Here in the Pacific NW, it has been dreary and raining for the past week. We got a little bit of sun last week, but I was still so jealous of the warm spring weather everyone else seemed to be enjoying. Anyway, to cheer myself up, I decided to make a springy little doll quilt.
Marjorie’s Cottage Quilt was what I had in mind, but for a kit quilt top, I wanted something with a simpler design and easier embroidery. The bunnies in the center were copied from an old embroidered baby quilt I saw on ebay several years ago. It was a whole cloth summer quilt with no piecing — just the bunny motif in the middle. Initially, I was going to set this quilt like Marjorie’s, but after I embroidered the bunnies, I changed my mind and decided make it diagonal. Because of this, the square in the middle is cut with bias edges, which was kind of a drag, and something I will certainly correct in the kit.
Vintage Double Wedding Ring quilt pieces form the patchwork sections of the quilt. The pattern is super easy; it’s like a strippy quilt in that you don’t have to pay much attention to how many little pieces are in each section. The original DWR pieces are close enough to the size I need that I didn’t have to trace and cut. Because the pieces are slightly wider on one end, I just flip them one way or the other as I’m sewing to keep the strip fairly straight, and then I trim it down. I like the look of the uneven seams.
For the tinting on these small quilts, I like to use Prismacolor colored pencils. They can get into smaller spaces, they don’t crumble, and because they are soft and slightly waxy, they apply really well to fabric. I plan to purchase pencils to put in the kits, although I’ll probably cut them up since they are sort of pricey and only a tiny bit of color is required.
The top measures about 23″ x 23″, and contains approximately 200 of the print pieces. I would definitely quilt this with black embroidery floss, probably similar to the quilting on the finished Cottage Quilt.
