Sweet Home Quilt Along: Week 5 - Assembly & Finishing

Welcome to week FIVE of the Sweet Home Quilt Along, a QAL I'm co-hosting with Sharon Holland, the designer behind the adorable Sweet Home quilt pattern, and Jennifer Jones of Penelope Handmade!





For week FIVE, now that our Sweet Home quilt tops are complete, we'll move on to the final quilting stage! Below you can see the schedule we're following throughout the QAL, but of course we always encourage and want everyone to sew at their own pace!

The Sweet Home quilt pattern is designed by Sharon and is available in her SHOP, for those of you just finding out about our QAL. Throughout the quilt along I've made a total of four quilts, two to keep and two to give -- two made with my new Cozy & Joyful collection and two using the original Sweet Home quilt kit, both from Lady Belle Fabric!

I'll be sending all four of my quilts to Brooke at Lady Belle Fabric who offers an edge to edge long arm quilting service, Lady Belle Quilting, in addition to her amazing fabric shop! This week I'll piece together my quilt backs and will photograph full shots of all of my quilts tops to share next week for the BIG reveal, before sending my quilts out to Brooke!



Since two of my quilts are gifts, I'm letting the recipient decide their own allover quilting design to finish their quilts with. For me, I've been browsing Brooke's long arm quilting patterns, trying to decide on which pattern I'll choose for each of mine!

The Cozy & Joyful Sweet Home quilt that I'm keeping for my family's 2020 Christmas quilt has a background made with my creamy white with red stars print, Snowing Bright!





So far I've narrowed quilting patterns down to FOUR! Three different snowflake options -- Frost (top left), Falling Snow (top right), or Simple Snowflake (bottom right). And one festive option -- Holiday Lights (bottom left). Right now I'm leaning most towards Holiday Lights, because it perfectly mimics my Cozy & Joyful Northern Lights print, but I'd love to know what you think?! It really is so hard to choose!



The second Cozy & Joyful Sweet Home quilt is made with my own Make Snow Flakes print as the background, so it will be exciting to see if this one ends up quilted with snowflakes!



My other two quilt tops are Sweet Home twins, made using the original kit that was available at Lady Belle Fabric. This version is made using a mix of prints by me, Sharon and fellow various AGF designers. It's so perfectly sweet and pairs with this quilt pattern perfectly! 





For this one I've narrowed the quilting options down to three, each adding to the overall "sweet" theme of this quilt -- Ginger Flowers (top left), Tight loops (top right) and Baptist Heart Clams (bottom). Currently it's a complete three-way tie for this one, so I definitely would love some help! The flowers pattern would highlight the garden-y theme that flows throughout the quilt because of the prints I used. The tight loops is just so classic to me and is something I always meant to try myself on my home machine using free motion quilting. The fans + heart combo is adorable, unique and would be a meaningful way to show all the love that went into making these quilts. ALL are such great options!



Beyond making these BIG quilting pattern decisions, sewing together quilt backs, taking reveal photos and shipping these beauties off to Brooke, this quilt along is pretty much a wrap for me! It's really flown by and I hope you've loved sewing with Sharon + ME + our new guest, Jennifer! Today both lady's have lots to share one their own blogs, Sharon has continued adding to her helpful weekly IGTV video series for this QAL on her Instagram and she has an amazing YouTube video for adding faux chenille binding using one of our sponsored Giveaway products, Chenille-It! So be sure to pop on over to both Sharon's and Jennifer's blogs to see their week five posts!



Such an amazing finish, right?! I'm planning to do this myself with at least one of the two quilts I'm keeping and I can't wait! 

As always, I hope these photos inspire your week five photos! I can't wait to see them! Be sure to post your photos on Instagram with our QAL hashtag #SweetHomeQAL, as well as tagging me @MaureenCracknell, @SharonHollandDesigns and @PenelopeHandmade. 

Just a reminder -- that from the hashtag pool we'll be able to see everyone's posts, as long as you have a public account, and from there we can interact and encourage one another! We'll also be using the hashtag pool to choose weekly Giveaway winners!



I'll see you back here Friday when I share our next Giveaway with our sponsor, Oliso!

xo Maureen