Raggy Rectangle Trick!

Hi all!

I know I haven't blogged for a while!  I caught the virus that has been going around here and frankly I haven't felt like doing anything much or that I could do much :-P

I had my Accuquilt Go! Club yesterday and we featured the rag dies.  I pulled out my bin of orphan rag blocks to take with me and saw just how many of them I have and thought - I wonder if there is enough of like colours for a little quilt?  So, last night I made this.

 

A nice little lap quilt good for the Christmas season.  Needless to say this used quite a few of those orphan blocks and also some Minecraft Creeper Quilt scraps - yey!  This quilt uses the large and small rag squares and the now discontinued rag rectangle (the Go! is discontinued but the studio one still exists).  I have often thought that it was a real shame that the Go! rectangle was discontinued as it works so well with the other two dies and you can make so many different patterns with it.  This one is a sort of Take-5 Variation and it is wonderful for using up bits :-)

 

Here is the old rectangle next to the old large square.  One day I was looking at these and thought - hmmm, I wonder . . . . . 

 

If you cut a 5 1/4" strip from your flannel fabric (or whatever you are using) fold it in half lengthwise and then lay it across the LARGE rag die right next to the blades.

 

You only need to cover the are of the die that you are using with your cutting mat and run it through your cutter.

 

Unfold your fabric and there it is!

 

You have an exact replica of the raggy rectangle without the die!  If you are using the newer rag dies this would have the corners cut out but that's not what I have (so I would manually cut these out myself).

So there you go!  A little quilt and a new trick.  Enjoy!

Pattern Testing Pillow

Hi all!

I hope that you are all enjoying your winter, or, at the very least, getting some sewing done while spending time indoors - I know that I am!

I am trial testing a pattern to teach a class on it.  I was attempting to die cut some, if not all, of the pattern instead of doing it all with rulers and templates.  I can die cut some of it at least!  Yey!

I made one block and really liked it so I thought that I would make it into a pillow - just to do something with it.

 

I think this looks good on my sewing chair.  And, I think this might just be it's new home.  I like the hexagon shape instead of square and the size is nice and small so it's an accent.  

The pattern is Jaybird Quilts Night Sky pattern.  What do you think?