30’s Playtime « modafabrics

Hi! I’m Kimberly from My Brown Bag Studio and I’m really happy to be back again with my second project for the Bake Shop kitchen. Working with this line of fabric was literally like a walk down memory lane… it seemed that each print reminded me of my Grandma more than the last. And creating a quilt with bunting just brought vintage and modern together perfectly!

1 – 30’s Playtime Layer Cake
1- Bella Solids Charm Pack in Snow
1/2 yard Bella Solids in Snow for border
3 1/2 yards Blue Bonnet 3258614 for backing
3/4 yard Blue Bonnet 32585 14 for binding
6 3/4 yards of jumbo white ricrac
basic quilting supplies
red thread if desired for contrast stitching.

1. Open your layer cake and choose 36 squares for your quilt. Make sure that the kitten you got for Christmas is sound asleep at this point.

2. Layout the squares in 6×6 rows the way you like them.

3. Sew together with 1/4″ seams

4. Press to one side, each row opposite.

5. Matching seams, sew rows together.

6. Press quilt flat and set aside.

Now we’ll make the prairie points… My quilt used 35 prairie points for the bunting flags, but you may choose to use more or less. I also had white layer cake squares available to me, so I cut them down to charm square size. The simple process was like this… cutting 5″ squares…

1. Press a charm square in half.

2. Press the two corners down to make a point.

3. Voila! The prairie point!

4. My 35 prairie points.

Check on that kitten again before moving on… because to a kitten, a quilt out on the floor is just way too tempting… believe me, I know!

1. Layout your quilt and position the prairie points in bunting-ish swoops.

2. When placing my prairie points, I loosely measured two fingers between each to keep them evenly spaced.

3. When you come to the edge of your quilt, be sure to leave a generous seam allowance (more than 1/4″) so you don’t sew into the prairie point when you attach the border.

4. Pin. Pin, pin, pin. Pin all the prairie points in place, making sure not to disturb the lines of the bunting-ish swoops.

5. Using a scant 1/4″ seam, stitch the prairie points in place using white thread, just to hold them in place.

6. Using either white or red thread and a generous seam allowance, sew the two folded edges to the quilt. A generous seam allowance will make for a quilt with interesting texture once it’s quilted and washed. On my girlfriend’s advice, I used a red thread and I really love the contrast it gave. Thanks for the idea, Andrea!

Adding the Ricrac…

I thought long and hard about how to sew the ricrac to my quilt. I didn’t just want a seam down the middle, because then the raw edges at the top of the prairie points would be exposed. So I came up with a zigzag stipple and it worked just fine.

1. I set my machine to a long zigzag stitch…

2. I practiced a little with a back and forth stipple…

3. …and jumped in. I took my ricrac, let it hang over the edge of the quilt a little to ensure that it would be caught in my borders, and then stipple quilted it on. I really took my time to try to unsure that the stippling covered the ricrac well. I didn’t pin, but curved the ricrac as I went to follow the top of the prairie point flags.

4. Trim overhanging ricrac after it’s all sewn on.

Cut your border fabric into 2 1/2″ strips and sew on with 1/4″ seams, pressing towards the body of the quilt so your seams don’t show through the white.

Layer your quilt top with batting and backing. I used Warm and Natural batting, and pieced a center seam to make the backing fabric the correct size.

Quilt as you like. I stipple quilted on all the squares, avoiding the prairie points and ricrac. I also did two lines of straight line quilting… one in the border ditch with white thread, and another outside that one in red thread to match the detail on the prairie points.