Did you see my Scrapbusting Challenge for Island Batik for March? You can see it HERE. The following is about one of the quilts I made for the challenge. I was scheduled to take a Ruler Quilting co…
From the back of my 1966 McCall’s Home Catalog: Where to begin with this ad… I’ll be back next week with photos from my 1920s Halloween sewing blitz!
Ancrés dans la tradition et la vie quotidienne américaines, les quilts ont inspiré de nombreuses petites phrases proverbiales. On les accompagne souvent de dessins nostalgiques et kitchissimes ! Le…
Art Gallery Fabrics is a manufacturing company of 100% Premium Quilting Cotton fabric and textiles collections, including knits, flannels and rayons.
National Quilting Day is a celebration of art, community, and the enduring legacy of a cozy tradition. Here’s to honoring the rich heritage of quilting...
We LOVE jokes and puns about sewing and knitting. Here we have gathered all the best jokes and one-liners we have come across. Pour yourself a nice cup of tea or coffee and lean back. It’s time for a good laugh! We have categorized all the jokes and puns into small categories. You can click […]
Great Minds think Alike! I was thinking about making a post about Quilting Abbreviations, but why re-create the wheel! Here are several lists that I recently came across. On February 23 the Quilti…
Conservators at the National Museum Australia have a mystery on their hands. And to solve it, they need the public's help.
Who doesn’t love those illustrated ecards that float around the internet? I’ve seen so many funny sewing ecards, but often when I want to find them again, I can’t. So I went to the Someecards site and below I’ve compiled for you the best selection of sewing humor I found there. You can click on...Read More
This past Saturday I taught a workshop on the One Block Wonder Technique at the Eastern branch of the Irish Patchwork Society. It was a busy but satisfying day and I think the participants enjoyed it. I don't have a lot of photos from the day, but I thought I'd share those which have resulting blocks in them (pity I don't have everybody's), as well as the tips we were able to take away from the day. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished quilts, though finalizing the layouts may take quite some time. This is a picture I wanted to print out, but didn't manage to get to the printers'. It sums up what we did on the day very well (both the picture and the phrase were found on the Web). I will not run through the whole process of making a One Block Wonder quilt (there are a lot of tutorials around on the Web), but I do want to share some tips which proved handy and/or were learned the hard way. 1. When choosing the fabric, pay attention to its color way - the pattern will change beyond all recognition, but the colors will stay the same. 2. For the first stage of the process - identifying your pattern repeat - it's handy to use a tailor's yardstick or any piece of board/plank that has a long straight edge. Alternatively, you can tape together two quilting rulers. 3. Some fabrics have their prints printed straighter than others. Don't be afraid to shift and wiggle your fabric to align the pattern. Once it's aligned, handle it with care to keep it that way. 4. Use flat pins to keep together your six layers while you're cutting. They don't have to be removed from the fabric when they get under the ruler, so your strips will remain aligned and won't shift. 5. Although most tutorials call for cutting 3 3/4 in strips, you don't really have to stick to this number. Measure the width of your repeat - in some fabrics it will not divide by 3 3/4, so to avoid wasting too much of your fabric you can choose a different strip width, say 3 1/2 in of maybe 4 in. Another thing to consider is the scale of your pattern. If it's on the smallish side, decrease the width of your strips. 6. Using a 60 degree triangle ruler with a "blunted" corner saves you a bit of fabric width when cutting the triangles. The blunted corner can also be handy to mark your central corner when piecing the triangles together. However, you don't really need a special ruler for this technique, any ruler with a a 60 degree line on it will do the job too. 7. Make sure your ruler has a horizontal line matching the edge of your strip. If it doesn't, create a line by sticking a piece of tape to the ruler - this will ensure all of the angles in your triangles are 60 degrees, and thus, all of the sides in your triangles are equal. 8. When piecing your triangles keep them in strict order, and always keep the center corners facing one way (for example, away from you) or mark the center corners with a pin, then your piecing process will be fast and smooth. 9. After you've assembled and pressed your half-hexies, keep them together with a piece of masking tape on the back while you're playing with the layout. 10. The layout is a very personal process, but I would still point out two important things - lay out all your blocks to see if there is any "focal" color that really jumps out at you; if there is, start the composition with the blocks that have most of this focal color and create some sort of shape of line with them, then arrange the other blocks around. This is a quilt I made before with the same lilac fabric. I chose to arrange the purple/pink blocks in a sort of wave with the greens supporting the shape. 11. When playing with the layout, snap photos of every variant, even if you don't really like it - the pictures make it easier to evaluate, compare and discuss your layout with other people, you might spot something you can't see up close and personal. On the whole this is a very fast and satisfying technique, definitely worth trying, at least to gain a new perspective on the use of pattern in fabric and the potential of fabrics you probably never considered suitable for quilting. UPD: If you're wondering what came out of that fabric, here's the finally finished quilt Linking up to Tips and Tutorials Tuesday at Quilting Jetgirl
Ah, fellow quilters! We are the people who cut perfectly lovely, large pieces of fabric into tiny pieces, just to sew them back together into large pieces again. We obsess over shades of green or b…
ARTspiration Artists or art that turns me on, feeds my soul, and inspires me. This bronze abstract sculpture of a figure of a woman holding a shield was created by actor Tony Dow, titled,…
Laughter is the best medicine and it's time for a big dose of happy. Kick up your feet and enjoy some of the most liked/pinned/shared sewing and quilting memes/comics. So many misconceptions about what a sewist really does. Honestly, I'd say most of my time is spent finding the tools I just had in my hand a second ago.
