Hello sweet friends! My name is April Rosenthal, mama to three lovies, wife to my high school sweetheart, designer for Moda, and the chickadee behind Prairie Grass Patterns, my quilt pattern company. I started quilting in earnest nearly 15 years ago as a way to cope with infertility–and over the years quilting has become a beautiful part of my story. I look back on the quilts I’ve stitched and patterns I’ve written and fabrics I’ve designed and realize that if I hadn’t had the harrowing trials that led me to quilting, I would have missed some pretty amazing people and experiences.
I’m so excited to be a guest blogger today to show you my version of Jenny’s “Broken Dishes” tutorial!
I decided to use my good friend Amy Smart’s new fabric collection, Gingham Girls–it is SUCH a fun collection full of nostalgic prints and patriotic colors! As soon as I saw it, I knew this fabric needed to be a new soccer quilt for our family–our old one is getting pretty ragged. Once I knew I was making a soccer quilt, I wanted to make something quick and easy to put together–because soccer quilts get USED–but I wanted to do more than just sew squares together.
I used Jenny’s tutorial exactly as she describes in the video, except with one change: Instead of using charm squares, I upsized to layer cake squares. This one little change means that you can grab 32 layer cake squares and whip out a whole quilt speedy fast! I had a great time stitching around each layer cake pair, as Jenny demonstrates. I was even able to let my 9 year old daughter stitch up a few, it was that easy!
To make a quilt like mine, simply make 4 sets of layer cake pairs, one dark and one light, all using the same dark color. I used various low volume fabrics for my light choices, because low volume hides grass stains better! These 4 sets will be stitched around, cut apart and reassembled just like the tutorial shows to make 4 identical blocks.
Assemble the blocks to make a jumbo block.
Make 4 jumbo blocks.
Stitch 2 blocks together in rows, and then stitch the rows together.
I backed this quilt with a perfect slub denim chambray and machine quilted it with a baptist fan pattern with a swirl. I used this super fun yellow plaid to machine bind with a zigzag stitch, a technique I like to use for quilts that will likely be drug around by tired sweaty children. 😉
This quilt goes together lightening fast, and I’m super tempted to repeat the process and make a much larger quilt with 9 jumbo blocks just because it would be so easy! Mama’s bed needs a new quilt!
I would love to see your versions of Jenny’s Broken Dishes tutorial, and get to know you better! You can find me on Instagram @amrosenthal, Facebook at Prairie Grass Patterns, and my website www.aprilrosenthal.com
xoxo
April
