dare! I took my clues about feature fabrics and color values from the fabrics in the official brown bag I purchased. (See my last post last week and the March 17, 2022 post).

Folks in the Brown Bag Mystery Facebook group were always reassuring others that the fabric requirements for the project were very generous. So I took a risk and used the red banana fabric which was theoretically ample but actually had had a couple pieces cut from it for another project. I did have JUST enough in the end! Whew!!

The dogs in the focus fabric at the center of each star have the goofiest expressions. They make me laugh!

This quilt is a generous twin size. It’s a bit larger than I really like quilting at home, but I’m going to try quilting this on my domestic sewing machine. I have an idea for a bouncing ball free-motion design.

Don’t hold your breath! Could be a while before it’s complete. Summer is not a great time of year to quilt a largish quilt!

"To the Point" Brown Bag Mystery Quilt 2022

Earlier this year I posted that I was going to make the 2022 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt designed by Karen Montgomery. Both the pattern and the fabrics were unknowns when I signed up. All I knew was that I’d picked a fabric colorway from the O’Sewpersonal Fabric Shop that was pink, lavender and green. That’s a risky business—you really need to trust the folks in the quilt shop to know now to coordinate colors. The folks at OSP definitely know how to do that! I regularly watch their Monday evening Facebook Live sales, so I knew what I purchased would be great. And it was!

The biweekly clues that Karen Montgomery posted for the Brown Bag Mystery on a closed Facebook Group were great. She also posted a how-to videos for each clue. The participating shop where participants purchased their bag also mailed a handout for each step. I was able to finish each step just by watching the video, so by the time the hard copy arrived I was already done.

I’ve done other mystery quilts were you needed to spend several days (or more) to sew each step. But the steps in this year’s BBM were usually completed in a morning. It seemed so easy, that I dug through my stash of fabrics and pulled enough to make a second quilt. (See my post next week for that quilt).

The instructions for the mystery quilt end with the lavender border with the embedded star points. We were encouraged to buy fabric for additional borders when we purchased our bags, but what we did with additional borders was left entirely up to us!

I added a 3/4 inch pink border from fabric left over from the quilt and I used Creative Grids® Triangle Squared ruler to make the 4 point stars cornerstone blocks with a fussy cut central flower. The outer floral border is the same fabric that is in the center of the stars in the quilt.

I had no idea what the final layout of this quilt would be until we were almost done. Then it seemed likely it would include a star—but I was surprised to discover there were 3 different stars in the final reveal! Pretty amazing.

The only step I struggled with was the final layout of the quilt. It was assembled in strips which really didn’t have any regular pattern. Even though I doubled checked each block with the chart, more than once I turned a pair upside down, and now and again I thought I’d added one of the rectangular bricks…but hadn’t. Each the blocks is small, so it was easy to unpick the mistake and correct it. I carefully checked each strip before I sewed it to the next, so that prevented a very long error!

This is a really pretty quilt. I’m not sure yet how I will quilt it—on my domestic or take it to a longarm machine. I think I might try quilting my stash-fabric version first to see out that goes.

This is my first time doing this mystery but I have to say Karen Montgomery does an excellent job with her annual Brown Bag Mystery quilts. Her instructions are excellent. She calls for ample yardage so there is plenty, and then some, to make the quilt. The final quilt is spectacular!

Fairy Peg Dolls and an Accordian-Folded Fairy's Book: Getting Ready for Midsummer's Night

Midsummer’s night will soon be here! Which brings to mind fairy folk dancing the the summer moonlight. So I decided I’d make some fairy peg dolls—3 girls and one boy. The wings are part-wool, part synthetic felt which I purchased several years ago. It was sitting in a box, all rolled up. Not necessarily good for the felt, but it allowed these fairy wings to gently curve around their bodies, a detail which I really love!

Here’s a photo of my fairy wing pattern. Yours could be cut differently. At any rate, cut them to whatever shape you like. Think about butterflies and dragonflies. Or perhaps a certain Disney-created friend of Peter Pan!

A young friend was recently telling me that she was on the hunt to find a fairy. She really wants to find some fairies, though I’m quite sure any fairies would be duly, and rightly, alarmed to learn they were being hunted! She asked me what I knew about looking for fairies. Here’s what I told her.

• Fairies are rarely seen. Never by grown-ups, but maybe a small person might see one.

• They are only out WAY after bedtime.

