Meadow Dance Blog Hop: Day 1

Get ready for more Meadow Dance inspiration! We've seen what Amanda Murphy has created with her new fabrics (click here if you missed it), and now it's time for some more fun! This week we'll be featuring four different projects using the gorgeous Meadow Dance florals and coordinates. Enjoy the tutorials, and make sure to enter to win a fat quarter bundle!

First up is Alison from Little Bunny Quilts, who picked a few favorite fabrics to make a Pocket Wall Organizer. Being organized is a wonderful thing, and having an attractive organizer is even better! Follow her tutorial and then head over to her blog to enter to win some Meadow Dance fabric. 

Here's Alison!
I'm Alison from Little Bunny Quilts and I am so happy to be back sharing a new project featuring Meadow Dance by Amanda Murphy! As I might have mentioned before, Amanda Murphy is probably my favorite designer so I feel so lucky to be able to participate in another one of her blog hops with Benartex!

I decided to challenge myself to make something new and am very happy with the results! Rather than being a pieced and quilted project, this project uses quilted sections to build a rather simple wall hanging with pockets!

You will need:
A total of 2 yards for the quilted sections of the wall hanging
     I used 1 yard of the aqua print, 1/2 yard of the large floral print, and 1/2 yard of the aqua/red print
1/3 yard for binding
     I used the aqua/grey print

Note: This is more that sufficient fabric for the wall hanging made below, but in case you want to scale up or make a mistake, I wouldn't start with less fabric than this. I found it was easiest to oversize my quilted sections and cut down to my desired size.

For the main background/base of your wall hanging, you will need a piece of fabric for the "front" and the "back" as well as a piece of batting. My desired size was 12" wide by 32" long, so I cut my pieces all an inch larger.

Layer your backing, batting, and main fabric and quilt as desired. Trim to the desired size of your wall hanging. I quilted mine with loops and trimmed to 12" x 32".

Repeat this process for your pockets. My three pockets are 12" x 8", so I cut my pocket fabrics and batting approximately 13" x 25". I found it to be easier to quilt one larger section and cut it into the three sections I needed for my pockets than to make three sections individually.

Cut four 2.5 inch strips for binding and for finishing the raw edges. Since my pockets are 12" wide, I cut one WOF binding strip into 14" strips for covering the top raw edge on each pocket piece. I sewed the strip to the piece exactly as I would for regular binding and trimmed off the excess. Repeat for each pocket. You do not have to worry about the raw edges on the bottom and the sides as these will be covered by the final binding.

Space your pockets evenly along the length of the wall hanging. For all pockets except the bottom, you will need to sew the pocket to the wall hanging right sides together as you would a regular seam and then press. Along the sides of each pocket and the bottom of the bottom pocket, stitch each directly to the wall hanging using a very scant 1/4 inch seam (my seam was slightly larger than 3/16" -- this will ensure that all of these seams will be hidden in our final binding.)

Don't forget to add some sort of hanging pocket! I used a 11" by 5" rectangle to create my pocket.

Add binding around the edge of your wall hanging just as you would any project -- I needed three strips for my wall hanging. There are times that you will be sewing through 3 layers of batting and 6 layers of fabric -- you will want to consider using your walking foot and sewing slowly! I also found it helpful to try to space my binding seams in places that did not have multiple layers of batting.

Hang as desired and fill with whatever your heart desires! While I made this with bright cheerful fabrics, it would be a great way to make a Christmas card holder as well! It's easy to start with this basic shape and modify it for whatever purpose you desire - you could modify this with smaller pockets to hold jewelry or larger pockets for sorting paperwork.

Follow along on all four days of our Meadow Dance blog hop!
Tuesday: Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts
Wednesday: Benartex blog design team
Thursday: Sandra @ Mmm Quilts
Friday: Chris @ made by ChrissieD

Click here to see our original Meadow Dance post. 

Click here to see the entire Meadow Dance collection.

Click here to visit Amanda's website and find her patterns.