"Half Pint": Little House On The Prairie Quilt Along Project

I discovered Downton Abbey on PBS last fall then discovered Andover Fabrics Downton Abbey themed fabric and Ebony Love (a quilt pattern designer)had done several Quilt Alongs using their fabrics. Andover Fabrics, in late 2015, designed a line of fabric replicating the fabrics from the TV Show Little House on the Prairie and Ebony was ready with a new quilt along. It began in early January 2016 and each WEEK participants would receive a part of the quilt mystery. The fabric styles were divided into two families called "Dear Ma" (reds/browns) and "Dear Pa" (blues/light pink) or you could use your own fabrics. I purchased the "Dear Ma" collection from www.fabrics.com using my birthday $$. It was intense doing so much each week but it was winter and quilting and sewing is what I do! Ebony provided two outer border options-complicated with triangles or simple with basic three borders. Her finished size was 96" square which I knew was too big for my liking. I used 4" squares of all the fabrics but the cream (my least favorite of the bunch) and made a pieced border. I used the red print on the ends to balance the other end blocks. It was a happy accident the yellow squares in the outer border lined up with the yellow in the quilt! My finished quilt is 82" square. I really love the square layouts of Ebony's quilt along patterns and plan to start another one in June using my own fabrics in pinks. purples and whites. The purple was a choice before Prince died and now I'm a bit obsessed with purple.

 

 

 

 

 

 This was the largest quilt I have ever quilted. I thought about sending it to a long arm quilter but I really don't like the all over stipple quilt look. I like to stitch in the ditch, cross hatch through squares and echo stitch. It took me two week to quilt it between my job and other responsibilities. I used only cream colored thread. The binding is red because it was my favorite color in the Dear Ma collection! It is a very heavy quilt.

Ebony gave everyone fabric requirements. I did not do the fancy triangle border and had lots of fabric left which I sewed together for the backing which I have never done before.
The quilt is so huge the only place to display the quilt is on my clothesline. It has been terribly windy so I couldn't take a photo until today.
I call it "Half Pint" because that was Pa's nickname for Laura Ingalls on the TV show and it is a favorite memory for me because my daughter and I used to watch the show all the time.