• So it’s unlikely that she’ll ever actually see a fairy. But she might find something that would that would indicate a fairy had been there.

She wanted to know WHAT she might find. Hmmm. On the spot, I said that I couldn’t really tell her. It might be something a fairy dropped accidentally or perhaps left behind on purpose. But that if she ever did find a fairy treasure, she’d know.

Thinking about that later, I knew I just couldn’t resist this challenge. What treasures might a fairy collect? Here’s what I came up with.

• Shiny, sparkly items

• All things sheepish

• Flowers and interesting plant items

• Buttons lost by humans

I decided to make a tiny accordion book. Next to my paper cutter I found some tiny painted rectangles I’d painted but never used and some leftover strips of paper. The cover of the book is about 1 3/4 inches wide and maybe 2 inches long.

The inner pages of the book can be seen in the photo on the left (or the first photo on a mobile device) and the front, back and two other pages in the other photo. The book contains these items.

• Paper flowers from a greeting card with tiny, clear glass “jewels”

• A curly piece of wool

• There is a round silver button marked with a circular sun design in the pocket with the sleeping fox

• A tiny red maple whirligig and a little lavender heart button

• A regular green maple whirligig seed

• A secret message written using real Ogham letters, a Druid alphabet based on the names of trees, but spelling out English words, and a colored pencil drawing of forget-me-not flowers!

The book is folded up and closed with a yellow star shaped paperclip. It was sent off to a responsible adult, with instructions that the little book should be dropped in a location where the fairies might have been dancing on Midsummer’s Night Eve!

More fun than Santa at Christmas! At least from my perspective!

More Information

For more information on how I make my peg dolls, see my post about about making Pea Sprout peg dolls.

Click this link see other Summer Solstice Fairies Peg Dolls I’ve made.

One Block Baby Quilt Top

I saw this quilt block (the central square which finishes with the light blue) on an online Shop Hop a few weeks ago. It was supposed to be a 12 inch bloc which is really a good size for a block this complex. But I looked at how many patches it had and decided to turn it into a 36 inch block with a 4 1/2 inch outer border and make a one block quilt instead!

The delightful bird fabric was designed by Kate Rhees. It’s called “Roosting Place” and is available at Spoonflower.com. I used a fat quarter to make this quilt, and still have enough left to make a coordinating doll quilt. All the other fabrics came out of my stash!

I have a few other projects in the works at the moment, so I’m not sure when I’ll get this quilted. But I’ll show it again when it’s done.

More fun with a Spoonflower Swatch

I purchased two Spoonflower.com swatches for the Garden Patch quilt I made recently. Unfortunately they were 1/4 inch too small on all 4 sides for that Hachi style quilt. So I turned one into the doll quilt which I wrote about in my April 28, 2022 post. For these two shirts project, I used an 8 inch swatch of “Vegetable Pattern White Fabric” by flaxlynx.

I fussy cut the vegetables in the design to applique onto the clothing. As you can see, there is a radish on the 0-3 month baby T-shirt above and beets on the pockets on pocket of a T-shirt I made for myself.

Applique on a T-shirt pocket

I found out one thing working on this project. Iron-on adhesive products don’t last forever! I looked at the product I had and thought it didn’t look right, but I decided to use it anyway. It did fuse to the vegetable fabric but once I tried to fuse to the garment, it wouldn’t stick. I ended up using a school glue stick which worked well enough for me to get to my machine to do the stitching. While the school glue worked this little applique I wouldn’t suggest it for a more complex one. So, if you plan to use an iron-on adhesive product and it looks bubbly wait on your project until you can get a new sheet to replace it!

Resources used for these shirts:

• Both the snap baby T and the adult T were purchased at Primary.com.

• I used the pocket template from the DIY Embellished Pocket Tees Tutorial on www.polkadotchair.com

• “Vegetable Pattern White Fabric” on by flaxlynx Spoonflower.com.

• I do like Heat ‘n Bond Lite Iron-on Adhesive and have had great results using it. Just replace it after 5 years or so!

Notice: This blog is not monetized: I do not use affiliate links. When there are links in a post, they are to give credit to another creative person, because I like or have used a product, or to help the reader easily find supplies for a project.

