August is here, and it’s my turn to be Queen!

This was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  I had a really hard time finding a block and deciding what to do, but I’m happy with the block I chose.

I’ve been admiring the Elizabeth Hartman critter patterns and looking forward to trying them out, but in the meantime I found this quilt-a-long from a few years ago that has a similar feel.  I apologize for doing another dog block so soon after Karen’s poodles, but I just love these guys.  They remind me of my boys, Bucky and Leo…and after all, my blog is named after Leo’s brown paws.

The quilt-a-long, which happened in 2015, is from Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts.  The original “Dog Gone Cute” blog page is here.  Here are the details for our bee blocks:

1. Please do the large blocks (18″ x 12″)
2. I’d like the background to be white, or a white on white print.
3. The dog face should bright color.  Prints and batiks are fine, but the fabric should read as one primary color (red, blue, orange, purple, green…you get the idea).
4. Eyes and nose should be black, or a black print.
5. for the contrasting part of the faces, I used grays.  You can use another coordinating color with your face fabric if you like.  I was struggling with this fabric as the background is white, and I wanted something to stand out both against the dog face and the background.  I think the gray worked well.

She has 8 different dogs to choose from.  You can choose whichever one you like – I’ll give you some tips on that here in a minute.

This is some inspiration for what I have in mind.  This was a quilt completed by Gina at Quilts and Cakes (blog post here) from the original Quilt-a-long in October 2015:

The links to the block patterns:

Quilt-a-long kickoff post (interesting for background purposes)

Blocks #1 and #2

Blocks #3 and #4

Blocks #5 and #6

Blocks #7 and #8

My suggestion, and request actually, is that you think about a dog who had some meaning to you and find one of the block patterns that most makes you think of that furry friend.  If you are not a dog person, that’s ok, I can recommend some pups to use as inspiration!

I did do some block testing and have some thoughts to offer.

I decided my Leo looked like block 5, and my Bucky looked like block 3.  Block 3 was much easier than block 5, but both came together very well.

For each pattern, there is a table with cutting instructions.  I copy/pasted that table into Word and printed it out.  I crossed out the small block column to help me avoid confusion, wrote the colors of the fabrics I was using in each section, and crossed off the pieces as I cut them:

I then cut all the pieces, and pinned letters on them so I knew which ones they were.  This was REALLY helpful, as with them marked I could just walk through the rest of the tutorial.

From there, I just went step by step through her instructions.  It was really straightforward, and actually didn’t take too long.

This is my Leo (Mr. BrownPaws):

and my Bucky (I got to try out my new Moda Grunge Hits the Spot!):

and I had to make the boys pose with their blocks (Leo insisted on bringing along his parrot stuffy):

Many outtakes were required, for which they were rewarded with ice cream later:

 

 

If you don’t have furry friends to use as inspiration, here are a few more of mine, past and present:

 

The big one is of our Sporty and Katie, who have now passed.  Upper right is Maggie, our corgi.  Middle right is Sandy, our crazy Jack Russel Terrier who left us 3 years ago.  And the bottom right is Sporty after we adopted our two boys, Bucky and Leo.  All of our furry kids have meant so much to us, and we love them all.

I hope you enjoy making the blocks – I look forward to seeing what you all create!