The Sew and Tell Project

Hello fabric friends!

I am thrilled to be included in another one of Sharon Holland’s fabulous blog tours. I promise you that you are in for a textile treat if you stop and visit the other makers. I love the fabulous banner tutorial Dritz shared with us last Friday, and I’m happy to be the first maker on the tour this week.

Make sure you visit Sharon Holland on Instagram as she is hosting very cool weekly giveaways featuring the tour’s sponsors: Dritz Sewing, BlocLoc Rulers, and Fat Quarter Shop. She is also hosting a similar giveaway on the weekly recap blog post.

As soon as I saw Everlasting Fabrics in the Spring Market reveal, I knew I wanted to order some as soon as it became available. In fact, you may recognize several of the prints from my last post. I hope to demonstrate today just how versatile the stunning reds, teals, blues, and low volumes of this collection are.

Last summer, while I was too pregnant to quilt/sleep/eat/clean, my friend Katie over at Simple Life Patterns released a gorgeous and free foundation paper piecing pattern called the Seafarer Quilt using Sharon’s Signature Fabrics collection. It is a jaw-dropping pattern and I knew I wanted to make it some day. She includes a pattern to download from her shop right here and a blog tutorial for assembly here. The pattern is free if you find the code in the pinned post of her Facebook group.

Everlasting Fabrics was the perfect choice to create a quilt using Katie’s Seafarer design. It also gave me the opportunity to make my third completed quilt project using the Cricut Maker to cut my fabric.

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I have only experimented a few times with foundation paper piecing, but I found it most helpful to use my Cricut Maker to cut out the fabric pieces to reduce waste, and to print the A0 file included in the pattern so I did not have to tape the foundation pattern together. Other helpful tools included my Cricut Brightpad (or a light box) to illuminate my templates, a glue stick, and a small rotary cutter with a good non-slip ruler (I prefer Creative Grids rulers) to trim my seams. While the pattern actually goes together fairly quickly once you get the hang of piecing, it does assume basic foundation paper-piecing knowledge.

Katie includes templates so you can choose between piecing the quilt as a 60″ circle or you can add corners to make it a 60″ square quilt. I chose to complete mine in the square and send it to Quilter’s Jem for an edge-to-edge feather and swirl design. With five children, I am thankful for a great longarm quilter to help me finish my projects so I can have more time to piece. I requested wool batting so I could enjoy natural warmth and a bit of loft in my new quilt.

I couldn’t be more thrilled with my finished quilt!

I actually had started working on my quilt already when Sharon invited me to join the tour. Sharon kindly sent me some additional fabric to finish my quilt as well as some of her adorable knit prints to make coordinating outfits for my daughters.

For my 10-month-old daughter’s outfit, I used the recently released Harlow dolman-style dress and romper from Peek-a-Boo Pattern Shop. Since she isn’t yet collecting treasures, I left off the optional but adorable pockets. I love how quick dolman-style rompers are since there are no sleeves to set. The romper is quick to sew and includes instructions for an optional snap bottom for babies, or you can simply pull it down.

I also made a cute little headband for her using a new and free tutorial from my friend Gail at Boo + Lu. Don’t you just love good scrap busters?

I initially wasn’t planning on making a matching outfit for big sister, but she has been growing like a weed and loves dresses. Plus I really wanted to use some of the large scale floral knit from Sharon’s collection and thought a simple raglan dress would be perfect to showcase it.

This is the Aurora Raglan from Sofiona Designs, a talented Canadian-based design company. Fun fact: Sofiona designers Sherri and Trish actually helped me work a bit on my Everlasting table runner when we spent time together in Winnipeg last month. I can’t wait to sew more of their growing collection of patterns.

After falling in love with the sleek fit and details of the Aurora, I am now going through my collection of Sharon Holland knits to make her one for every day of the week! It is such a simple design with gentle, flattering shaping for my little girl. I left off the optional accent ties to showcase the fabric. This dress was definitely the simplest sew of the projects I’m featuring today but I’m so pleased with the results and can’t wait to make more.

We recently cut off her waist-length hair for summer, so she also got a sweet hair bow using scraps from my quilt project! I used the sailor bow tutorial from Sweet Red Poppy to cut out this simple bow on my Cricut Maker.

That’s a wrap for my creations for the Everlasting Blog Tour! Thank you for taking the time to see what I created, visit me on Instagram, and visit Marisa Wilhelmi for her stop tomorrow!

Friday, July 12 – Sharon Holland

Monday, July 15 – Marija Vujcic

Tuesday, July 16 – Carolina Moore

Wednesday, July 17 – Dana Willard

Thursday, July 18 – Lisa Ruble

Friday, July 19 – Dritz Sewing

Monday, July 22 – Eleri

Tuesday, July 23 – Marisa Wilhelmi

Wednesday, July 24 – Sharon McConnell

Thursday, July 25 – Morgan M.

Friday, July 26 – Alexis Wright

Monday, July 29 – Priscilla Geissler

Tuesday, July 30 – Maureen Cracknell

Wednesday, July 31 – Elina Temmes