Tula Pink Sew Along: Bean Stalks

I jumped at the chance to participate in Sara’s Tula Pink Sew-Along, and I’m so excited to share with you my finished Bean Stalks quilt from The House of Tula Pink.
 
Tula Pink is the undisputed badass of the quilting world. She, as much as anyone, has taken the artform of our grandmothers and made it undeniably cool. When I set out to make the Bean Stalks quilt, I had intended to use a few of her prints mixed in with some fabrics from my stash. In the end, the pull of The Birds and The Bees was irresistible, and this became an all Tula Pink quilt.

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I did use one other print, and it’s from Sarah Jane’s Out to Sea. It matches The Birds and The Bees really well, and I love the demure touch it adds. For the background fabric, I used Free Spirit Designer Solid in Lilac. I have to say the Free Spirit solids may have ruined me against other solids! They, as well as The Birds and The Bees fabrics, have a gorgeous hand and are dreamy to work with.

The improv nature of this quilt took me a bit out of my comfort zone…and I liked it! In her instructions, Tula says, “don’t stress about perfection or symmetry,” and it was liberating! I did have a bit of difficulty with basting because my bean stalks ended up a little wonky, so I’d rate this quilt as intermediate. Also, I think any twin-size quilt should be intermediate by default. That’s a big quilt!

My quilt is the cover model! One note on fabric requirements: I followed the fabric requirements in the book, and I ended up with quite a bit of leftover fabric. I had more than a yard and a half of background fabric left, and probably enough of the patterned-fabric wedges to make an entire second quilt. Now, I think most of us would agree that too much fabric is a much better “problem” to have than too little fabric. I know that Tula and her editors take care to make sure we don’t run short on fabric (especially if you’re using your stash of some of Tula’s hard-to-find lines!). I understand that, because of the improv nature of the quilt, you might have a very different fabric-requirement experience than I did, but I wanted to point this out in case you could be more judicious with your cutting!

Here’s a peek at the back. I fought my urge to hoard these Squirrels and Trees prints and put them to use on the quilt back, along with some more solids.

Thanks so much for hosting the sew-along, Sara! This quilt is destined as a gift for a purple-loving girl in my life, but I think I’ll have to sew up those extra wedges and make one for myself.