Where were you for the summer solstice?

Once a year we get to ‘steal’ the granddaughters and take them on a road trip with our truck and trailer. This year we were headed for Craters of the Moon, Yellowstone, Tetons and Rocky Mountain National Park. We expected it to be warm so we only asked Kira to pack a few sets of long pants, long sleeve shirts and jackets. We were in Yellowstone for the summer solstice and it snowed on us. Really? We thought that meant long summer days.

Be careful what you wish for though. On our way back home to drop Kayla off in Salt Lake City we stopped by Arches National Park and almost melted it was so hot. We planned to arrive for sunset so we could enjoy the view and cool down. We made it just in time for the sunset and although the hike out was very hot, the views were so worth it!

One of our first template packs (designed by Kayla) was called Star Spangled you can see it here:

Template packs are designed to give you just the tracing guides for the appliques. You can then put the appliques on anything you want. We originally used the basic block blanket: style 2 to turn them in to a quilt.

The appliques on the original blanket are fairly large in order to fill up the space on the blanket. You can see it below with Kira’s kids for scale.
When we initially offered the pattern, we also offered kits since we needed to use up the rest of the bolt. A young mom stopped by our booth and wanted to purchase the kit, but we had sold out. She asked if we would sell her the sample quilt since her child was born in July and she wanted the quilt to use on the Fourth of July to watch the fireworks. We put a lot of work into our samples and they take us way too much time to make which means we rarely sell our samples. It was a really hard decision for Kayla, but she chose to make a couple people really happy that day.

But that meant Kayla needed a new 4th of July blanket for herself. She decided to ‘shrink’ the appliques so she could fit them on the Block Blanket pattern and make a larger quilt. Here’s what she came up with:
Since Kayla didn’t want to use traditional americana fabrics for this quilt she looked for a fabric line that had all the right colors and would give a 4th of July feel without screaming “4TH OF JULY”. To create this blanket she used the Everlasting line of fabric by Art Gallery Fabrics.

You can find the resized appliques in a template pack here:

And you can find the building blocks pattern right here:

These new resized appliques also fit perfectly on a placemat. And we all know how much I love to make and use placemats.

I added a sliverware pocket so they would be easy to take out on a picnic.

Here’s a photo before we added the appliques.

And here is after I added the appliques:
And because it is almost the 4th of July – our print and ponder this week focuses on the Freedom that we enjoy in this amazing country of ours.

 

We hope you have a safe and enjoyable 4th of July!

The Musers

Sheila Kira and Kayla