Good morning everyone, how are you all doing? Are you ready for another quilt block for your “Sail away with me” quilt? Today we will be sewing another boat, the Happy Boat.

This pattern has a very special meaning to me personally. In the winter of 2019, I wanted to make a sailboat quilt for my husband but couldn’t find the right patterns. I then decided to learn quilt pattern design and start designing my own patterns and writing instructions.

This sailboat was the first boat I made available as a pattern in my store. That idea has since grown into over 300 different patterns, a book “Adorable Animal Quilting'”, countless magazine publications and much, much more.

At the time, I named the boat Little Happy Boat. Pretty fitting, isn’t it?

Are you new to the Sail Along?

Are you reading about the Sail-Along for the first time? Or have you decided to join this Quilt-Along only now after a long time of thinking about it?

No problem at all, you can come on board anytime and sail along! Together we will sew a quilt using FPP blocks with nautical designs. The patchwork instructions will be published block by block on the BERNINA blog. You can find all previous articles here:

Sail-Along on the BERNINA Blog

The best way to get started is to read my first Sail-Along article: Welcome to the BERNINA Sail-Along.

You only want to sew the boat?

Maybe you don’t want to participate in the Sail-Along at all, but want to try out foundation paper piecing and sew just this little boat? That is also possible! The Happy Boat is available as a single pattern:

Little Happy Boat pattern

The fabrics for the Little Happy Boat:

For our quilt, we need the Happy Boat twice in a 12″x 12″ size.

Below you will find my fabric choice for the Happy Boat. As always in the Sail-Along, you are free to work with your own fabrics. Scraps of fabric will also do for the sails and cabin.

1. Happy boat 12 “x 12”

C 12983 denim media (sky)
C12980 mist media (water)
C12986 black media (hull)
C640 autumn media (boat edge)
C 610 black media (boat edge/mast)
C12981 gray media (sail and cabin)
C12981 off white media (sails)
C 640 lodgepole media (mini flag)
C12986 mist media (sail)

2. Happy boat 12 “x 12”

C 12983 denim media (sky)
C12980 stone media (water)
C12980 off-white (sails)
C610 persimmon media (hull)
C120 solid brown (boat edge/mast)
C12981 charcoal media (sail)
C12981 off white media (cabin)
C 640 lodgepole media (mini flag)
C12984 multi media (sail)

Let’s start with the Happy Boat

For the Happy Boat, you only need to print four pages per boat. Two pages of the pattern need to be glued:

Glued together, the whole pattern looks like this:

It is always a good idea to lay the fabrics that you want to use for a block next to it. So you can double check again whether you like your fabric choices. 

3. As you can see here in my Little Happy Boat, I placed the princess from the fabric print right in the door of the cabin. That’s pretty easy in this case, because the door has the number 1 of the segment.

Since this is the first part to be glued (or pinned) anyway, you can now easily place this part of the segment on the fabric to fit and glue it in place. If you have a light box, this will be even easier.

But it also works without a light box; you can simply hold the fabric against a window and place the segment accordingly.

If you want to know more about the so called “Fussy Cutting”, you can read more here.

4. In this block, I put the captain in the door. Not out the door, that would not be helpful for our sailing trip…

Now join the segments as you did with the other quilt blocks. I use the BERNINA 770 QE PLUS Kaffe Edition.

Remember to remove the paper from the seam allowances as this will reduce bulk of the layers. You will find the order of sewing the segments together in the pattern.

As you can see in the picture above, I always use the patchwork foot #97. The edge of the foot lines up nicely with the edge of the seam allowance and the foot store open in the front. This gives me a clear view of my seam.

And here they are, two super pretty Happy Boats. You are on your way of becoming a real FPP professional. 🙂

 I am really proud of you. Keep up the great work!

… and of course I want to see your boats!

Your boats have certainly become super varied. I am so excited to see pictures of your blocks. Show them to me on social media or in the community section of the blog! On Instagram and Facebook, always use the hashtag #sailawaywithmequilt. In the community section of the blog, don’t forget to select the “Sail-Along” giveaway.

until next week
Ingrid