I am giddy.with.excitement to share with you all today!
It all started with Madame Samm asking me to do a tutorial for Sew we quilt. She asked me to do a tutorial/pattern for a paper piecing project, which prompted me to design the pop bottle pattern. That, in turn, led me to the idea of creating a kitchen curtain for our new home that we'll be moving into soon, using the pop bottles as a border for the bottom edge. I don't have measurements for the window, so I'll have to finish it off later, but you'll get the just of it.
Thank you Madame Samm!
Here's where the curtain will eventually hang.
So if you want to make a curtain of your own, or something else with the pattern, let me walk you through a brief how-to.
First off, you'll need to print off the pattern. You can adjust these to whatever size you like, or if you want to do them the size I did, just save this image to your computer, then print it off with no centering or adjusting with your printer. The pattern will be approx 2.5 X 8.5".
Keep in mind:
- the image is already reversed for you.
- you will need to leave a 1/4" seam allowance around each edge of each of the 4 sections (since it's not included in the pattern).
If you look closely at the pattern, you'll see three lines near the top of the pattern that are bold. Cut on those lines like so, creating four sections that you will paper piece separetely.
I'm not going to go over with you how to paper piece since there are so many great tutorials online. The one I used to teach myself how to paper piece is this one, at Quilter's Cache. It's super basic, but will help you to understand how it works so you can move on to more intermediate patterns like the pop bottle!
Once you've paper pieced the four sections,
sew the cap sections together, then sew the cap section to the top bottle section, then sew those to the bottom bottle section.
And there you have it, your first pop bottle. The only other detail I added to the bottle was to embroider the kind of soda each bottle has in it on the label. Lime for green, creme' for tan, grapefruit for pink, etc.
You could do so many things with these, a long pillow, a tea towel with several of them as a border, a tablecloth with these all around the edges, or a curtain, like I'm doing!
One more thing, if you decide to make this pattern (or even if you don't!), come over and join my Sewtakeahike pattern and Tutorials group on flickr. I'd love to see you there!
~Penny
p.s. Make SURE you go over to Sew We Quilt and enter the giveaway Madame Samm is offering up on my post there! Who wouldn't love 22 fq's of Rashida's new fabric, I heart??
(photo courtesy of Sew We Quilt)
