Alexandria's Meadowland

Are you familiar with my friend Lizzie's's work? Lizzie Clark designs beautiful floral fabric for Sweet Bee Designs and I was lucky enough to make a quilt with her newest line, Alexandria. It's so cute with both small and large florals plus some really fun supporting prints. I tried to pick just one favorite but there were several. How am I supposed to choose between teal and purple?

I knew right away that Alexandria would be perfect for Then Came June's Meadowland pattern. The light Flower Garden print was just right for the background and I added a few solids to round out the number of fat quarters needed. The blocks in this pattern are big so with just 12 of them the quilt is still a good lap size at 48 x 64".

I think it turned out pretty great if I do say so myself and just about everyone who saw me working on this wanted it for themselves so I guess they would agree. I was able to get this quilted (a simple 2" grid) and bound already so it's time for me to take it out and enjoy it!

This is almost the last stop on this blog tour so be sure to go back and see all of the beautiful projects made so far if you missed them. There is everything from quilts to bags, pillows, and more!

April 25 - Emily

April 30 - Meg

May 2 - Sharon

May 7 - Lissa

May 9 - Sherry

May 14 - Jen

May 16 - Diane

May 21 - Steph

May 23 - Nicole

May 28 - Allison

May 30 - Loni

Also make sure you're following Lizzie @lizzieclarkdesigns and Sweet Bee Fabric @sweetbeefabric.co on IG for plenty of eye candy and inspiration.

So many turtles!

I've been keeping an eye out for Trish and Birdie fabric for awhile now and was thrilled to finally get my hands on some! This newest line from Deane Beesley for Sweet Bee Designs is the cutest. The turtles, the flowers, the little birdies - all totally adorable and suuuper soft. I was piecing this top at a sew in with some friends and they were all raving about just how soft this fabric is.

There were two prints in particular that jumped out at me, wanting to become a quilt - the aqua turtle shadows and the navy stripe. They are both great blenders with lots of surprise turtles in the aqua when you look close. Deane was kind enough to send me a yard of each along with fat quarters of the whole line and that was enough to make this 51" square quilt. Can you believe it? I of course had to include some of the main turtles (Trish!) and I'm thrilled with how the whole quilt came together.

I'm looking forward to playing around more with the other prints and have gotten some great inspiration from the other stops on the tour. Lucky us, there are plenty more projects to come - be sure to visit these other crafty sewists to check them out:

Jina @ Jina Barney Designz

Becky @ Be So Crafty 

Andy @ A Bright Corner  

Allison @ Allison Sews 

Missy @ The Little Green Bean  

Cassie @ Lily Shine Creates 

Erin @ Piper’s Girls 

Sherry @ Powered by Quilting 

Stephanie @ Steph Jacobson Designs 

Lissa @ Lovingly, Lissa  

Jackie @ Jackie’s Art Quilts  

Keep an eye out at your favorite quilt shop for these new prints from Sweet Bee Designs and be sure to ask for them if they are not on the shelf yet. You are going to love sewing them up!

Are you following Sweet Bee on instagram? I hear there may be a giveaway at the end of the tour plus, who doesn't like pictures of pretty fabric.

Windsor Garden blog hop + giveaway

There's nothing quite like a fresh bundle of pretty fabric to inspire you to try something new, and that's just what I did with Kelly Parker Smith's new line Windsor Garden when it arrived on my doorstep. How adorable are these prints?!? Perfect for a bright, summery project.

I so enjoyed working with Kelly's fabric. In addition to being adorable to look at, it is super soft and has fantastic drape. I especially love the Amelia print with it's variety of whimsical flowers and shapes - I knew that would be a great starting point for the Brimfield block that I've been seeing pop up all over instagram lately. I'm not one for a whole lot of hand sewing and I already have another EPP project in the works so I though I'd try something a little different - fake EPP!

I starched all my fabric before starting the process to make sure it would hold it's shape when the paper was removed, then glued the fabric on to the paper pieces as usual. I then gave it a good press to make sure the fabric was creased really well. Here's where I veered off track.

Instead of stitching the pieces together by hand, I wanted to see if some fusible interfacing would hold it all together in place of hand sewing. I tried a really lightweight interfacing first and it wasn't quite strong enough so I switched to Pellon SF101 and it worked great! I cut it into 1/2" pieces to use over all seams I would have hand sewn. I made sure to butt the edges right up against each other as I heated the interfacing - watch those fingers though!

I was pretty gentle with the fused pieces (especially when removing the papers) but it definitely held together. I did find that it was a little easier to interface them with the papers still in versus without. Next I used some good ol washable Elmers to glue baste the blocks on to the background and then stitched them down by machine. All that's left now is to quilt it.

These fabrics were really fun to work with and I could definitely picture them in many more projects. This is just the beginning of the blog hop so lucky us, we will get to see lots of ideas in the next few weeks! Make sure to visit these other makers to see what they have up their sleeves:

June 21 - Kelly Parker Smith
June 26 - Allison Sews
June 28th - By Dylan M
July 3 - South Bay Bella
July 5 - Knot and Thread
July 10 - Color Girl Quilts
July 12 - The Little Green Bean
July 17 - Elise and Emilie
July 19 - Steph Jacobson

Whew! So many projects to still look forward to. Would you love to have a fat quarter bundle of your own to play along with them? Visit my instagram later today to win a bundle of your very own!

For more information on where to buy Windsor Garden, visit Sweet Bee Designs and then come back here Thursday for a peek at another new Sweet Bee line, Wonder Full by Lizzie Clark.