Welcome back for the final day of the Sweet Shoppe Quilt-Along! This quilt-along has been so much fun for me because I've been able to keep the final quilt a secret until today! So without further ado, here's a look at the finished Sweet Shoppe quilt!
Ta-da! It's a table runner with colorful candy rows interspersed with strips of sweet stitching. It's amazing to me how simple shapes and bright colors can combine to create a quilt that's bold and graphic but still very sweet. Don't you just love quilting?!
Some Thoughts on Finishing Your Sweet Shoppe quilt:
The quilt was pretty before I added the red perle cotton, but I think the red stitching is really the cherry on top! If you'd like to add the stitching to your quilt, you can also substitute 2 strands of embroidery floss for the perle cotton.
But don't feel limited to finishing your quilt the way I did—there are countless ways to personalize this project. You could do decorative machine stitching or a narrow quilted border pattern of wavy or swirly lines or ribbons within the sashing strips. The larger blocks are an opportunity for some fun machine quilting—I can imagine spirals in the lollipops and maybe a small cross-hatch in the wrapped sweets. Even the red and green peppermint stick rows could be embellished with complementary colored diagonal lines stitched between the HSTs. And if you really want to take the Sweet Shoppe theme over the top, you could stitch little bows to the lollipop sticks or the narrow parts of the wrapped sweets and sew tiny buttons to the centers of the minty fresh and peppermint blocks. Just have fun!
I'd love to see your finished quilts, so please tag me @JenDalyQuilts if you post them on Facebook or Instagram, or send a picture to me via email: jendalyquilts@gmail.com. And if you haven't been able to quilt along this year, but you'd like to make your own Sweet Shoppe quilt, the complete pattern will be available in my Etsy shop after Christmas.
Thank you all so much for following along with this year's Sweet Shoppe Quilt-Along! Happy Holidays and, as ever, Happy Quilting!
Cheers! Jen