Layer Cake Latte Quilt Fabric Choices, or “Why I Chose the Fabrics that I Chose”

April 18, 2024April 16, 20241 Comment

I had fun picking out the fabric for this quilt because there were A LOT of great collections that have come out in the past little while. So many that I actually got a little overwhelmed with my options and decided to poll my Facebook friends on what collection they would choose:

I was really surprised that the winner of the poll was #5: “Antoinette,” by French General for Moda, followed by a tie for second, with only one vote less, of #3 “Honey & Lavender,” by Deb Strain for Moda, and #6 “Lemon Bouquet,” by Timeless Treasures Fabrics.

I had already been leaning towards #1 “French Quarter,” by Maywood Studios because I’ve been slowly morphing my home’s decor towards a blue and white palette, but it really surprised me how few votes the collection got in comparison to the other collections. I love two color quilts and I assumed everyone else did as well. The only other collection to get less votes was #2 with all the reds. Two color quilts are not a favorite amongst the people I know.

So I decided to just mock them all up in the quilt pattern so that people could understand why I was going to go with French Quarter despite it not winning the poll—namely, because the contrast was going to be excellent. I thanked everyone for voting and promised them that I’d show them what each collection looked like once the quilt pattern was released, and so here we are. I present to you, dear friends, what the Layer Cake Latte quilt could have looked like in the different collection options:

#1: French Quarter, from Maywood Studios

#2: Heirloom Red, by My Mind’s Eye from Riley Blake Designs

#3: “Honey & Lavender,” by Deb Strain for Moda Fabrics

#4: “Honeybloom,” by 3 Sisters for Moda Fabrics
I mocked this up with two different background colors because I really liked the blue in the collection.

#5: “Antoinette,” by French General for Moda Fabrics

#6: “Lemon Bouquet,” Timeless Treasures Fabrics
I mocked it up with two background colors because I saw the Kona Color of the Year, Mint Julep, and thought it might work well.

I like my quilts to have a fair amount of contrast between the background fabrics and the showcased fabrics, so French Quarter was my ultimate choice, but I did think long and hard about going with Honey & Lavender because I really liked the look of that one as well. I don’t decorate with a lot of purple in my house, so I went with the blue.

But there you go, friends, the visuals that helped me choose my colors. Seeing them mocked up, which fabric collection would you have gone with?

Layer Cake Latte Quilt, a new pattern from Fat Quarter Shop

April 16, 2024April 15, 20242 Comments

It’s the day, it’s the day! Time to show you the Layer Cake Latte quilt in all its mostly-finished glory.

Details:

Pattern: Layer Cake Latte Quilt, a FREE pattern by Fat Quarter Shop.

Fabric: A layer cake of “French Quarter,” by Maywood Studios, and a layer cake of White Bella Solids (98), plus a little extra yardage of the solid for the border.

Thread: Piecing: 50 weight Aurifil, Natural White #2021

This is another pattern in Fat Quarter Shop’s “Shortcut Quilt” series, which starts with some sort of precut and creates a quilt from there. I especially like these kinds of patterns because I really working with precuts.

The pattern uses two layer cakes–one of prints, one solid—and I ran into the problem of my whites not matching up well. French Quarter’s white is more of an ivory/muslin/natural white, and stock was low of those whites in solid layer cakes when I was ordering my fabric, so I just went with a regular pure white and told myself it would be an experiment to find out if it really does matter as much as I think it does to match your whites perfectly. Result of experiment: Totally fine. I don’t mind the “mismatch” at all, and actually like that it makes it easier to see the difference between the two colors.

If you love half-square triangles, this pattern is full of them. If you can tap into a meditative flow state whilst trimming HSTs, prepare for some blissful sewing.

Fat Quarter Shop is releasing the free pattern today, and will be offering a full kit to purchase to make up your own pretty soon.

Thank you so much, Fat Quarter Shop, for the opportunity to sew this up! I enjoyed it immensely!

