Little Kingdom: Project Ideas

It’s here!!! Little Kingdom, my very first pattern, has been released into the wild!!!

🏰 Get your copy here: pdf or printed booklet! 🏰

I’m so excited and can’t wait to see what people will make with my two dear blocks, Mr. Castle and Mr. Watchtower!

For those of you who’d appreciate some help with inspiration, I have put together some ideas in this block post. Of course, this is by no means a complete list – so please share your own ideas with me and I’d be more than happy to add them to this post!

Small projects

Besides making a set of cuddle pillows as described in the pattern, Mr. Castle and Mr. Watchtower are great and versatile to be used on their own in various other small projects. What about a nursery wall hanging or a library tote? (There’s a separate blog post about the two pillows below, if you are interested. Read it here!)

Or stitch up a haunted castle pillow for Halloween! All the details about the pillow cover below can be found in this blog post.

Larger projects

If you are going for a baby, throw or even bed sized quilt however, you may want to pair the two gentlemen with some more fairy tale ingredients.

Village quilts

If you’ve been following me on Instagram you know that I originally designed Little Kingdom while making Lindsey’s (aka Pen+Paper Patterns) Tiny Town quilt (get the pattern here) for my daughter Anja and decided to upgrade her beautiful but somewhat ordinary (sorry Lindsey! :P) neighbourhood to a royal habitat.

I slightly modified the layout and number of blocks as compared to the original pattern, because I wanted a twin size instead of a throw. (If you are interested in more details, I wrote a separate blogpost about Anja’s quilt.)

I then played around with different quilt sizes and layouts and came up with this enchanted castle amidst a beautiful flower garden and surrounded by a mixed forest. Position four watch towers in the corners and you have a lovely baby quilt! If using the sashing and border dimensions given in the Tiny Town pattern the layout below measures 43” x 51 1/2″, a perfect crib size! I am currently working on a baby quilt with this layout and can’t wait to show you all!

But of course these are only two possible layouts featuring Lindsey’s and my own blocks – be creative and build your own Little Kingdom! I can’t wait to see what you come up with! Ange from A Little Patchwork for example did some really fun fussy cutting and added a little princess and a kitten!

Other fairy tale elements

While making a quilt label for Anja’s quilt, I wanted to incorporate a special something and came up with this little crown block:

Pocket Crown is a simple foundation paper pieced block. The pattern (get it here) includes templates for four small quilt blocks (3″ x 3″, 4″ x 4″, 5″ x 5″ and 6″ x 6″) and one jumbo size (12″ x 12″).

Since then, I have come across a number of other quilt blocks which would pair perfectly with Little Kingdom.

If you’d like to embrace the story time theme, Kate from Quilt With Kate designed a beautiful book block, Tall Tales, which can be found here.

Wanna pair Mr. Castle and Mr. Watchtower with some mushrooms or toadstools to honour all those little fairies and elves out there? Larisa from Stitching Notes has you covered (get the free pattern here)!

I simply couldn’t resist making a test block. I scaled the pattern up a bit to make the dimensions go with the rest of the blocks and I find Shroomie turned out quite cute! I’ll definitely make more…!

Or even some gnomes! Or frogs! Or rainbows and unicorns! There are sooo many different fairy tale elements!

By the way, if you succeed in incorporating a dragon, you’re my personal hero!!! 😀

Updates

(13 April 2020)

Janice (check out @prairieandocean on Instagram or visit her website) did it! She made an awesome dragon block and published the pattern today! Please meet Boris – you can get the pattern here!

(15 April 2021)

A year later and I have another dragon solution for you! My new Dragon Dreams crib quilt pattern released today and it pairs perfectly with the Little Kingdom pillows, woohoo! Get your copy here: pdf or printed booklet!

And if you want to upgrade to a twin size, you can even combine both patterns in one big quilt! To make it as easy for you as possible, here is a tutorial with all the details!

I can’t wait to see what you make and what other ideas you come up with! Please share your projects on social media using the hashtags #LittleKingdomQuilt and/or #ApplesAndBeaversPatterns!