Through the Woods - a Rachel Rossi pattern

I've been busy working on a variety of projects lately, but don't have pictures to show.  😞  I'll try to rectify that in the next day or so.

In the mean time, I'm thrilled to announce that Rachel Rossi has released the Through the Woods pattern that I helped test for her. Remember this post about my Secret Sewing Reveal? 

This was a fun quilt to make and I was honored to test it. Here's Rachel's blog post about the new pattern, including some really awesome pictures. 

The pattern is very well-written and a pleasure to make. Don't let the paper piecing scare you. A number of the pattern testers had never done it and they all raved at how easy it was. Not only does Rachel include very good instructions, she includes a cutting chart for the background pieces as well as minimum size cut pieces for everything else. Ahhhhh...no guessing involved and no swearing when I've cut something too small.  I even fussy cut for a few of pieces and knew exactly what I needed. 

I like the feathers in this narrow house and even played a little to try and match up the blue dots on the bigger house. I wasn't totally successful, but it's not bad.

In the picture below, it's easy to see the feather in the door of the narrow house, but not so easy to see the words on the church. (I'd take a better picture, but the quilt is up at M&E Quilt Shoppe because we're going to schedule a class.) Right above the door it read, "Hope is the thing." and above that (although it's not complete due to size restraints), it reads, "Feathers that perch in the Soul." Along the sides of the door are words such as "Silent song". I placed the words "Best" and "Never Stops" in the steeple. They aren't together on the fabric, but I liked them for the top of the church. I really like this block, even though it's not a strong contrast with the background.  

I quilted this on my domestic machine and it was quite easy because the finished quilt measure 40" x 62," although you could easily add borders and make it larger if you want.

Taking a cue from the background fabric, I quilted small swirls in the background and then stitched in the ditch along the blocks. There really is no rhyme or reason to the swirls, I just dropped the feed dogs and tried to fill the spaces evenly. :-)

I quilted a diamond grid in the large sashing pieces and think it works well against the wavy horizontal lines of the fabric.

And because I know that many people like to see the quilting on the back (me included), here is a picture.

I think I fell in love with this backing fabric when I saw it and knew that it would be perfect for this quilt. A bonus is that I bought it during a store-wide sale. How cool is that?

It's too late to make a long story short, but I enjoyed making this quilt and know you will too. You can purchase this pattern, along with Rachel's other patterns HERE. I know you won't be sorry!

Stay tuned for a table runner that I'm making using some of these blocks. It's going to be so fun! 😍