Tula Pink Sew Along: Stacks

Today’s post is from Bianca of Sweet Diesel Designs. Bianca always has a lot of fun events going on, on her blog…she ran the Patchwork Prism and Retro Flower quilt alongs earlier this year. I’ve actually met Bianca in person and she is so sweet, and a riot and a half! Check out her blog for more fun stuff!!

Hi everyone! I am Bianca from Sweet Diesel Designs where I like to blog about my sewing adventures. But today I am so excited to be taking over Sara’s blog and share with you my Tula quilt. 😉 I was thrilled when Sara asked me if I would like to join in on the fun with the Tula Sew Along. I was lucky enough to get my hands on Tula’s book “Quilts from the House of Tula Pink” and chose to make the “Stacks” quilt on page 127. First, I must say that I had the hardest time choosing which lovely quilt I would ultimately make from the book and I can definitely say that it will not be last!

I think my hubby might need more experience in holding up quilts…but he was a good sport. 🙂 This pattern was wonderful. At first glance, one might think, “man what have I gotten myself into?” This quilt is HUGE! Tula’s finished size was 72″ x 90″ but mine is a tad smaller but still HUGE! Then when I started to dig more deeply into pattern and read over the directions, I saw that Tula is brilliant! She creates very simplistic patterns, makes them extremely user friendly and the outcome of the quilt looks like I spent a lot of time constructing it.

 I kept it simple and used a fat quarter bundle of The Painted Garden by Dena Designs. Once all of the cutting was complete, this quilt came together really quickly. It was actually very soothing to sew up. I was able to chain piece most of it, excluding the pinwheels. My one recommendation for the pinwheels would be to add 1/2″ to the squares so that you can trim down to the correct size. It really doesn’t matter in this pattern because of the construction of the blocks and the background fabric, so I just trimmed and made all of my blocks 18″ square instead of the recommended 18.5″ square. {Of course, if I had noticed before cutting all of my background fabric I could have cut it 1/2″ larger and then I would have had 18.5″ squares.} This quilt pattern is definitely a great place for a beginner to start. There are no seams to match when sewing up the blocks by row and only 12 seams to match with the columns. It also has some flexibility in the pattern if things don’t come out at just the right size for you. On the other hand, a more advanced quilter would find this to be quick and soothing to sew up. I definitely see myself sewing this one up again.

 Thanks Sara for spearheading this sew along…it was tons of fun!