I've joined the SugarBear Quilt Along hosted by @southerncharmquilts and @havels_sewing
I thought I'd share my fabric selection, a little about the pattern and the first three blocks I've completed.
This block is Imani. It's my favorite block so far! I decided to use a tiny stripe for the points and I think it is so whimsical! Also I'm bringing in some characters in the corners that are making me smile. Who doesn't love a ballerina and peter pan!
Fabric Pull. I do wish I had more of the super soft blue... I only had two pieces at first but I found the soft grey blue with tiny cream stars and it seems to work. I added in some solid Kona pink and lavender to create pops of color. Also adding in the black and cream stripes and ginghams.
See Melanie's pattern and more of my blocks and about the fabrics...
Choosing fabrics... I decided to use a scrappy gathering of low volumes along with my vintage Moda Athill Range Cottage Rose in lavenders, pale pinks and blues. My inspiration for the color choices came from a coat that I saw on @lady_lancaster_
If you love vintage quilts... you have to check out her creations! They are fabulous! Here's a picture of the coat that inspired my fabric pull... Its lovely isnt it!
I'm definitely going to use a solid or a tiny polka dot for my Christmas version because I really love how that puts all the focus on the blocks.
All of my pieces are cut and my star points for each colorway are sewn together! Now piecing each block will be a breeze and I see how we'll finish and have a completed quilt by June. Yay!
Watch her tutorials on her YouTube channel...links to her videos and channel to subscribe to on YouTube are on her site. She has great video instructions for a variety of her patterns there.
This block is Anabel...
Melanie's patterns are super easy to follow along with! She's thought of everything and really has a great way of communicating. I love that she also makes a place on each page for your own notes. and has pages in the back of the pattern for you to write and draw more.
These are my HRT's in process....
Pinning the pieces together, using my new Tula Unicorn flathead pins, keeps them aligned properly. I find that stacking the units for each block all at once makes the sewing go faster.
I decided to use a scrappy bunch of low volumes for my background again....I just cant get away from loving that look! I'm planning to make a couple more SugarBears, one a Christmas which I will use a solid color background and one a Ghastlie fall which will be again a scrappy background. The solid background will be much easier I'm sure. I had to make sure that I had a variety of low volumes for each set of the star points because I want to be sure that there's not a ton of one kind of low volume fabric in one block. Also, I have to try to keep the border pieces unique and spread evenly throughout the quilt so that there is a uniform scrappiness that doesn't look too contrived.
I did want to use eyelet in my backgrounds too... Let me tell ya what, 100% cotton eyelet fabric is expensive for one, and hard to find for two...that is so odd as I feel like it used to be pretty easy to find years ago. At any rate I wanted an offwhite... not stark white eyelet and I couldn't find that locally, so I got creative and hand tea-dyed using some old earl grey whole leaf tea steeped for a couple minutes, and just plunging the eyelet in. It came out lovely and I even grabbed a few pieces of regular cotton low volumes that had a bright white background and dunked those as well. It changes the whole mood of your low volumes. I'm thinking of trying it on some super bright prints that I have and see if it tones them down sufficiently. That whole process was so fun! I have two types of eyelet and you can see them in the block below.
This block is Cristina
Get your pattern at @southerncharmquilts and join us on this quilt along!
Happy SugarBear Quilting!
xoxo, ande
