One thing I’d really like to work on is creating my own fabric pulls over using bundles and designer collections. I’ve made lots of quilts with jelly rolls, fat quarter bundles, specially curated bundles, kits… you get the picture. I love those quilts and I learned a lot from making them now – now I’m ready to flex my creativity even more with fabric choice. I’ve been reorganizing my sewing room lately and I’ve got my stash all organized by color and it is just so very inspiring! Year of stash, indeed!

So back in December, I applied to test a new quilt pattern for Tera of The Quilting Smith. I was selected and spent quite some time on my fabric pull. I went back and forth for days, y’all. Finally I decided that I’d start with my favorite color, pink, and go from there. I pulled out my trusty color wheel and decided on a three color scheme to keep things simple. I wanted the pink to pop, so I planned to use it for two fabrics in the quilt pattern.

This is my original pull – pink, blue green, and yellow green. I edited it down from here a bit to simplify the cutting but this is pretty much it. I tried to have a mix of scales and values to keep things interesting. On a side note, go check out Just Get It Done Quilt’s color series – she’s amazing and I have probably watched most of her videos twice, at least.

With that I got started cutting and even labeled everything! The pattern is so straightforward and easy to follow, I loved having everything laid out like this!

I loved making all these cute green hearts, though in my mind I was calling them apples.

The blocks all came together so quickly! At this point, I was really focused on distributing the pink colors evenly. I had a mix of low, medium, and high value pinks and planned them to be even across the quilt top – remember this, it’s relevant in a moment. Before I knew it, it was time to lay everything out.

I loved how prominent the pink is in the final layout. At this point, I started having a sneaking suspicion that I could have done the layout a bit better. It was a snap to sew up the rows and then I was done!

And there she is! This is one cute as pie little quilt. As this was a test quilt, I’ve had a bit of time to think about the layout and my color choices. The final effect is not exactly what I had in mind. Since I used the same color for two fabrics in the pattern, I wound up losing the contrast between the flying geese and the little checkerboard squares. I could have kept it all pink and maybe done the flying geese in the high value fabrics and made them pop a little more.

I love learning about color, value, and pattern by doing – I’m thrilled with the finished quilt top and now it’s fun to think of lessons I learned along the way. By the way, those green hearts and the teal squares are slaying me right now.

All in all, this is a fantastic pattern that resulted in a lovely quilt. This is the Sweet Nothings Quilt by The Quilting Smith – it comes in two sizes and I made the throw size. The throw finishes at 60.5″ square – I used various scraps, fat quarters, and yardage from stash. I can’t recommend the pattern enough, Tera walks you through every step and explains everything so well. I love how she breaks down the blocks – it made really easy for me to pick it up a chunk at a time during my very busy January.

At the end of the day, I can’t fault myself for incorporating so many beautiful pink fabrics – it’s what I love. I can’t wait to get it quilted and get to enjoying it – it’s so sweet it hurts my teeth.

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Happy {learning and} making!