Perfectly Pretty Patchwork Book Tour

Hi and hello friends!  Today is my day on the book tour for Kristyne's new book, Perfectly Pretty Patchwork.  I'm sure you know Kristyne, if not from her blog Pretty By Hand, then from Instagram.  I'm a long time fan and friend of her's and I was so excited to be invited along for her book tour.  Its an honor to be included in such a great collection of makers and designers.

 

I love the book.  There's no detail overlooked with the projects, there are lots of pretty embellishments, lace, embroidery. #KlassicKristyne  The styling and photography is wonderful, and of course the instructions and illustrations are clear and concise like you'd expect from Kristyne and Martingale.

 

The book is in sections, each section incudes a classic block and two projects.  I couldn't resist this little basket.  You can see it's quite small.  I did applique the handle, but you know what's great about this book, or really any book, you can adapt the projects to suit your method of choice.  If I was making this whole quilt, I'd probably fuse the handles and blanket stitch them down, but I wanted to try the classic technique. My handle looks a little chunky on one side but you know with practice I bet I could get it right.  The best part, the book inspired me to just try something for the heck of it. 

 

I love this Mill and Stars block.  The book has a beautiful blue and green quilt with both large and small blocks.  I picked some Christmasy fabric when I made this block, again, just inspired to give it a try.  Along with the quilt, there are 3 sizes of pincushions to make, so I made the largest one, but how darling is the tiniest one?

 

Perfect to use a vintage button on.  Check out how adorable Minki's  pincushion is.  I saw it on Instagram on Monday.  Love it.

 

Photo courtesy of Martingale. Photographer Brent Kane

 

One of my all time favorite blocks is the honeybee and I love Kristyne's interpretation of it. In her small quilt, she used embroidery for the wings.  Her pattern also includes Colonial knots for the 9 patches.  I tried the tiny embroidery for the  wings and just could not make my stitches tiny and sweet so I turned to my favorite lazy daisy stitch to add those little wings.   

 

 

Obviously, not a genius at that either, but you get the general idea of what I'm going for.  And isn't that the best thing about a book that inspires you, encouraging you to try something and finding a way to make it work for you.

 

This book is a wonderful addition to your library. There are fun projects, beautiful photographs and pages of inspiration. I hope you check it out, check out the #perfectlyprettypatchworkbooktour hashtag and of course follow @prettybyhand to see all of Kristyne's beautiful creations.