My Monday Block Project Using Australian Aboriginal Prints is Complete

Wow! My Monday Block Project just flew by! All 20 of the blocks I chose to make incorporating Australian Aboriginal prints are now done! I still don’t know how I am going to put them together in a quilt yet, or what sort of fabric I’ll use. Finding a fabric that coordinates with all these blocks is going to be a challenge!

But in the meantime, here are all 20 blocks. They are not in chronological order, except for the first two and last two! I tried to get a good mix of blocks with a cross and blocks that have a “spinning” element.

This one of the most color-dense quilts I’ve ever made. There are no white patches…the really light patches are either pale yellow, pale peach, or very pale green.

So, NOW what am I going to do with my Mondays??

Hachi Quilt with Ukrainian Blue and Yellow Blocks

A couple of months ago O’Sewpersonal Sewing Center offered one of their weekly “colorwheel” Facebook sales bundles in Ukrainian blue and yellow. Their colorwheels contain 8 fat quarters that are somehow related, coordinated or are from a single fabric line. I decided to purchase one and use it to make a quilt.

I added the sunflowers and the stork fabric (fortuitously found on Spoonflower.com) which are Ukrainian favorites, as well as some more blues and yellows from my stash. This is another of the Japanese Hachi style quilts adding to the collection of Hachi quilts that I’ve made this year. The storks are, of course, the “unexpected visitors” in this quilt! (Look back at my November 4, 2021 post to read more about Hachi quilts).

The quilt has simple linear quilting which follow the quilt blocks. I hand quilted around the large stork near the center of the quilt to highlight it. It puffs out a bit from the quilt, which I really like. The backing fabric is bright yellow solid.

Hand Quilting around the stork

This quilt will eventually go to a Ukrainian refugee. I hope it gives them some happiness and hope.

Low Volume Sixteen Patch Quilt

Seems like most quilters have a few quilt stories about sewing during the Covid-19 epidemic. This quilt is one of mine! (If you are interested in Covid-19 sewing, see my post from June 11, 2020 about a quilt made with scraps from sewing face masks).

I saw this pattern, “Chamomile” by Allison Jensen, woodberryway.com, on a Facebook live sale. It looked so cute, so I popped into my shopping cart.

I had a low volume* 2 1/2 inch strip roll and knew this was the perfect pattern for this fabric. I had yardage of a few others which I added, cutting them into strips too. I got right to work and sewed the 16 patch units, and the little 9 patch cornerstones. Then I looked at all those 1 1/2 inch strips of fabric which needed to be sewn together to create the sashing. And the wind went right out of my sails. Wooft.

I just could not get myself to sew all those fussy little strips together after sewing face masks. I packed all the fabrics and the blocks I’d completed into a project box and buried at the bottom of my stack of projects. I didn’t take it to the attic….it stayed out where I could be reminded of its existence.

Well, it took me almost a year, but I did finally get back to it. And really, the sewing wasn’t all that fussy. On the other hand, we’re not sewing face masks anymore!

So here it is. It is really a sweet quilt. There is a pink and cream striped fabric on the back which I picked up for a song at fabric sale our guild had recently.

A done deal? Um, no. The pattern calls yardage in fat quarters or fat eighths and I had a 2 1/2 inch roll. Somehow my quilt match failed me and I have still another 20 identical 16 patch blocks that still need to be made into a quilt. I don’t have enough of the soft teal or peach solid fabrics left to make another quilt that is just the same. But why would I want to do that anyway?

So, I have my eye out for a striped fabric in a different colorway that might create a similar look with less work. I am curious to see what, and when, that will happen!

I also had some strip sets that were off-cuts from the sashing strips on this quilt that were too short to use anywhere in this quilt. Look back to see my post from April 28, 2022 of the doll quilt I made using these strips and a swatch of fabric from spoonflower.com.

*Low volume fabrics have white or pastel backgrounds with very light printed surface designs.

Aqua Batik Hachi Style Quilt

Here’s another Hachi style quilt. This one was made as part of a project for our quilt guild.

If you’ve been following my blog recently you’ll know that Hachi style quilts always have an “unexpected visitor”. In this quilt, the visitor is readily apparent but not out of character with the either the quilt’s fabrics nor the design. The unexpected visitor in this quilt is the dark gold blocks. They do just what they are supposed to do—add a pop of color and add visual interest to the quilt.

The full length blue band is 4 inches wide, one of the dimensions allowed in a Hachi style quilt. I needed to add it to get the quilt to the requested width of at least 60 inches wide and 72 inches long.

