Busy Hands Quilts: Pretty in Pink Quilt-Along {Fabric Selection and Cutting}

Heather Mulder Peterson of Anka's Treasures is hosting a Pretty in Pink Quilt-Along. I have long admired her work, so I am jumping at this opportunity to quilt along using one of her projects. My quilt Mrs.Starlight is made from one of Heather's patterns.

This is one of the many colorways in which Heather made Pretty in Pink. There are lots of colorways shown in her quilt-along blog post. This one's my favorite.

I plan to quilt along using the fabric collection Twice as Nice by The Quilted Fish for Riley Blake. This 10" stacker has been waiting for just the right project, and this is it! It's a lovely collection whimsical flowers, trucks, checks, and dots in reds, pinks, aqua, gray, and white. Heather is making a mini quilt using charm squares, but I'm making the large version with 10" squares, a total of 20 which will be a nice baby size. The pattern is found in her book, Living Large.

Heather's helpful post gives instructions on fabric selection and cutting, reminding us to be careful of directional fabrics, which I promptly forgot! I cut one of the pickup truck fabrics in this line the wrong way, and I've no choice but to leave it that way.

In the past, I would not have cut the white strips into segments as directed in the pattern; I'd have left them and strip pieced the squares to the strips and then cut them apart. In Camille Roskelley's Precut Piecing Made Simple Craftsy class, I learned to go ahead and cut the segments first. Then when sewing two fabrics RST, pin the tail end of the two pieces together before stitching and then keeping just a tad of tension on the pinned end. It works great to keep the two ends lined up, and I always pin like this now. This tip has improved the accuracy of my quilting. I've learned a lot of tips like this that have improved my quilting in Craftsy classes.

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