The Warhol Sally Quilt

Posted on January 24, 2021 by spunstraw

Here’s a little about how I designed and made this fun commission quilt for a friend!

A friend from elementary got in touch after I shared some of my makes from the first lockdown asking if I could work with her to create a quilt for her partner based on his favourite dog – Sally. It was perfect timing for a new big project so we dove in designing!

Here’s Sally!
(photo used with permission from her owner)

My friend found a block (The PDog Block by @byNessie505) she liked which had the right basic shape to look like Sally and we went from there. The block is 18″x18″ (ish, mine seemed closer to 19) so 3×4 blocks was perfect for the 60″x80″ size she wanted!

I took the colouring page and played with it in paint.net, I got familiar with it while working for a knitted hat company – Wonky Woolies – and haven’t learned any of the Adobe ones yet! It’s better than Mircrosoft Paint and still free, but definitely has its limitations! Can be handy for playing around with quilt colouring pages though. I started with a version that was more true to Sally’s colouring, then for fun made a more colourful version playing with different values within a colour. My friend liked the colourful version so we worked on that! I was pretty excited to play with the Andy Warhol inspired desgin!

I figured out I could get each set of coloured blocks out of 4 background fat quarters and 3 face fat quarters, plus a mid and a pale. I had a great time on Lovely Jubbly Fabrics‘ website picking out colours to match the vibrancy of the mock up and ended up with these (in the order of the big stack on the left!):

Figo Lucky Charms Wish Bone Pink
Tula Pink True Colors Mineral Tourmaline Gem Crystal
Libs Elliot Greatest Hits Vol 1 Harlequin Pretty in Pink
Figo American Road Trip Fizz Bubbles Pink
Giucy Giuce Quantum Polaris Tangelo Orange
Tula Pink True Colors Mineral Amber Gem Crystal
Figo Butterscotch Starlight Orange Stars
Andover Sweet Shoppe Too Candy Dot Sherbert Orange
Dashwood Studio Great British Quilter Paper Planes Buttercup Yellow
Tula Pink Designer Solids Pear
Tula Pink True Colors Hexy Sunshine
Andover Sweet Shoppe Too Candy Stripe Sunflower
Tula Pink True Colors Mineral Peridot Gem Crystal
Ruby Star Speckled Emerald Green
Tula Pink Designer Solids Cricket Green
Alison Glass Sun Print 2020 Stitched Grasshopper
Tula Pink True Colors Mineral Topaz Gem Crystal
Figo Basics Elements Water Blue
Figo Lucky Charms Wish Bone Royal Blue
Tula Pink Designer Solids Sapphire Blue
Figo Basics Elements Fire Lilac
(Unknown batik from stash)
Libs Elliot Greatest Hits Vol 1 Sunstars Violet Purple
Cotton + Steel Basics Square Jelly Purple

how I set up my workspace when I do an FPP project like this

I really enjoy foundation paper piecing! At first I found it a little frustrating and wasteful, but I’ve since gotten better and found some ways to match my fabric to the sections better. I’ve been foundation paper piecing for a year or so and did the Mini Series Sew A Long last year hosted by Giucy Giuce and Alison Glass, but even so I learned a bunch from watching videos put out by Pride and Joy Quilting. (I’ll link to her Youtube channel and her Instagram for your viewing pleasure!) She’s an amazing pattern designer and has a full beginner series on her Youtube as well as lots of little clips if you’re just looking for help with a particular technique. (Not affiliated in any way, just love her patterns and her videos definitely upped my game!)

The tools I need when I’m foundation paper piecing are:

a seam ripper
a good fabric glue like this sewline gluepen
28mm rotary cutter, the Olfa one has become my favourite!
An Add-a-Quarter or Add-an-Eighth ruler are so helpful, I use both because my Add-an-Eighth is the plus version and has a sharp edge to fold the paper against. I definitely recommend getting the plus version of the Add-a-Quarter if you’re getting one!
I recently got some of these Tula Pink tweezers and they’re really handy for getting tiny paper sections out when it comes to the end

I worked on a set of blocks at the same time, so while it sometimes felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere I was then all of a sudden done with a third of the quilt! Doing the same section for each of the four blocks at the same time meant I could keep the mix of fabrics more even than trying to work on a single dog face at a time if that makes sense! (Like I’d take all the “A” sections for 4 blocks and work on them, then the “H” sections, etc.) I spent some time getting as many of the bigger sections of fabric cut out and trimmed to size and that made it a lot quicker to sew together once I got started! If I do another quilt like this in the future I’ll definitely take this approach again! This pattern was good since it was a mirror image, so when I cut some fabric wrong by not paying attention to what should be right or wrong side it was easy enough to flip it for the mirrored section!

dogs in sunglasses

I had a lot of fun taking photos of noses and sunglasses, and love this little gif! It’s fun to see how the colours change the look of each block!

Thanks for reading this far if you’re still with me! This was such a fun quilt to do I’ll need to do another! Mabye my dog needs a Warhol portait of her!

If you want to keep up with what I’m up to and hear about the patterns I’ll be bringing out this year (first one coming out the end of February!!) please sign up to my email list! I send out coupons to email subscribers for shop updates and pattern releases, so don’t miss out! (And will only bother your inbox once or twice a month for now! Hahaha)