Today’s post is from Katy of The Littlest Thistle. Katy is co-hosting the Travelling PicStitch Bloghop, which is an English Paper Piecing event that features fun color palettes! Check it out to see all the fun and prizes!
Hi, I’m Katy from The Littlest Thistle, and I’m so happy to have been able to take part in this hop! Sara knows just how much I love Tula Pink, both her fabric and design ideas (seriously, have you seen that Space Dust pattern? Amazing!). Anyway, my first Tula love was Prince Charming, which was already ‘old’ when I started quilting, but was very grateful to snag a whole FQ set of it before it vanished completely. I have other plans for my princes, but I did love the Crown Jewels pattern when I saw it, and I decided that that had to be my pick for the hop:
Funnily enough, when I picked it, I had no idea how the pattern would go together, so I was ridiculously happy to find that the technique involved another great love, paper piecing! The good news is though that the pieces are very big and easy to put together, and you make the large rectangles with the crowns in straight, then apply the ‘wonk’ afterwards. After that it’s a whizz to put them all together, and it’s totally beginner friendly with nice big pictures.
The only thing I would say is to make sure you’re wonking on the same side of the blocks each time, otherwise you’ll end up with a row wonked backwards… which is how I came to make an alteration to what was, in fact, a perfectly good, easy pattern! I’m a little anal and wanted my rows with alternating wonks, and with alternating colours – I went scrappy, but I did have equal numbers of aqua and grey bits. I was irrationally upset for about 5 minutes, especially as I’d already had to go down to just 4 rows because I didn’t have enough scraps for a 5th, when I realised I could just pop in another row of something else entirely!
For my 5th row I looked up the ‘LOVE’ letters from another pattern and totally freehanded them for a paper piecing pattern, then I popped in a frog prince in a heart porthole to balance the length of the row out – problem solved ;o) I got my wonks balanced, but alas not my colours, however I’ve decided I’m okay with that!
Pre quilting, as I forgot to take an in-situ photo, sorry! |
The only special thing I suggest you get for this quilt is a proper cover button tool – they’re cheap (at least in the UK they go for about £3, which is $4.50) but they give professional results, and it’s much faster to crank out all those buttons for the crown points when using one.
It’s backed with a plain white flannel sheet, so when I came to quilting it, I loaded up my favourite Aurifil, in white (which I also used to piece it, it’s very versatile and goes a long way). I echoed round the crowns and letters, then I FMQ’ed what I’m calling ‘hearts on a string’ I’d seen someone a while back quilting balloons in like this, and thought the idea would work great with this. I’m sure someone else has invented this long ago, but I’m very new to FMQ, so humour me that it’s original, okay? ;o)
I also tried to get a little quilting into the openings in the letters:
I hope you love this as much as I do, it’s my very first quilt that I’m keeping just for me, and I’m going to enjoy snuggling under it this winter while I do some hand sewing.
I love this quilt by Katy! Very lovely!
This quilt is really awesome! I love the addition of the “Love” row!
Love the colors and the white background. Very nice.
This is such a triumph and it is now top of my list of quilts I would love to see in real life.
I love Tula but alas I had never even heard of quilting fabric when this line was released, so my chances of getting a little Prince of my own are remote.
Your quilt is absolutely gorgeous and the love row is inspired.
I can see why You’re keeping it just for you, it’s wonderful in every way!!
Oh well done to our friend Katy xxx
Katy,
Yet another item I’m going to have to cross the pond and kidnap!
Really love this Crown quilt ~ the wonkiness and whimsey of it is wonderful ~ the ‘mistake’ is even better!
Brilliant recovery Katy! It’s fabulous!
Oh! This is so much fun Katy! I especially love that little heart froggy.
Love your quilt!