Blog Tour Bitty Blocks: Doris Does Pumpkins
This is the final Blog Tour Bitty Block in celebration of Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks Volume 12, on newsstands now. I hope you’ve enjoyed these little darlings. They sure are fun to make.
I asked Doris Rice to design today’s block. She’s known as the Quilting Queen Online and she’s a member of our Addicted to Scraps team. This group makes quilts using Bonnie Hunter’s Addicted to Scraps blocks, found in every issue of Quiltmaker.
I was pretty excited when Doris sent me her idea, because these little pumpkins are what I call self-sashing: the space between the blocks is included in the block itself. Very clever!
Here’s how to make Doris’s Bitty Pumpkins. They finish at 4″ x 4″ (4-1/2″ unfinished).
Materials and Cutting
(printer-friendly instructions here)
Orange (pumpkin)
1 square 3-1/2″ x 3-1/2″
Green (stem)
1 square 1″ x 1″
Cream (background)
1 rectangle 1″ x 3-1/2″
2 rectangles 1″ x 1-3/4″
4 squares 1″ x 1″
1 rectangle 1-1/2″ x 4-1/2″
 Sewing
Make the stem:
Use Stitch-and-Flip to make the pumpkin: Put a 1″ background square on all 4 corners.
Sew across diagonally. Trim off, leaving a 1/4″ seam allowance. Open out and press.
Sew the stem and the pumpkin together.
Sew a 1″ strip to the top and a 1-1/2″ strip to the side as shown below.
One Bitty Pumpkin complete!
You might like to try putting them on a dark background, as Doris did. These have the 1-1/2″ strip on the other side, but it doesn’t really matter.
See how cute they are all lined up? Now you can see how that final strip creates space between the pumpkins.
Doris had some serious fun.
You can make the stems a little wider on some pumpkins. So very cute.
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