Lori Holt's Cozy Cottage Calendar - A Blog Tour

Have you guys seen the new 2016 Cozy Cottage Calendar by Lori Holt of Bee in my Bonnet?

It's a monthly calendar with each page featuring beautiful photos taken inside Lori's own vintage style cozy cottage in Utah, decorated with colourful quilts and other projects from her books.

As if the calendar is not pretty enough it also comes with patterns for the Cozy Cottage Block, Cozy Cottage Mini Quilt, and Cozy Cottage Pillow. The book's cover shows the mini-quilt - so dang cute. These patterns are not available to purchase elsewhere, and it's a limited collection calendar (just saying).

As one of the bloggers taking part in the blog tour to celebrate the calendar's launch, I decided to make the Cozy Cottage Pillow-mini (a mini quilt version of the pillow pattern). I started by making an 8" Cozy Cottage block.

I then added the borders, leaving the pillow backing out, and finished it as a mini quilt to add to the growing collection of minis on my sewing room wall.

For the quilting I used a decorative stitch that I recently discovered on my machine. I raved about it on Instagram when I shared a picture of another quilt, and there was so much interest that I wanted to recap it here as well. It's a wavy stitch (stitch #19 on my Janome Horizon Memorycraft 7700 QCP and #20 on my entry level Janome DC2050). I set the stitch length and wave width to the highest possible settings to get the biggest waves. I marked a single quilting line down the centre of the quilt and quilted outwards from that mark. Then turned the quilt around and quilted outwards in the other direction.  I didn't mark any other quilting lines other than that first one down the middle - I just lined up the edge of my foot with the peaks of the previous line. The distance between the peaks is close enough that you can traverse from one peak to the next quite easily without actually having a marked line to follow. I didn't try to get parallel wavy lines as I like the more organic look of random waves, which to me looks a bit like free motion quilting at first glance. But if you wanted parallel lines you would have to pay attention to your needle's position when you start each 'wibbly wobbly' line.

Back to the matter in hand, I can't wait to start using my new calendar - it will be so lovely to look at Lori's beautiful makes for inspiration every day. And look here - I have a very special event marked in my calendar already - I will be at the market!

Copies of the calendar are now available over at Fat Quarter Shop. The lovely folks over there have also sent me an extra calendar to share with my one of my readers - leave a comment at the end of this post and I will select a winner by the end of the week. And make sure you pop over to other bloggers taking part in the Cozy Cottage Calendar celebration if you would like to see their Cozy Cottage projects! Here's the full list: 

Monday, November 2, 2015 

Fat Quarter Shop

Lori Holt of Bee in my Bonnet 

Jessie of Messy Jesse

Donna of Donna's Lavender Nest

Lucy of Charm About You

Jina of Jina Barney Designz

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Tina of Emily Ann's Kloset

Sherri of A Quilting Life

Debbie of Happy Little Cottage

Sedef of Down Grapevine Lane (me!)

Jane of Quilt Jane

Kim of Persimon Dreams

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Vickie of Spun Sugar Quilts

Pam of Pam Kitty Morning

Marni of Haberdashery Fun

Renee of Sewn With Grace

Me and My Sister Designs

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Daisy of Ants to Sugar

Sharon of Daisy Cottage Quilting

Tonya of The Crafty Mummy

Michele of Quilting Gallery

Jennie of A Pieceful Journey

Friday, November 6, 2015

Erin of Why Not Sew

Melissa of Happy Quilting

Seema of Hooks, Needles and Brushes

Corey of Little Miss Shabby

Sinta of Pink Pincushion

Until next time, happy quilting!