Today we are closing out our Petal Patch release with our third sample, and she is a good one. Meet Retro; 58" x 80", and full of sass with petals that pop and playful leaves that dance from flower to flower.
Petal Patch uses FQs to give a scrappy vibe, and those FQs can either be used all together to create solid petals/solid leaves, or mixed up within each block for an even scrappier look. So far, we have shown you an example of solid petals and solid leaves in our Cover one, and mixed petals and mixed leaves in our Scrappy one. Retro is the best of both worlds, with solid petals, and mixed leaves. We even opted into the scrappy binding option for this sample...more on that later.
In keeping with the mix-and-match vibe of Petal Patch, we have mix-and-match bundles in our shop, so you can recreate exactly what we have made, or choose your own adventure with the fabrics that inspired us. For Retro, we used the Retro Petal bundle, the Retro Leaf bundle, and the Shell and Lemonade Flower Center bundle. And paired with a woven background - a RSS Warp and Weft called Flicker, in Natural - it is texture city, from quilting cottons to ginghams to (more) soft wovens to a couple fabrics that almost feel like a lawn. In full disclosure, all those textures made for some challenging piecing moments, but we made it through and it turned out gorgeously.
Step one with all this texture? Starch starch starch. And then starch a little more. Only then did it feel safe to start cutting. Not shown in these pictures are the scrappy binding cuts. The Petal Patch pattern gives an option for cutting binding strips from the leftover Petal fabric. We did that here, and you will see those later in the blog.
Also not shown are all the little black fuzzies that came off of the Warp and Weft fabric as we worked with it. I cut this while Meghan and Christy were in Chicago for H & H, and even though I cleaned up afterwards, Christy returned to her cutting table thinking ants had infested the studio. Oops.
If you've read our previous Petal Patch blogs (Cover and Scrappy) then you can say this next part aloud with me: Petal Patch is a chain piecer's dream pattern! Turn on a bingeable show or start a thrilling audiobook, pop in some ear buds, and snowball your heart out. These flowers piece together in no time.
Done! And I would like you to know that Meghan and I each took some of these home to sew, and the black fuzzy infestation continued. I dare you to look at that Warp and Weft and not see it as little ants.
Next up are the leaves! Our Retro sample shows the mixed leaves style, but the process is the same no matter which style you are following: for each leaf fabric, half will become Left Side Leaves and half will become Right Side Leaves. Split them up before you sew and then go to town with your snowballing.
(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.)
Because we were making solid petals with mixed leaves, we needed to decide the final layout for our flowers before we started putting our leaf sections together. In a solid flower, the stem piece will need to match the petals, and though our leaves will be mixed, we wanted to be intentional with their placement. So it was important to get ourselves organized and up on the design wall at this point.
Now that we have everything laid out, we can sew the leaf sections together.
And like that, done! Time to match them up with their flower sections.
Nice, right? But what you really want to see is the whole thing put together...
Ta da! You can tell it's an extra good finish when we take it out for a field trip. We took advantage of a mild May day, and went for a quick walk for some photos.
We took advantage of a mild May day, and took Retro for a spin around the block for photos. Then back to the studio for those gorgeous detail shots.
We chose a pale pink solid for backing and sent Retro off to Emily at So Sunny Quilts for long arming, who stitched in the Fun House panto.
As mentioned above, we used the optional scrappy binding method included in the pattern. You will have enough scrap left in your petal FQs to cut 2 1/2" strips that can be sewn together for binding. How many strips you use will depend on your finished quilt size and preferred binding method, but we were able to use every fabric at least once. And when attaching the binding, we made sure to include a label from our original TCJ x Sarah Hearts Quilt Block Label collection.
There you have it, our Retro sample. If you have fallen in love with her as much as we have, you can make her too.
Shell and Lemonade Flower Center Bundle
TCJ + Sarah Hearts Quilt Block Labels
Happy sewing!