Lola Dutch...I Love You “Sew” Much!

Ever since I was little, I have loved books and reading.  When I was growing up, my older sister used to read The Chronicles of Narnia to me, and I can remember begging her to read just one more chapter, then another...and another.  Now, as a mom one of my favorite things to do with my kids is go to the library to pick out books and I look forward to reading with them every night before bed.  I love watching them carefully peruse the library shelves on the hunt for the perfect book...my son has been into Dog Man lately and my daughter's latest obsession is Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie series.  But we also have those special books that we keep coming back to again and again, and one of those is Lola Dutch.  So when I discovered Sara Jane came out with a fabric line based on her Lola Dutch books, I had to have it!  And create something special with it! 

My daughter loves hanging artwork in her room, so I decided to make her a cute little wall hanging for the reading corner in her bedroom.  I absolutely love Polka Dot Chair's mini  Wonderland Cottage  quilt pattern...those little peekaboo windows are just too adorable! 

The character of Lola Dutch reminds me so much of my daughter...Lola is super creative and always coming up with these grand ideas that often go a bit too far.  But she never stops dreaming and creating.  As adults, I think we too often lose this sense of fearless dreaming and experimenting that is ever so present and natural in kids.  As adults we fall back on excuses like, "If only I had more time" or "If only I had more money" or "When my kids are older"...but what if instead of making excuses, we channel our inner child and give into our dreams and actually take steps to make them happen?  Imagine the possibilities...

If you had told me ten years ago that I was going to be a quilter, I wouldn't have believed it.  But I'm learning to quiet that inner voice that sometimes tells me I can't do something or it's too hard. 

Back to my mini cottage quilt...I had fun fussy cutting those little window blocks!  I've never fussy cut before, and it took some thinking at first, but it's surprisingly easy.  I will admit though that I struggled a bit with the idea of wasting fabric...it's inevitable that you will have some fabric waste when you are fussy cutting.  But if you save your scraps (which most quilters do), you can always use the scraps for something else.  To fussy cut the 4 inch squares, I actually used my strip cutter because I didn't have a 4 inch ruler...after centering my square using the 2 inch mark on the strip cutter, I cut at the 0 and 4 inch mark, then flipped my fabric and cut again at the 0 and 4 inch mark for perfect 4 inch squares.  These quilt blocks are actually called polaroid quilt blocks because they look like polaroid photos.  They can easily be made using jelly roll strips...Melissa Mortenson from Polka Dot Chair has a great  tutorial  for polaroid blocks on her website. 

To quilt, I experimented with a variety of straight lines and mostly used the patterns in the fabric to guide my quilt lines.  For example, with the vertical stripes, I just used the edge of my walking foot to follow the lines in the stripes.  And for the cottage roof, there were already lines in the library fabric, so I followed those lines with my walking foot to make a grid pattern.  If you're intimidated by straight line quilting or not sure how to start, sometimes you can find inspiration just by looking at your fabric.  That library fabric with Lola reaching to pick out a book is my favorite!! 

 As cute as the front is, I have to say the back of this wall hanging is equally as cute, if not cuter than the front!  I used the border fabric panel featuring Lola's house with quotes from the book, and pieced it with some of my other favorites from the line including the library fabric and the rainbow stripes.  Book quotes on fabric?!  My Language teacher heart is so happy!! 

My daughter loves her new wall hanging and it looks so cute hanging in her reading corner!  She's requested that I now make her a wall hanging for every season...I have lots of fabrics in mind that would be perfect for fussy cutting, so I don't think I'll have a problem meeting her request.  And I might have to make a few mini cottages for myself too!