Sewcialites 3 Sew Along: March Check-in

I am having so much fun participating in this sew along! I haven’t done a sew along years, but have had my eye on some in recent years and I’m so glad I decided to just go with it and jump in this year! We all know I love Fat Quarter Shop, and part of that love stems from their well-written and well-organized patterns and sew alongs, so it’s fun to be caught up in the fun of something like this again. It’s giving big Farm Girl Vintage vibes from way back in the day.

The sew along is still rather new, so if you want to join in you totally should!

Like all quilters do at the beginning of a new quilt, I had to decide on a color palette. I like to add constraints and restrictions when I’m figuring out my color palettes, and I also really love to use community sew alongs as an excuse to work through a problem area in my scrap bins. I’ve noticed, over the past few years, that my green scrap bins have been bursting at the seams, but whenever I go to work through my green scraps, most of them are a yellow-green color, which isn’t a color I like to work with that much. For this sew along I decided I’d try to work through as many of those yellow green/lime green scraps as possible.

As I thought about a cohesive color palette that incorporated yellow-greens, I had a flash of inspiration: Cherry Limeade. Citrusy colors and fruity visuals. It’s always fun when a color palette excites you. I committed and haven’t regretted it one bit. I am LOVING this quilt.

The sixth block pattern will be published today, but I wanted to do a round-up post at month’s end, so I’ll just be showing the first five blocks I’ve made up until now. Block 6 will happen…sometime next week, probably, given the craziness of this weekend’s schedule.

Block 1: “Idyllic”

Block 2: “Twinsies”

Block 3: “Cabin Life”

Block 4: “Spring Wind”

Block 5: “Little Love”

Thoughts on the Setting Blocks

Looking at the final layout for the finished quilt, I’m aware of the setting blocks and realizing I’d probably prefer to make them ahead of time, rather than waiting for the release of the official block pattern at the end of the sew along. The setting blocks are easy enough to reverse engineer: They’re just two 5-inch squares sewn together and then attached to a 5 x 9.5-inch rectangle. So I’m hoping to start sewing up one or two each week along with whatever new block pattern is released. Then I won’t have a crazy amount of extra blocks to sew at the end.

You can download the patterns for the blocks on Fat Quarter Shop’s website.

Links to specific patterns:

There’s also a very active Facebook group for this sew along, if you want to join: Sewcialites Lounge, and they are so much fun to interact with throughout the week. If you’re looking for an upbeat community of sewists, you’ll find them there!