Quiltmaker’s 100 Block Vol. 3 Special Issue Blog Tour!

Welcome Quiltmaker Blog Tourists! I’m so excited you’re here!

Did you know it’s my first time being featured in Quiltmaker and my block made the cover? *happy dance*

Go on, guess which one is mine…

Did you guess right?

I’ve posted before  about my exciting adventure of being invited to design for Quiltmaker. And I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to finally see my first published pattern.

When Carolyn asked if I would like to submit a pattern to this issue, I immediately thought of this self portrait, taken by my friend John’s 6 year old daughter:

Photo courtesy of John Adams - Quilt Dad

I just fell in love with this photo. It brings back all kinds of childhood memories for me. Especially of how beautiful I felt wearing my fancy party dress when I was 6, and it reminds me of just how early my shoe obsession began. These strappy rainbow keds are absolutely adorable!  I had to see if it would work out as a paper pieced pattern!

Here is my first pattern attempt:

Doesn’t it look like you’re on a swing looking at the trees in the distance? The teal fabric is  “Forest” by Hokkoh.

You can see that the pattern started out with more detail on the toe of the shoes. Even I have to admit this was pretty fiddly so I tried simplifying the pattern around the toes..

I love the idea of the white tips of the shoes, but here they’re getting lost in that beautiful Kumari Garden fabric I chose for the carpet. I also love the idea of having the floor being a great place to showcase fun fabrics, so I again decided to further simplify the pattern and lose the white tips. I snuck some of the cambodian silk scraps from my SIL’s wedding dress  in the dress for this block. Wouldn’t this be a neat way to feature fabric from all those favorite dresses you used to wear? Or your daughter’s dresses you can’t bear to give away?

I made this wall hanging to show how easily this pattern can be used to tell a story. This is the Great Snail Race..

You can find all of the nifty free motion quilting designs I used at Day Style Designs. I’m like a kid in a candy store over there!

I love this block. It’s 12″ x 12″ and paper pieced. I would rate it as an intermediate level pattern due to the handful of little pieces around the shoes. You can simplify it even more by omitting the straps all together. If you need a refresher in paper piecing, check out my video tutorials. It’s just like riding a bike.

I think I’ll make pillows from my first attempt blocks. When I submitted my initial design idea to Quiltmaker, I put together a montage of some different fabric combos. When we laid my options out, we all agreed that it would make a really fun quilt of a little girl stepping on all the different rugs in her grandma’s home..

Thank-you all so much for reading and sharing my excitement over being published! It’s been really neat to be able to share my adventures with you, and I hope you decide to keep checking in on me to see what I’m up to next. *wink*

If you’d like a chance to win your very own copy of Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks Vol. 3, then leave me a comment below and I’ll choose one lucky winner on May 12th, 2011! ~ Good luck and be sure to visit the other great designers participating in the blog tour! ~

————————————————————————————————————————-