Cute Cups Quilt

Late last year I purchased the book "Quilty Fun" by Lori Holt with the intention of doing a sew-a-long with my friend Jess early in the new year.  Well December proved to be a busy month which spilled over into January and I was just a little bit stressed wondering how I would manage to get everything done; when Lori Holt posted the following invitation on Instagram:

 

 

 

I tagged Jess and asked her if she would rather do something smaller like this instead of the whole "Quilty Fun" quilt.  The next thing I knew, Jess had sorted through her scraps and started to sew it together already.  Time to get myself into gear.  I had been hoarding some red and white prints with the intention of making something schmancy for my kitchen - this seemed like a good excuse to use my special stash.  The prints I used were a lovely "Pam Kitty Picnic Red Recipe For Success" text fabric that I had purchased ages ago from Alison at The Cotton Factory, and I matched it up with some prints from "Weeds" by Me and My Sister for Moda.

 

The cups are made.

The sashing goes on.

 

My completed top.



I'm still rather inexperienced when it comes to actual quilting (no I still can't FMQ!), and when Jess posted a photo of hers with a lovely cross hatch quilt design I asked her how to do it.  I knew that I would be able to use my walking foot to quilt this design but instead of using tape to mark the lines I used a water erasable pen.  I stitched the ditch in red around the red border and used Aurifil in white for the cross hatch. I was surprised how quick and easy this method was!

 

My assistant - Snowy the Squirrel

 

Quilting

In next to no time it was quilted, bound and hung up in the kitchen.  I hadn't pre-measured the space I had in mind to hang it but thankfully it fitted perfectly.  It now hangs on the kitchen wall above my recipe book shelf. 

  

 

  

Overall this was such a quick and easy project and it surprised me actually.  Lately most of my work had been intricate foundation paper piecing and I guess I had forgotten how quick regular piecing is in comparison.  It took me a matter of hours to sew the top together and similar time to quilt it.  If I had of hand quilted it would have taken one or two nights to complete it. 

 

I'm pretty chuffed with how quickly this mini came together and how cool it looks hanging up in my kitchen, but what really impressed me was how sweet, kind and supportive Lori herself has been:

 

 

 

"Quilty Fun" by Lori Holt