For full schedule of guest post quilt pattern reviews, discounts, and prizes, click here!
Today’s quilt is made by Marci of Marci Girl Designs. You can check out quilt blocks, family, and fun sewing over on her blog!
Hello, this is Marci and I’m absolutely thrilled to be guest blogging today at Sew Sweetness. Even better is the fact that I get to review a great pattern by Tula Pink, Le Petite Salon. This pattern is perfect and I’m not just saying that! This is the perfect quilt pattern for the beginner quilter. Easy cuts, simple directions and even easier to piece together. This pattern is also the perfect pick if you have fabric that features a larger motif that you want to show off. As soon as I knew I would be making a quilt from this pattern, I instantly knew I would use Fox Trails by Riley Blake and make this quilt for my 8 month old baby’s future big boy bed!
This pattern called for 22 (1/4 yard) cuts, I used fat quarters and this worked out just fine. These 22 prints make up all of the crosses. I didn’t have quite enough of Fox Trails so I added in a bunch of prints from my stash. Kona cottons, Pez prints, houndstooth, Timeless Treasures sketch, shot cotton and a few other random prints. I cut out all these pieces and only had a 5″ strip left from each print. Not much waste. The fabric needed for the center panel, frame around the center and borders were spot on. There was some left over, but not a ton. All the leftover strips that I have, I plan to incorporate into the backing. The required cutting for this quilt is really simple and straight forward. I will say the exact same for the construction. The pattern is easy to understand, has great diagrams and is really well written. The ONLY difficult part of this pattern is that Tula Pink recommends laying out the entire quilt before sewing it together. This is done so that you make fewer mistakes and don’t have the same color or print crosses butted up next to one another. This was difficult for me because of its large (85″ x 85″) size. I don’t have a design wall or floor space to lay the whole thing out, so instead I did it in three sections, top, center and bottom, which worked just fine. I just double checked everything to make sure I wasn’t making mistakes. I did not run into any problem or have any questions, the instructions really are straight forward.
This quilt has one real unique feature or special technique, the scalloped edge on two of the sides. Unfortunately, I will not be including this feature on this quilt simply because I don’t feel it is appropriate for a little boy. Though, I will be doing this technique on a future quilt. I LOVE IT! Basically, you trace the template onto freezer paper, iron it onto the quilted quilt, cut along the template and then bind the quilt. Though I do know that you should use bias cut binding to make the binding process go smoothly and have a good end result.
Last but not least, modifications. Yes, I made several. I feel like it is impossible for me not to make a change to a pattern. The first change was the size. The pattern is for a 85″ x 85″ quilt. I didn’t want a quilt quite that large, I wanted it just a tad bit smaller. The easiest way for me to do this was to remove the first and last vertical rows of the crosses. By doing this my quilt measures 79″ x 85,” perfect! The second modification was to the outer border which measures 8.5.” I kept the same size, but since I was using fabric from my stash I didn’t have a three yard continuous cut of one of the prints, which was required for this pattern. I did have a two yard cut and a one yard cut. I decided to do a skinny border the same width as the crosses and then one larger or wider border to finish it off. The skinnier border was cut at 3.5″ wide and the wider orange border was cut at 5.5″ wide. I also decided to randomly “continue or extend” some of the crosses out onto the skinny border, and am really glad that I did. I think it added a little something extra to the quilt. I mitered the corners on the skinny border since it is an argyle print and honestly looked much nicer this way.
I truly think this pattern is fabulous and loved making this quilt top. Thanks for taking the time to read my review and thanks so much to Sara for having me here today as part of the Tula Pink Sew Along!
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Marci, your quilt is so cute for a boy. I love the idea of extending the crosses into the border, you are brave, and with mitered corners too, very clever.
Lovely! I really like how thosr brown bits show up against the aqua!
Marci, your quilt is so cute for a boy. I love the idea of extending the crosses into the border, you are brave, and with mitered corners too, very clever.
Oh loving Marci’s work xxx
Looks great! And you’re right, I do love the crosses extending into the border
I like how crosses tesselate. (Is that the right word? You know what I mean?)
Love how this came out, so cute!
Such a pretty quilt ~ I’ve got this pattern and didn’t even know it’s a Tula Pink!
I adore the cross pattern 🙂
Very nice! Fun quilt for your little guy, Marci!
Your quilt looks great with all those fun fabrics!