If you are a new visitor to my blog, and want to learn more about Hachi style quilts, check out my post from November 4, 2021. This is my 4th Hachi style quilt in the past few months. The 8 inch blocks are quick to piece but offer endless design options. I’d had this a stack of batik fat quarters in my stash for several years never found a quilt pattern I wanted to make using them. But they were perfect for this project!

Doll Quilt from a Spoonflower Swatch

I purchased this rabbit fabric as an 8 inch swatch of “Hare in the Meadow Small” by Jill O’Connor from Spoonflower.com. I had thought I was going to put in the “Urban Allotment” quilt in my March 31, 2022 post as one of the “unexpected visitors” but as it turned out, I’d already pieced the quilt by the time my order arrived.

Too cute to not be used, I decided that the swatch was just like a fabric quilt panel. I could easily make a doll size quilt by just adding borders to the swatch.

And it just so happened, I had some borders left over from a quilt top I had just completed. All I needed to do was to piece 4 more 9 patch cornerstones!

I love how this little project came together! It’s the perfect size for a Hazel Village rag doll. Hazel Village is best known for their forest animals but they do have a small collection of rag dolls. This is Louise, definitely my favorite of the bunch! Though Jules is really cute too!

I definitely would consider purchasing a Spoonflower swatch in the future, just to make a doll quilt.

Duck Duck Goose Hachi Style Baby Quilt Completed

Here’s another quilt I finished in February.

This fabric called Duck Duck Goose, came from deep in my stash. I’ve had this fabric forever. At least it seems that way. The Japanese Hachi style quilt finally seemed like a really fun way to finally use it to make a baby quilt.

The unexpected guests in this quilt are….SOCK MONKEYS! Number-counting sock monkey’s at that!! Total silliness!

And to add to the fun, I added 3 floating rubber duckies in the solid yellow blocks using free motion quilting. The quilt has a polyester batting which adds fullness to the quilted duck.

Free Motion Quilted Rubber Duck

Here’s the back—a whole flock of ducklings!

Back of the Duck Duck Goose quilt. Looks like the fence had some melting snow which got on the back while I was photographing the front. The joys of photographing in the winter…but it sure beats Mud Season which follows!

My Monday Block Project April Update

Today I want to share where I’ve gotten on my self-starting Monday Block project. I’ve passed the 12-block-point, which was one of my places where I might have stopped and assembled the quilt. But I still have lots of the Aboriginal fabrics and blocks I’d like to make. So now my goal is 20 blocks in total.

Here’s what I have so far.

Just 7 more weeks to go!

Crocus and Snowdrop Peg Dolls: Early Spring Bulb Peg Dolls

For several weeks i looked at the snowdrops in my garden. They are the first harbinger of spring in my garden, often popping up and then getting buried again in a snow drift, only to reappear, totally happy, a few weeks later after a March melt! I thought they might make really sweet peg dolls.

I picked the girl peg doll to use as their body. I painted the body of the peg green and the hair white with non-toxic watercolors. They I sealed the peg dolls with beeswax polish. Finally I added their faces with watercolor markers.

The three petals were cut from white wool felt and sewed onto a little circle of green felt. Then I glued the petal cap to the peg doll’s head. And yes, they do look like snowdrops!

Snowdrops

By the time I decided to make the snowdrop peg dolls, the crocuses were up too, so I decided to make a little cluster of 3 crocuses.

Crocus peg dolls

I chose small boy pegs to be the bodies of the crocuses. I prepared them exactly as those of the snowdrops but used a darker green watercolor for their bodies. I picked the darkest yellow for their hair, but in retrospect, a reddish orange would have been more accurate.

I cut 6 petals from wool felt and then sewed them together with perle cotton thread to match. I put a knot in my thread a couple inches from the end so that I could tie the two end of the perle cotton around the body of the peg. The petal skirt can be slipped off the peg doll for summer play if desired!

Crocus petals stitched together. I went back and cut the points off these petals. making them rounded like the crocus petals

Here the new spring bulb pegs in my Spring-themed Waldorf Birthday Ring. They are joining last year’s bunny and chick peg dolls!

Spring Waldorf Birthday ring

The knit bunny in the center of the ring is up-cycled cashmere from the Etsy shop WeeThingsFiberArts. The Waldorf birthday ring and wooden ornaments can be found at a number of stores which sell Waldorf toys.

