Dog Gone Cute QAL Complete!

Lorna McMahon of Sew Fresh Quilts is a Canadian quilt designer I have admired from afar for a while now – her Elephant Parade pattern has always been on my to-do list. So when she launched her latest pattern, Dog Gone Cute, with a QAL I just had to join in the fun.

When thinking about the fabrics to use in this beautiful project, I thought I would start with my current favourites, my luscious Kona solids, with white for the dogs and grey as the background… I thought these would look great and very colourful for a child’s wallhanging which was my intention. 

I decided to make up my first block, just to get the hang of the pattern. As I only needed small pieces I raided my scraps from a previous project, and for some reason picked the lighter grey instead of the darker one. As you can see this was a mistake, far too close to the white so that pup loses its outline.

Still, I loved making the block, Lorna’s pattern is so easy to follow, and I love this stitch and flip method - her piecing is just genius!

So then I thought, what about using some patterns instead of solids… and while hunting for some plain pink and black for the ears, eyes and nose, I came across these lovelies from Louden’s Flitsy range that I'd forgotten about – it is scary when you forget what you’ve bought!

So I tried out my first doggy, deciding on the larger block – I was very please with the outcome, isn’t he sweet! Is it sad to cooo and giggle to yourself when sewing… especially when you’re all alone??

Anyway, I then made another two, and laid them out for a wall hanging – but they needed something else…. Since discovering this flip and stitch method, I have been working on some new cushion designs for Christmas, including these two – I live in Middlesbrough if that explains anything… 

....I really enjoyed how the letters came together, so decided to work out a plan for “Dog Gone Cute” to add to my wall hanging. If you would like to add the lettering to your own project, I have the cutting and piecing instructions here.

So once the panel was all pieced together, I had to decide on the quilting… I recently finished a quilt for a new kit with wavy lines across the whole top, and had forgotton how much I love the quilting process, so I decided to have some fun, and as Angela Walters would say, “quilt the life out of it”!

I started with vertical lines on the dogs, just so they would stand out against the rest, then I echo quilted each of the letters. Then came the background, after consulting my FMQ heroines, Angela and Leah Day, I decided on this dense pattern on the top dog. However, I’m sorry to say I actually got a little bored… so I came over all artistic and decided to slowly thin out the quilting lines, turning them into loop-da-loops in the second dog, and then down to simple wavy lines in the last dog. I think it’s worked really well, I hope you agree.

Lorna has been kind enough to share instructions for these gorgeous blocks on her blog, so why not have a go yourself. And if you would like some more inspiration, check out the rest of today's bloggers:

 
Sandy of Upstairs Hobby Room
Heide of Heide’s Quilty Hugs
Britt-Inger of Hill Valley Quilter

Judy of How ART You?

Linking up with Let's Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts, Crazy Mom Quilt's Finish It Up Friday and Free Motion Mavericks - come and say hello!