happy flower quilts book tour! and a giveaway

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Hi there! It's finally my stop on the Happy Flower Quilts book blog hop! I've been waiting patiently for my turn! (Ok, maybe not quite so patiently. The truth is that I worked right up until the last minute on my project, fueled by the limited edition Peeps Oreo cookies. They have yummy hot pink marshmallow-flavored filling.) You might have already seen a few sneak peeks of my project that I shared on Instagram (I'm @greydogwoodstudio.)

So let's talk about the book. I've known about the elusive, legendary Happy Flower Quilts book by the great Atsuko Matsuyama for several years. Some of us have referred to it as "the pink book."  I wanted that book so badly, but it was only available in Japanese print. But now everything is coming up roses because there's a brand new English version! 

The new English translation is published by Zakka Workshop. My friend Kristyne Czepuryk of Pretty By Hand is one of the English editors.  Now at last we can sew up those cute designs! So when Zakka Workshop contacted me and asked if I'd like to help promote the book, of course I was as excited as a daffodil on a March morning. (I am positive that daffodils, tulips and crocuses are excited to pop up through the ground. If only they could read this book!) 

Now that you know the history of the book, let me show you my project!

My Lovely Vines pillow is an interpretation of the Lovely Vines quilt. The quilt is by far my favorite project in the book. It features five columns of leafy vines alternated with postage stamp columns. I'd love to make the whole quilt some day. To make my pillow, I purchased a fat quarter bundle of the latest Antique Flower Pastel fabric by Lecien for the leaves. How pretty is this fabric?! I used one of my favorite light green prints for the stem - it's High Tea by Jera Brandvig for Lecien.

My leaves were made by tracing the applique shape onto freezer paper. Then I applied starch to the edges with a small paintbrush and pressed them to the paper with a hot, dry iron. It's my favorite way to prep applique shapes because I'm able to get nice clean edges with no distortion. And for my stems, I used a Clover bias tape maker, although the book illustrates an easy method that doesn't require any gizmos. I hand appliqued the shapes using Kimono silk thread in Zen Zen 375 and a number 11 straw needle (I even use these needles to stitch quilt bindings), and then hand quilted around each shape and a grid in the background. You could definitely speed this up by using iron-on fusible web and a zigzag stitch. I like the slower method, and it gave me LOTS of time to catch up on some older The Splendid Table podcasts.

The book has quite an assortment of projects that can be completed in a short amount of time. There are 30 patterns for quilts, mini quilts, pouches, pincushions, totes, satchels, placemats, wall hangings. There is piecing, applique, embroidery, 3-D applique and embellishment. And more! The book cover has an amazing sampler quilt. Plus, there are two large tear-out sheets of applique templates to be traced (some of which I might use for other projects. Those birds are too cute!). There is truly something for everybody here.

And now it is giveaway time! Zakka Workshop is generously providing a copy of Happy Flower Quilts at each stop of the book tour. Just leave me a comment letting me know which flower makes you happy and I'll chose a winner on March 1. Contest is open to readers of my blog, and it is also open to my Instagram followers.  And be sure to check out the other stops of the book tour, too - there are some really pretty projects that I've seen!

 

  

 

happy birthday, farm girl vintage!

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Welcome to the birthday party! Look at the cute cake I baked for the birthday girl! Lori Holt's book Farm Girl Vintage is celebrating her first birthday. How much do we all love this book? Lori's patterns are always fun, and they come with very easy to understand directions. I want to make everything that she designs.

I'm still farming my blocks for the cover sampler quilt. I've completed over half of them, and I've added in a few of the bonus blocks that are available for purchase separately. Like the corn and tomatoes block. Oh how I love that corn block!

My blocks are 6" square. Now if only I could find nice juicy corn and tomatoes like this at a local farmstand. And the book also has a perfect flag block that you can make for the Fourth of July - it has a single friendship star.

Meet the mama hen block with her light blue wing. (Yes, she's missing her little embroidered eye. I'll add it later!)

I'm sewing with fabrics from Brenda Riddle and Fig Tree Quilts. I love how Brenda's pale Bespoke Blooms prints mix with my large Fig Tree collection.

