Land of Magic blog tour: the crown block

Good morning and welcome to my blog! It's been a while since I posted, but when Kerry asked me to participate in her Land of Magic blog tour, I couldn't think of a better reason to dust off the ol' keyboard.

I was very excited to be assigned to make the crown block from Kerry's Land of Magic quilt (have you seen it? It's too cute and clever for words!), because as Kerry knows, I love to fussy cut and the crown block is a perfect candidate for some fussy cutting. 

Normally, I like to do English paper piecing, but a fun and maybe little known fact about me is that I like to do foundation piecing as well. People are always mixing up English paper-piecing with foundation piecing (probably because they are both commonly referred to as just plain old "paper piecing"), but the two are very different. For those of you who don't know, English paper-piecing is always done by hand using paper templates whereas foundation piecing is always done by machine, sewing onto a paper foundation.

The crown block gave me all kinds of ideas and there are so many ways you could use this block. The shape of the crown would be perfect done up in solid gold with a little fur trim at the bottom and if you were to then embroider "Let the wild rumpus start!" you would have yourself a very cute piece of wall art for a children's room (Tell me you get the reference!).

You could also make some yo yos and applique them onto the crown for a fairy princess crown (I could see a whole quilt done that way, with different fabrics for each crown block...oh yes!!!) and what about appliqueing a cute little frog peering out at you from behind the crown for a Princess and the Frog tribute? Soooo many possibilities for this block, I tell you!

But what immediately came to mind for me was some very regal Tula Pink fabric that I had in my stash and the idea to turn this block into a tooth fairy pillow. So, that's what I did! 

The block finishes at 8" which is ideal for little hands to hold. I added a little tiny pocket on the back for tooth-and-treasure-leaving purposes and then added a floral piping. Before I was even done, my son (who is only 3 and not quite yet in his tooth-losing years) decided this pillow was for him, which of course made my mommy heart swell. As I type, he is still asleep with the pillow beside him. Awww, they're so cute when they're sleeping ;-) 

Fabrics I used were Tula Pink for Free Spirit "Elizabeth" for the crown, shot cotton in mushroom (I use this fabric waaaaaay too much) for the background, Kim Kight for Cotton+Steel "Lucky Strike" floral for the piping and Aneela Hoey for Moda "Hello Petal" tiny dot for the backing of the pillow. All were fabrics from my stash.

Thank you so much to Kerry for asking me to create one of these blocks and thank you to you for stopping by the blog! Come find me on Instagram @Alewivesfabrics where I post almost every day rather than once every couple of years ;-)

~Rhea