Hello everyone! Thank you for visiting my stop on Pat Bravo’s Mini Quilt Tour!  I hope you had fun visiting Lesley yesterday.  If you read through my post you will find a *special offer* at the bottom and the link to our next awesome mini quilt in the tour!

But first a little about me!  Hi! I’m Ellen Ault and my daughter Zoe is 5 years old. Which means I have been quilting for 6 years. I had been sewing for some time, but as soon as I found out I was having a baby girl I had to make a quilt for her!  And of course I was immediately hooked.  It will be a shame once she gets bigger because I will have to move a lot of my fabric bins and supplies out of her closet.  Right now her clothes still fit with them in there!  If you check out the side bar of my page you can see a lot of my work, many of which is inspired from her.

I jumped at a chance to be part of this quilt tour and was extremely excited when I was chosen!  And when the fabric arrived, even more so.  I love the feel of Art Gallery Fabrics and honestly do not get to sew with it as often as I like.  After I petted the fabric for some time I started coming up with a plan.  Any mini quilt I make or receive in a swap, inevitability goes to my daughter for a doll quilt. A few remain on my wall but most go to her.  So I figured let’s go directly to the source for this one!

Pat Bravo’s new Dare Collection really called to me.  I love combining blue and pink together, and here it was done for me.  The ‘Opt Out of Par’ print is by far my favorite and I decided to create a quilt block directly from it.  I used EQ7 to create a block similar to the block in her print. Looking at the fabrics that were sent and the design of the block in the print, I found a way to simplify her design but keeping the main shape.  My daughter has this great little doll bed from Pottery Barn Kids (which we got 50% because of a tiny scratch – go scratches!) so I made the block 16″ to fit her bed. But honestly I could imagine a whole quilt with this block, or even one super block quilt with this design!

The fun challenge with designing a block in EQ7 is then figuring out how to actually make what you designed.  I decided paper piecing was going to be the way to go but there probably is some easy strip piecing methods as well. I did some fussy cutting to get the stripes the right colors and keeping the contrast. I quilted it on the longarm, which the whole block fit in the throat space which was a nice time saver. And anytime you have the option at adding stripy binding, its a must! I decided to keep the “Opt Out of Par’ print intact as the sheet for the doll bed.  Using up some scraps I made a little pillow for her doll.  After  I was done with my pictures, Zoe had to come over to make sure Crumbs Sugar Cookie was ok.

Thanks for coming to my site, I hope you enjoy my work!  Please like my Facebook page and Instagram page to see more of my work.  I have just begun long arming for others and wish to offer a special discount for new clients.  I am offering 10% off your first long arm service with Free Return Shipping on your first quilt. Just note this post when you contact me. This offer is valid until the end of May 2016. Please help me grow my business, I hope I can quilt for you!  Now on with the tour!  Check out Michelle next!