I am having so much fun working on the blocks. They're like little gems, and every time I finish one I have to just step back and say "isn't this the cutest block." Luckily only the cats can hear me talking to myself! For the postage stamp below, I cut 36 different squares and hoped that it would be cute instead of a mess.

And while you might know me as the town mouse from NYC who packed up and became the country mouse in Indiana, would you believe that my mother grew up with a chicken coop in the backyard? I remember always seeing that coop behind my grandparent's house in Connecticut, and I was afraid of those clucking sounds. Here's 9 year old Bunny, my own original farm girl, with her baby brother and their pet rooster Whitey.

Just look at those chicken feet!

So I had to ask mom to tell me about Whitey. Well, he was the family pet until he pecked her. And then Whitey became Sunday dinner. Oops! But my grandparents always had fresh eggs from their chickens, and that was where I first saw brown eggs. And with those eggs, of course, my grandmother baked amazing cakes, which always had buttercream frosting, and often raspberry or lemony custard filling. That's what inspired the colors of my layer cake block. (I'm lucky to have several of her frosting recipes.)

Would you like to bake your own cake block? The pattern PDF is a free download at Fat Quarter Shop, and it comes in 6" and 12" sizes! No need to preheat your oven or sift the flour! Just visit the Jolly Jabber blog here for more information. The Farm Girl Vintage book can be purchased here, and the corn and tomatoes block pattern is here. And Lori always has something fun going on at her Bee In My Bonnet blog, too.

Finally, I'd like to invite you to see the cake blocks that many bloggers have "baked" for the birthday celebration. Feel free to visit their parties. And don't forget that you can see my daily sewing updates by following me on Instagram (I'm @greydogwoodstudio).

fat quarter baby blog tour!

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The Fat Quarter Baby blog tour begins today! Fat Quarter Baby is the first baby quilt book by It's Sew Emma for Fat Quarter Shop. The book features 20 crib-sized quilts, perfect for baby... as well as for grown-up babies! There are ten quilts for baby girls, and ten quilts for baby boys. Any of them could easily be made larger by adding more blocks.

I chose to make "Laura" because it's full of STRAWBERRIES. I think that my strawberry fabric obsession is well documented. So here's Laura:

It's just five large, appliqued strawberries and four 4-patches. I knew right away that I'd be using Fog City Kitty and Sunrise Studio fabrics with all those ripe strawberries. So, I have strawberry printed strawberries - I think that makes these double strawberries? This quilt needs just 9 fat quarters, some background fabric and a tiny bit of accent fabric. You'll even have plenty of leftover fabric! (I think that I could probably have made two of these quilts with the unused fabric.)

My applique skill is still a work in progress, but I'm learning. Luckily, Lori Holt showed three applique techniques on her blog a few weeks ago. I opted for the lightweight, non-fusible Pellon method, and it was super easy. I even had fun making the strawberries!

I stitched them to the backing fabric by hand. I do like to just sit down and quietly stitch before bedtime. (Now if could just find somebody to thread those miniscule straw needles for me...ugh!) Or you could easily applique them by machine, too.

Add a few little speedily pieced stems and leaves and you're done!

"Laura" was a super-speedy quilt to make - it took me just a few days to piece and applique the top. 

Check out the other bloggers on the tour - in the next few days, they'll show you the other 19 quilts in the Fat Quarter Baby book. You'll want to make all of them! I'm also a bit partial to the whale and bowtie quilts for boys (in other words, I want my own bowtie quilt!), and the tiara quilt for girls. Get the whole scoop and links to the other bloggers on the Jolly Jabber blog here. The Fat Quarter Baby book is in stock and can be ordered here.  The fabrics that I used are Fog City Kitty by Pam Kitty Morning and Sunrise Studio by Holly Holderman. You'll find them all here by the yard. And finally, there will be a Laura quilt kit, featuring Fig Tree's upcoming collection, Strawberry Fields Revisited (I love this collection!). The kit will be available in January here. 

Thanks for visiting with me today! I'll be back on Wednesday with... my first published quilt pattern in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks Volume 12! I can't wait to share my block with you, and there will be a little giveaway, too.