Have you heard? We released our newest pattern a few weeks ago. Say hi to Petal Patch! You met our first sample, The Scrappy One, at the end of May, so today I'd like to share our cover girl with you. And we have kits for her! Check them out here.
The Petal Patch pattern is both FQ and scrap/stash friendly, and offers an array of design choices. For our cover quilt, we used FQs, and constructed "solid" (i.e. all one fabric) petals and leaves. For an example of the "mix and match" construction, you can read about our Scrappy Petal Patch here. Both are examples of the Throw size, finishing at 58" x 80".
We used all Bella solids for our Cover sample. This variety of warm tones will become our flower petals...
...and the cool tones will become our leaves.
Bella Citrine and Light Blue became our flower centers. The Cover Kit includes these FQs, but you can find them as a separate Flower Center Bundle as well.
Cutting the pieces for a Petal Patch takes a minute; keeping fabrics grouped together, like with like, and stacking background squares in groups of 20 helps me stay organized.
Step one in constructing a Petal Patch block is making your flower centers. These are essentially 16-patches, and strip piecing and nested seams make them a breeze to put together.
Petal Patch is a chain piecer's dream. Whether you are making mixed or solid flowers, you can pick up a pile of petal pieces and a pile of background pieces and just snowball to your heart's content. A hot tip on snowballing: if you haven't already, give diagonal seam tape a try. You stick it directly on your machine, aligning the red line down the center with your machine needle. Then, as you sew, you keep the corners of your "snowball" on that red line and you will have perfect seams every time.
Once your flower centers and your petal sections are done, you just sew up each row and then sew the whole thing together, nesting your seams for easier seam matching.
Boom! Flowers! This was our first time sewing solid flowers, and we couldn't get over just how striking they were. The saturated Bella solids really pop as they each have their standalone moment in their Flower Unit.
Onto the Leaf Unit! But before we get to the actual leaf fabric, we finish with the last strip of our flower fabric, sewing up our stems. Quick and easy.
Now to the actual leaves. And more snowballing. Again, a chain piecer's dream, and again, a wonderful excuse to break out the diagonal seam tape. For each leaf fabric, half will become Left Side Leaves and half will become Right Side Leaves, so we found it easiest to split them in half before sewing and work on one side at a time. Meghan took all the lefties and I took all the righties, and we snowballed our way through.
Once you've chain pieced your way through Left Side Leaves, Right Side Leaves, and Stems, it's time to put them all together.
Again, look at those solids just poppin'! Aren't you just dying to see all the pieces put together??
Ta da!
She's so pretty. All the flimsies look extra magical when we manage to catch the light shining through from behind, but something about these colors make it look even more like stained glass.
Petal Patch Cover went off to Emily at So Sunny Quilts, where she quilted on the 60s Mod Butterfly pantograph, by Julie Hirt. After backing her in a light pink Bella solid, she was bound in Bella Tangerine (we have half yard cuts available here, and they are perfect to add to a Petal Patch Cover kit).
There she is, our gorgeous Petal Patch Cover. If you've been inspired to make your own, here's everything you need:
Bella Tangerine Half Yard Binding Cut
Happy sewing!