This post contains affiliate links

I Forgot that I Finished the Quilt Top

March 24, 2024March 25, 2024Leave a comment

Another week of March complete! There were a few reminders and calendar dates that came out this week that really drove the point home that we’re heading into the last bit of this school year. Renaissance received her cap and gown on Monday, so that big reminder that graduation is approaching is now sitting on my dining room table and I get a little hit to the emotions every time I walk by and see it. Bittersweet.

Top priorities this week:

Finish the Latte Layer Cake quilt, photograph it, and write up the various posts
PROM DRESSES
Rachel choir stuff
Garden
Office/Ward Music/Band Parents

Creativity

Layer Cake Latte Quilt: The top, as needed for the pattern debut, is complete! I still need to photograph it and write up its various social media posts for the release date.
Prom Dresses: Worthy of their own blog post because we are not off to a great start.

Caring

Renaissance and I helped Rachel out this week with her rehearsing and she says it helped. The choir concert went really well, you could hear the improvements from the last time her group performed these pieces. They’ll be leaving in a few weeks for an out-of-state competition, so it is crunch time for these kids. A little stressful for everyone right now.
Band Parents: We have a board meeting set up for tonight to deal with some overdue stuff.
Ward Music: My predecessor has it set up pretty well and pretty far out. This should be easy to jump into.

Gardening

I don’t think I got out there this week. Blame the prom dresses.

March(ing) Along

March 18, 2024March 19, 2024Leave a comment

Halfway through this banger of a month! This week technically has quite a few things going on, but as I look at the calendar I don’t feel overwhelmed by any of them.

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

Saturday: Potstickers, stir fry veggies, rice
Sunday: Corned Beef, potatoes, cabbage
Monday: Tacos, taco veggies, rice, tortillas
Tuesday: Honey Garlic Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner, carrots & broccoli, rice
Wednesday: Taco Pasta, creamy green salad
Thursday: Thai Chicken Stiry Fry, stir fry veggies, rice
Friday: Irish Beef & Root Vegetable Stew, rolls

Clothing

It’s all about the prom dresses, baby

Cleaning

I repeat: It’s all about the prom dresses, baby

Caring

Rachel needs help with rehearsing for her choir concert this week. She’s singing the mezzo line in a very difficult song and it’s hard to sing the middle part on anything, let alone this whopper. Time has been scheduled to work with her.
I feel like I need to find some time to spend with Nathaniel. But Cross Country starts up next week and I’ll be spending a lot of time at his meets for the next many weeks, so maybe I can just allow it to happen then?
A lot of office stuff needs to happen. We’ve just been really busy and it’s been hard to find the time to do that.

Creativity

At Home:
- Fat Quarter Shop upcoming quilt: It’s called the “Layer Cake Latte” quilt, and it’s coming along. All the blocks are completed and I am in the midst of joining them. All that’s left is adding the skinny border around it and then the top will be done. I had hoped to get it completely quilted before the due date, but that’s not going to happen because I FORGOT ABOUT THE PROM DRESSES and need to sew like the wind on those.
- Prom Dresses: Yeah, they’re all I can think about at the moment. Ren’s fabric is here and it’s gorgeous. The pattern for her dress was only available as a PDF (boo!) and it’s printed but not yet taped together. Not looking forward to the taping. Once the Layer Cake Latte quilt is assembled I’ll hop right on over to sewing up Ren’s muslin. Rachel has picked out a dress pattern that I crazy, crazy love and cannot wait to tell you about because it’s so cool—it almost shouldn’t even exist—but I have to focus on Ren’s dress first because she’s a senior and that’s how that works.
Van Crafting Sessions™: I’ll keep chipping away at designing wedding shawls for my girls. A lot of the kids’ music lessons are cancelled this week, so I might not have a whole lot of van crafting time.

Gardening

Set up trellises for peas, reattach trellis netting on France for eventual sweet pea climbers
Something with the Delphiniums
Sow pansies, violas
Put plant markers in by sown seeds
Start marigold seeds

Celebrating

Easter’s on the horizon, but I don’t think we’re doing anything in particular for it.
Nathaniel’s birthday is next month, so I’ll start slowly getting organized for that. Time to pull up the “gift ideas” note to myself that I add to throughout the year and start watching for sales.

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