Urban Allotment Hachi Style Quilt

This is my Urban Allotment Quilt. I made it for my neighbors who created a rather unique little vegetable garden in their front yard. They are moving out of the city and will have lots of room for a really big garden on their new property. But this quilt will be a reminder of their little urban garden, which somehow, our neighborhood ground hog never found. One of life’s great mysteries!

I choose the grey borders because their garden is a cluster of round, raised bed, bordered by large rocks.

The rock surrounded raised beds on a snowy day.

I used the Bernina #4 stitch, increasing the stitch length to 2.5 to create the texture in the borders.

This is another quilt in the Japanese Hachi style. The unexpected guests are the chickens! They may be expected on a farm, but clearly not IN the vegetable patch!

The large blueberry print, the cherries and the sugar snap prints are all part of my Dogs at the Farmer’s Market Spoonflower Collection. And the backing of this quilt is the Dogs at the Farmer’s Market feature fabric. The Farmer’s Market is a major event in our urban village, and the print has 2 dogs who they know. More reminders of our neighborhood when they are at their new place!

Here’s the quilt back.

Back in 2015, I made another quilt using the Dogs at my Farmer’s Market Market, fussy cutting the fabrics to make the quilt blocks. This new quilt is very different and it was fun to use the fabrics in a new way.

Peace Dove Foundation Pieced Quilt Design

Though my Tuesday Improv Block group I heard that until March 18, Tamara Kate Design was selling her Peace Dove Mini Quilt Pattern to raise funds for the Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal through the Canadian Red Cross. The Canadian Red Cross was matching any donations they received which was awesome. I thought this was an awesome, win-win way to support folks in Ukraine.

While the pattern is great, I have to say that foundation piecing is not my forte! If you’ve never done foundation piecing, the sections of the pattern are printed on a series of printer size pieces of paper which have outlines of each patch and the order with which they are to be sewed. The fabric is placed on the underside of the piece of paper, flipped away from the section to be covered and stitched down through the lines printed on the top side of the paper. The finished block will be the mirror image of the design printed on the paper. Essentially it means working backwards and upside down! But it does make a perfect block and some folks will only piece this way.

I can foundation piece. I’ve even designed some foundation pieced patterns. The Castel St. Angelo in Rome, far left block on the wall hanging on my February 24, 2014 post, and the castle in Homburg, Germany, top row, far left block in the {Big} City Girl Quilt are my foundation patterns. But I still find it challenging to do foundation piecing.

Peace Dove, is probably the hardest quilt I’ve even pieced. Despite the excellent pattern, I did a lot of “un-sewing” in order to make it perfect. If you make this pattern, here are some tips from my experience.

• Use a light box to place the pieces of fabric on the under side of the paper pattern. While I often have used light in a window to do this, this pattern is complex and I found the light box was essential.

• Using special paper for foundation piecing which is semi-transparent would be really helpful. I just used copy paper which worked, but it was hard to see through it at times, even with the light box.

• The pattern calls for 1/2 yard of fabric for the background. And yes, that is just enough. I had 20 inches, but it came from deep in my stash so there was no hope of getting any more if I rand out. Half way through I was convinced I wasn’t going to have enough fabric, so I started adding other teal fabrics. It turned out I would have had enough fabric, but it would have been really tight. I’d recommend having 3/4 yard of background fabric which will give you plenty…even if you make some cutting errors.

• When sewing the sections of pattern with the branch, line them up carefully. Place a straight pin through the seam lines on both papers to check if the 2 sections of the branch match perfectly. If all looks good, sew just an inch of the seam where the branch connects. Stop and check to see if the sections align perfectly when sewn. If not, just unpick that 1 inch of stitching and try again. Once you know the branch is matched, finish sewing the whole seam. It’s a lot easier to unpick and inch than 8-10 inches of tiny stitches!

• Have fun and give yourself lots of time to sew this pattern together. It probably took me about 18-20 hours to complete. But then that may be because I don’t find foundation piecing intuitive!

Even though this was a complicated quilt, I’m delighted with the finished piece. This quilted hanging is going to my church to be a pulpit hanging which the pastor plans to use during “Ordinary Time”, the many weeks in the church liturgy that stretch from the end of Pentecost in the Spring to the beginning of Advent before Christmas.

But Peace shouldn’t be limited to a season. It is something we need everyday of the year.