Piece and Quilt with Precuts Blog Hop - Morse Code - My Version of Dot 'n' Dash

Christa Watson, a good quilting friend of mine, just launched her 3rd book called Piece and Quilt with Precuts: 11 Quilts, 18 Machine-Quilting Designs, Start-to-Finish Success. (affiliate link)  I love Christa's books in that they take you all the way from fabric selection, through the quilt top making process, and through the quilting process too.  It is a pattern book and a quilting book in one!

Christa sent me a copy of the book and I chose to remake the Dot 'n' Dash quilt pattern with a little twist in the fabric selection and size.  Here is the book version of Dot 'n' Dash, a lap sized quilt.

Photography courtesy of Martingale/That Patchwork Place

The Dot 'n' Dash pattern is written for jelly rolls (which makes for a very speedy quilt top). I did not have a jelly roll that I wanted to use, but I had this wonderful print from Anna Maria Horner that I did not know what to do with. The print is Crossing Paths from the Lou Lou Thi Needleworks collection and it is a 58" wide quilting cotton with stripes running from selvedge to selvedge with cross-stitch patterns on them.

Instead of cutting the fabric the traditional way (selvedge to selvedge), I cut the Crossing Paths fabric along the length of the fabric so each of my pieces contained different colored stripes.  It gave the look of improv sewing a bunch of fabrics together with much less work.  I actually made the entire quilt (top, binding, and backing) with only this print and some white background fabric! I thought it was a neat touch to have the backing show what the fabric looked like before it was chopped up. 

I changed the number of blocks in the quilt to bring it down to a baby size. I am always needing baby quilts as gifts so it is good to have one finished in case I need one in a hurry.  My version finished at about 40" x 48".

The quilt top came together very quickly and easily and soon it was time to bast and quilt.  I quilted using the continuous stipple design from the book (shown on the Windows quilt in Piece and Quilt with Precuts).  Stippling is one of my favorite quilting designs, it gives great texture and is very quick.  

With so much white, I would have typically gone with a white thread, but to add just a hint of color, I used really light pink Aurifil thread in 50 wt. for the quilting.

I really enjoyed Christa's book, especially how it combined great looking quilt designs, easy to follow instructions, and inspirational quilting designs.  You can pick up a copy of Christa's book over on Amazon by clicking here (affiliate link) or buy a signed copy in Christa's store.

Follow along with the hop - There are multiple quilters showing different versions of each of the book patterns over the course of the hop, you find a listing of all the different posts over on Christa's blog.