Drop Everything and Make It! Layer Cake

On March 11 the Fat Quarter Shop announced a layer cake challenge to celebrate National Quilting Day. Simply sew a quilt using a layer cake and share it on social media with the hashtag #layercakelotto. I happen to love layer cakes (fabric and baked) and decided it was time to sew up some love, a Moda Love quilt.

Plans for a Picnic
Moda Love Picnic Blanket
The Moda Love layer cake quilt is 72 inches square.

I printed this free pattern a few years ago, so I didn’t pay close attention to the details. I planned to quilt this myself until I realized how large it is. Now I plan to have a long-arm quilter stitch a chicken wire design with edge-to-edge quilting.

Layer Cake Lotto

If you read about the layer cake challenge, you saw a video in which Kimberly Jolly stitches a quilt top from one layer cake. I loved the idea! While rummaging through my fabric, I came across a forgotten layer cake that’s perfect for a simple quilt made of hourglass blocks and four patches. I was determined to make this quilt snappy quick!

The Garden Variety Layer Cake by Lella Boutique looks like a fresh take on feed sack fabric.
Hot off the press, so to speak — no time to clean off the loose threads clinging to my clothing.

I finished the quilt with simple diagonal quilting and pretty pink binding. I pieced the backing with a stripe and print from the Spring Chicken collection by Sweetwater. It seemed to fit the farm-fresh vibe.

layer cake quilt backing with chickens
Spring Chicken print and stripes on the quilt back

Riceford Streams Becomes Joyfully Tracie

I celebrated National Quilting Month in a big way: finished Postcard from Sweden, started and finished my version of Layer Cake Lotto, and pieced a Moda Love quilt. The last two quilts weren’t planned: just “Drop Everything And Make It!” To top it off, I decided to change my blog name from Riceford Streams to Joyfully Tracie so that my Instagram handle and blog will be in sync. Thanks for continuing to follow along and read about my corner of the world!

Squirrels of the Furry Kind

The last time I wrote, I shared the tale of Twitchy, our little red squirrel. If you haven’t read that blog post, you must! We have a rather unique squirrel who enjoys living large. Many readers urged me to deliver a quilt to Twitchy. Alas, he had moved again! What to do? We missed tracking his antics, so my husband decided to build him a home, which I dubbed the Corn Palace. After all, it is for Twitchy, and we all know he wouldn’t settle for anything less. He likes his creature comforts!

My husband read that we should entice Twitchy into the Corn Palace by placing nuts on the deck, as well as inside the house. The only nuts we had were lightly salted pistachios. Would Twitchy take the bait? Watch and see…

Of course, he would! Ironically, once the pistachios were gone, he vamoosed. He was not about to eat that tasteless corn on the cob. “Let the dumb gray squirrels and blue jays have it.” So he wiped the pistachio dust off his little paws and scurried off to his plush cottage in the woods (yet to be discovered by us).

Hopefully, I’ll have more squirrels to share with you in April! They’re frisking about in our woods and inside my little quilty brain.

Joyfully,

Tracie