I love that this quilt can be made with six fat quarters, which are economical and easy to find – even easy to make, if you’re looking to reduce the size of some of the cuts in your stash.

It also looks very simple to make, without looking… well, simple. It’s basically no more work than cutting up a bunch of uniformly sized squares, but, visually, it’s so cute and interesting. This is definitely going onto my short list for gift-giving!

I meant for this to be a bib, but some measuring errors made it unusable, so I decided to keep it as a block. I’ve since added more. I like these shapes for showing off pieces of fabric I don’t have a ton of, like my vintage sheet FQs, and various Japanese prints from swaps and bundles.

I decided just yesterday that I’ll probably sash the blocks with something like blue hop dots, since I generally dislike rail fence quilts.

Or so I thought.

Enter the beautiful, monochromatic work of Melissa (littletykesmomma):

I love this quilt! It’s everything I didn’t think a rail fence pattern could be: bright, modern, sophisticated. Fresh. Charming. And the list goes on.

The quilt was inspired by the Old Red Barn Co. quilt-along, so you can head there for instructions, or just to admire a great-looking crop of rail fence quilts.

Yeah, I said great-looking. After perusing the flickr pool, I found that I really liked the majority of the rail fence quilts. Lesson learned!

Check out Quilting Bee Blocks for all the blocky goodness you could ever want!

Right?

Luckily for all of us, quilter and chihuahua-mom Julia Bravo followed up with a tutorial for this project, which, when the dog was removed, turned out to be an ironing board cover.

Not a quilt, per se, but something you’ll need if you’re going to be doing any quilting. And it’s patchwork! Squares, no less, which is turning out to be the unofficial theme of this week. Squares that are a great reminder to come up with a project to use all the kawaii fabric I’ve been hoarding.

Make your own here.

Thankfully, there are quilters who want to change all that. First up: one of the many projects to be found at Orange Flower’s lovely patterns and tutorials blog.

Don’t you love this??? The size is just perfect, and there are so many possible variation to match any decor: boy/girl, adult/child, home/school/office, Christmas/Easter, fall/spring.

This would look great in redwork. Or blackwork. Imagine blackwork on colored linen! Or framed instead of bound, if that’s your thing….

Okay, at this point, I’m pretty much just taking up your time. And you need your time to make alphabet samplers. Find out how here.

This one, made by the always brilliant Camp Follower Bag Lady, is my most recent in a long line of faves.

I’m in love. WHY did I not sign up for Doll Quilt Swap 8?

But, wait! There’s more! She’s posted a tutorial!

Happy Sunday sewing, everyone!