Little House on the Prairie Sew Along; Black Susan

Lily and I were surprised to hear from so many Little House on the Prairie fans who might like to sew along with us this summer. I made this little button for our sew along. Feel free to share it if you would like and join us!

To recap, Lily is eight and I would love to share my fondness for the Little House series with her but she doesn’t normally like to read books that I suggest. So, I bribed her a bit! I told her that we would sew a block or two after each book and make her a quilt. That sparked her interest. She started out by reading the first book in the series, Little House in the Big Woods. In that story, the Ingalls family lives in a log cabin in the Big Woods. So, we made a log cabin block with 2 1/2″ strips resulting in a 14 1/2″ square. Our original blog post is here.

We are half way through reading the second book now. I am reading her a chapter here and there and she is reading to herself as well. But we decided to make a second block for Little House in the Big Woods before moving on.

Our block is Black Susan, the Ingalls’ family cat who was mentioned many times in the first book but the family had to leave her behind when they left the Big Woods. It’s a fairly simple block, like the log cabin, but introduces a couple of half square triangles. You can cut those out using traditional methods, or with a Sizzix die cutter if you have one. We used the diecutter because it gave Lily more independence. I rotary cut the other pieces. Directions for making half square triangles are widely available so I am not including them here.

Here is a little cutting diagram for you. First, assemble your HST units and trim them to 2 1/2″ square and 4 1/2″ square. (No trimming is necessary if you are using die cut pieces.) Then, assemble the row with Black Susan’s ears. Attach that strip to her head and then to her body; set aside. Next sew the right hand column. Join these two pieces to complete the cat. We then added two 2 1/2″ x 14 1/2″ strips of background fabric to either side of the block to bring it up to a 14 1/2″ square like our log cabin. The larger size blocks make them easier for kids to sew. And, it will make for a larger quilt with fewer blocks which is more satisfying!

We will be back before too long with our first block from Little House on the Prairie. We already have a list of 6 ideas so there will likely be at least two blocks again.