The very awesome Allegory at A Thousand Needles has been hosting a quilt along for the 318 Patchwork Patterns book! She started in mid October and each week, she'll feature four blocks with a guest quilter and a giveaway. Her inaugural post with all those details can be found here (along with weeks one and two).
This week (or rather last week but given our shop move, it's been pretty chaotic around here) the guest on Al's blog is our very own Brenda Ratliff! She owns Pink Castle Fabrics, in case you were not already aware. She rules.
Brenda made block #5 from the book, this sweet ice cream cone. I told her she should make all the sweet treat blocks into a pillow set because how cute would that be?! Brenda put the time into nice finishing techniques too like a hidden zipper and contrast binding. You can read more about her experience working from this book and making the pillow over on her blog.
There have been a bunch of cute blocks stitched together so far-- mugs, apples, ducks, shooting stars, hearts, and this super cute little tulip!
A chicken (block #99) pieced by guest blogger from week 2, Penny from SewTakeAHike
The 318 Patchwork Patterns book uses the freezer paper method of paper piecing which some of you may not be familiar with (I know I'm not). Al was also kind enough to put together a great tutorial on how to do this method of paper piecing!
I was really excited to get this book in the shop as soon as I found out we'd be carrying it and now seeing all these blocks worked up in pretty fabrics is so awesome. They're even cuter than I thought they'd be! If you're interested in seeing more projects made with some of these adorable paper pieced blocks, Zakka Workshop is also organizing a blog hop to show off all the things you can make from the book! Here's the full schedule for that:
