Florence Flamingo quilt: A finish!

When Elizabeth Hartman released her new patterns last fall, I (like half of Instagram) immediately fell in love with her Florence Flamingo quilt, so when the owners of the quilt shop where I work asked if I'd be interested in putting together a shop sample, I jumped at the chance.

The bulk of the flamingos were made using a jelly roll of Elizabeth's latest collection, Pond. In the original pattern, Elizabeth used a Kona jelly roll for the solids, but I chose nine coordinating Moda Bella solids instead (you need an 1/8 yd. of each if you're going that route). For the background, I stuck with Essex Yarn Dyed but switched to Chambray, a delightful blue that seems to go with almost everything.

While the pattern was generally not difficult, it was time consuming, starting with all of the cutting. See that picture above? Yeah, that's a lot of pieces. And it's a lot of different-sized pieces, which means you have to be very careful about labeling everything and then not mixing it up. I'm happy I now have a sewing space where I can leave my projects set out each night.

There are also a lot of really tiny pieces. Elizabeth generally doesn't use paper piecing in her patterns, which is often a bonus, but there were definitely parts of this pattern that would have been easier with the stability and precision that come with paper piecing (I'm looking at you, knobby knees).

Still, I couldn't help but be happy with this cheery result. Just look at those gals strutting their stuff! The super fun quilting was done by one of the shop owners on their long-arm machine. This was actually the first quilt I'd ever had long-armed, and I gotta admit it was nice to not have to wrangle this one through my machine.

And now everyone gets their beauty shot.

For the binding, I used some of the leftover jelly roll strips to create a scrappy look. The backing consisted of two pieces of yardage from Pond (this and this), with a leftover strip of the chambray Essex in the middle.

She's been hanging in the shop since February, and it's still fun to walk in and see her behind the counter. Strut it, Flo!