Layer Cake Pop Quilt Along with the Fat Quarter Shop

I always enjoy getting emails from the Fat Quarter Shop excited about new patterns and quilt alongs.  Whenever time permits I love to say YES!  And this pattern – the “Layer Cake Pop!” was just too adorable not to say yes to! I received the pattern early and was given the fabric requirement.  If you’re not new to my blog you should know by now I can’t do things “exactly” like the pattern.  In the case of these quilt alongs though I really need to follow the rules … mostly.   The first switch I made was to choose a fun mint jelly roll instead of the suggested white jelly roll.  My daughter Capri is obsessed with mint and I think she may be rubbing off on me! Next was choosing the layer cake I would use.  I honestly bought two because I just couldn’t decide until I saw them with the mint. Espresso Lane 10 karat Mini-Jewel Wilmington Prints and the Batiks Color Daze Layer Cake Laundry Basket Quilts for Moda. They are both just absolutely gorgeous!  It was hard to decide but after comparing the fabrics with the mint I felt that the Espresso Lane would create the impact I was hoping for.  Now I’ll just have to find something spectacular to do with my Color Daze Layer Cake … oh well! The “Layer Cake Pop” pattern is a quick, easy, and has a fantastic secondary pattern!  Before I knew it I had six blocks whipped up. Hmmm … this might be a bit TOO mint. I had to think of a way to de-mint this quilt just a touch.  Don’t get me wrong – this is gorgeous but pretty tame for a “Kim” quilt.  After sleeping and dreaming on it I knew what to do – add pops of another solid background color (the second “Kim” switch)! I found this great solid navy blue and ended up making three blocks to mix in with the quilt. This added an element I really enjoyed to the quilt without changing anything about the pattern! The trickiest part with those three navy blue blocks is deciding on which layout I liked best.  I utilized my design wall for this and after many layouts and photographs I finally decided on the one I liked best and stitched it together. Only the top is done … Project QUILTING has just taken up too much time … but I can’t wait for this to be quilted!  I’m not sure if I’m going to give it a go since it’s not overly large or if I’m going to send it out.  The one thing I’m sure of is there is a lot of “blank” space there for some fun quilting designs! I finished the quilt top at 1am this morning and my original post just had late night bad lighting photos of the quilt.  This morning I headed out to the deer fence and got slightly better photograph in the fresh snow.  I’m not the only one who made this quilt early to get you all excited!  Head over to the Fat Quarter Shop’s blog HERE so you can find out what others made and of course all the details on how you can join in the fun! And stay tuned to see how I quilt it! You can sign up for my newsletter by clicking HERE and follow along on my day to day quilting adventures on Instagram.