Little House on the Prairie Sew Along; Pet and Patty

Lily has just finished sewing block 4 of the sew along; the second block for the second book in the series, Little House on the Prairie. She is now moving on to Farmer Boy but we reserve the right to add a block from any book we feel like at the end if we decide that we need another block or two!

Lily really loves horses so she wanted to make Pet and Patty, the Ingalls’ horses. I found this horse as a part of a block called Winner’s Circle in the book 5,500 Quilt Block Designs. I adapted it to remove the outer borders and enlarged it to a 14″ finished block. I would normally paper piece a block like this but decided to use templates to make it more like what Lily expects. When you are cutting your fabric from the templates, please look at the block layout diagram so that you orient your templates properly. This means that the letter on the pattern piece will not always be right side up, sometimes to the side, etc. Look at the diagram for placement. Cut with your fabric right side up and templates right side up.

You will need a horse color, a mane/tail color and background color. I loved Lily’s choices for the horse body and mane. When we were looking for a background fabric as soon as she saw the birds, I knew there would be no changing her mind. I think it makes it a little busy with the tail but I can see how an 8 year old girl would fall for the bird print. It’s awfully sweet!

I was worried that it would be hard to sew this block with Lily but it went together really smoothly after I precut all the pieces for her. We talked about, “which piece do you think goes next?” so she understood how the block was being constructed.

You can download the templates and block layout diagram here.

Thanks for sewing along! I started a Flickr group if you would like to add your blocks there. If you post them on Instagram make sure you tag me so I see! I am @duringquiettime.