Charm Box Blog Hop - Charming, Ta Da!

I named this little quilt Charming. I made her using the new Charm Box Quilt pattern which is a new free shortcut quilt pattern from the Fat Quarter Shop. She is a lovely baby quilt at about 36" x 45". I used fabrics from Heather Ross's Far Far Away collection, with a nice buttery yellow Kona solid. I used more of the same solid for the binding.

Kimberly and The Fat Quarter Shop have made a great little video to show how to make this quilt - it should be embedded just above or go here. This pattern is cleverly designed to have accommodate 5" charm squares - it uses 2 packages and a really fast and fun piecing method. It took no time to make the quilt top at all.



I quilted Charming with unevenly spaced lines, from .25" to about 1.5" apart. I wanted the lines to be a feature but to have a fairly soft quilt too. The quilting on this little quilt should have been a breeze, but instead my top thread - a lovely variegated yellow Aurifil 50 wt cotton thread - kept breaking and breaking. The tension was good and the bobbin thread stayed intact, only the top thread would break - I could not even make it across this little quilt once. I flipped over the thread spool, rethreaded, changed the needle, re-oiled the bobbin, cussed and all with no help.

So I switched out the thread spool for a solid yellow Aurifil 50wt cotton so the only real difference was the solid versus variegated and the actual particular spool - there was nothing left to change - and it was smooth sailing all the way. I left the pretty variegated yellow in the bobbin with no issues. Whatever was going on with that spool, it is now for use on only my regular sewing machine, not the long arm.

For the back, I used big chunks of fabric from the same fabric line. Of course, I tend to keep my Heather Ross fabrics safely on the shelf so it was nice to actually use them. I even remembered to have the directional prints going in both directions - quilt backs are generally viewed on a bed, not on a wall, after all.



Here is a closer view of the back. These prints have a soft almost fuzzy look from a bit of a distance but the designs are sharp and charming close up.



As the quilting was slower than expected, I was behind. I had to finish this quilt last night so I machine stitched the binding (my tutorial for binding is here). This is the best corner, and in fact I managed to get all the corners stitched first time for a change.

This quilt looks great in both directions, and I positioned the prints with no top or bottom in mind.

The Fat Quarter Shop has a Charm Box Quilt Blog Hop today. If you go to their blog - the Jolly Jabber - you can see the links to check out other Charm Box Quilts - and here is the link to the free Charm Box Quilt pattern again. And if you want to purchase a kit to make this quilt with the Aloha Girl fabric line, just go here.

Best,

Leanne