APQ Quilt Along 2016: Part 1

Friday, February 26, 2016


Today I wanted to post about this year's APQ Quilt Along! The theme of this year's quilt along is "It All Adds Up!",  featuring different plus quilt designs! There are three quilt patterns in this year's quilt along (two in the April issue of American Patchwork & Quilting, and one in the Spring issue of Quilts and More, both on newsstands now), plus a pillow pattern on HowToSew.com!


I was approached last month by the lovely folks at All People Quilt about sewing up the Easy Addition Quilt by Brenda Ratliff (found in Quilts and More) for their booth at QuiltCon to help promote the quilt along! The fun twist is that attendees had the opportunity to enter to win the finished quilt! It was a really fun project to work on!

I thought ahead and remembered to take lots of progress along the way! I'll share a few of those now, and next week I'll share the completed quilt!


I tried not to overthink my fabric choices since I was on a bit of a tight deadline when I was making this quilt. I used the fabrics that I pulled around my Tidbits thread collection and expanded it. For the plus fabrics I chose fabrics from my fabric collections. For the background I chose a variety of navy prints and a few solids. I don't use a lot of dark colors, so I really wanted to do something different with this quilt.


Chopping up all the navy!


Plus fabrics cut and ready to start piecing the blocks together.


Chain piecing, my favorite!


Blocks before chopping!


I wanted as many unique combinations as I could manage, so I laid out all the block parts and paired them up.


Block pieces stacked up and ready to be sewn together!

I'll be back next week to share more progress photos and photos of the finished quilt!

Happy Friday!

10 comments :

  1. I am a big fan of plus quilts. Looking forward to your interpretation for this one.

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  2. Can't wait to see the big reveal. I seldom buy navy as I can't ever think of how I would use it, but clearly my eyes have been opened.

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  3. I've been wanting to make a plus quilt for a while and I love the dark navy scrappy background you have chosen - it looks quite Japanese, the brights shine like kimono fabrics against indigo.

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  4. I love your version of my quilt Jeni :D #awesome

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  5. These are really cute blocks - love the blue. Look forward to seeing the entire quilt.

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  6. I saw this quilt at Quilt-con and picked up the magazine! Loved it! Any chance you could give us the navy fabrics you used? Thanks!

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    1. Sure! I ended up using fabrics from: Curiosities, Chic Flora, Petal and Plume, Modernology, Chromatics, Pure Elements, and Oval Elements. All from Art Gallery Fabrics.

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  7. Hello, very intriguing construction: you talk about "chopping" the blocks, I hadn't realised "chopping" was necessary. Fortunately, the magazine is on its way to me! Will check back to see the finished quilt.

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  8. Can't wait to see more. Am inspired and intrigued.

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  9. Nothing more gorgeous and motivating than the sight of a stack of colorful pieced fabric all ready for the next step!

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