Rainbow Bright / Beauties Pageant 38

As I predicted last week, the quilt tops are piling up!

I just finished piecing this colorful strip-and-flip baby quilt. Is there a baby in my life who needs a rainbow quilt? Well, no. But it was a delight to assemble this fabric pull and a cinch to piece the strips.

The quilt requires a 2-inch strip from each fabric, not enough to make a dent in my yardage on hand. To bust through a bit more fabric, I cut enough for two quilt tops and two pieced backs. : )

To make your own strip-and-flip quilt, check out Allison Harris’s tutorial here.

What have you been working on? If you, like me, are producing just tops this summer, we want to see them. Share your finishes big and small in the linky below!

I thought you’d appreciate a real-life look at a FBTB photo shoot. Ten minutes before I had to leave for a vet appointment, I was taping this project to the wall in my family room and taking pictures!

Linking up to Favorite Finish and Main Crush Monday ...

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Giveaway: Camille Roskelley Book / Beauties Pageant 37

We’re a week into school vacation up here in Massachusetts, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that this is going to be the Summer of Quilt Tops. I need sewing that requires little brain power, projects that I can pick up and put down easily. Of course, out of necessity, the Fall of Quilting will have to follow the Summer of Quilt Tops, but I can live with that.

I just added Camille Roskelley’s Little Man pattern, from her Simplify book, to my Summer of Quilt Tops to-do list. It’s a quilt I’ve made twice before, once in a contrasting blue and orange palette ...

And again in a more subdued palette ...

The beauty of this pattern is that the blocks don’t require much fabric—I made the first two versions with mere scraps of novelty prints I had stubbornly held on to. Plus, the final product is about 40 inches by 51 inches—I prefer gifting generously sized baby quilts.

My third Little Man quilt will be more of a Little Lady quilt, featuring Seaside Carnival, a collection by Rae Ritchie for Dear Stella. There is no intended recipient for this quilt yet, but since it’s the Summer of Quilt Tops, I don’t think that matters. Let the unquilted tops pile up!

A Giveaway

If you want to make your own Little Man quilt, you’re in luck: I have a copy of Simplify to give away. Just comment below to be entered to win. (If a prompt would be helpful, let us know whether there’s a quilt pattern you find yourself making again and again. What’s so great about it?)

The giveaway is open to U.S. recipients only. (To those of you in Canada, Germany, and beyond, you know this pains me, but the cost of shipping internationally would exceed the value of the book.) The random-number generator will pick a winner on Friday, June 28. If you’re a no-reply blogger, please drop me a note at frombolttobeauty (at) gmail (dot) com with your email address in case you win.

Update: Kathy S. is the winner!

This Week’s Pageant

The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Please Send Reinforcements! / Beauties Pageant 36

Quilty friends, summer vacation has begun. My sewing time, which was already hindered by Cain Renovation 2019, has been hijacked by two little boys. They won’t let me near my sewing machine. Even simple tasks, like viewing last week’s Beauties Pageant participants or responding to emails, have been denied. Yesterday I spent hours (hours!) playing ping pong with my 10-year-old. I’m still exhausted. From playing ping pong. For real. Please send reinforcements!

I don’t have anything sharable this week, so I’ll throw in some pictures of projects past for good measure and get right to this week’s event!

Pretty pictures of stuff I made years ago!

Even more pretty pictures of stuff I made years ago!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

I Heart Pieced Backs / Beauties Pageant 35

Quilters tend to fall into one of two camps: those who piece their quilt backs and those who don’t. I am a member of the former group. I almost always piece my backs. To me, piecing a back doesn’t mean joining two widths of identical fabric, though. (I despise matching repeats and avoid that approach whenever I can!)

I have a particular approach that involves stashing 2-yard cuts of fabric, cutting them lengthwise, and then filling in the middle with fabric I want out of my stash or scrap bin and into a quilt. (For details on this technique, click here.)

What results is often a chunky design that coordinates with the quilt top without competing with it. Check out some of my favorites from finishes past and the rationale behind each one ...

Piecing to Use a Precious Fabric

I was lucky enough to have yardage of a focal fabric from Basic Grey’s PB&J years after the collection went out of production, and I used it in the back below. I made this quilt for me, so now I get to enjoy that beloved print every day. (See the full project here.)

Piecing to Avoid Accumulating Scraps

I made my mother-in-law a quilt to coordinate with her family room. There were a lot of cool colors in the quilt, which are far from my preferred palette, so instead of filing the leftovers from the quilt top in my scrap storage, where they would likely linger for years, I incorporated them in the back. (See the full project here.)

Piecing to Feature a Large-Scale Print

I loved the Joel Dewberry print below and knew it deserved to exist uncut in a project, so onto a back it went! (See the full project here.)

Piecing to Highlight an Inspiration Fabric

The floral print below from Rifle Paper Co. set the palette for a quilt top. Of course I had to include a swath of it on the back. (See the full project here.)

Piecing to Do Something a Little Different

The front of this quilt included the tiniest bit of teal. I couldn’t successfully incorporate teal in the top, though, so I gave it its day in the sun on the back. (See the full project here.)

How do you decide what to do on the back of a quilt? Share with the rest of us in the comments!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter