Disappearing Nine Patch

Hi all!

I hope that you are all enjoying this late August weather.  Here it is very nice but for others in the US - stay safe!

I have been playing with my new Studio cutter, as you know, and I got another great tip from my friend Sherry for making a Disappearing Nine Patch quilt (D9P) using my Studio dies.  However, this tutorial can also be applied to the Go! as well.

First start off with your Studio F die (50035).  For the Go! you would use your F die as well (55019).  This is the square 4 3/4" - you could also use your 5" square die as well if that is what you have but you will have a slightly larger block in the end - not 12" square.

 

Fold your fabric selvage to selvage, and then repeat twice more for the studio so that your selvage runs perpendicular to the rollers so that you are rolling your fabric through on the lengthwise grain.  Do the same thing for the Go! just decrease the layers to 4 or 6 instead of 8.  Repeat this for all of your fabrics you are using in your D9P.

Can you see the date on that selvage??  Yes, that fabric has been in my stash since 2002 - yikes!  Time to use it up!

 

Piece together your 9-patches.  I did a simple configuration with alternating cream blocks.  Easy peesy.

 

Grab your 6.5"  batting die (50070) and lay your 9-patches on this and run it through your cuter.  When I bought my Studio Bread and Butter set I initially thought that I would never use this die - right now it is the die I have used the most!  The nice thing about using this die is that it squares your blocks up to a perfect 6.5" square for you while it divides them -so fast!  You can layer this 3 blocks thick. If you are using the Go! you will have to rotary cut this in half in both directions.

 

There are many different lay-outs for the D9P - way too many for me to show here.  Just Google D9P and you will see many variations.  Here are the two that I played with.  I chose the one on the left.

 

This top went together so quickly and easily - this will not be my last D9P!  I found some backing fabric in my stash and quickly loaded this onto the frame.  I quilted it in a YLI 40 weight variegated  thread in a loose meander loop. 

 

Binding, label and sleeve are on and this quilt is ready to be given away as a late wedding gift!

 

All fabrics were pulled from my stash including the sage green backing fabric!  Woohoo - that is a lot of yardage, that has been sitting for years, finally made into a quilt to be given away.  I am actually getting wiggle room in my stash drawers!!  I haven't had that in years.

This will not be my last D9P!  I think this would be a great way to use up kiddie prints and make some scrappy baby quilts or preemie quilts.  Have you made a D9P before?  Was this tutorial useful for you?

I Might be Crazy

Hi all!

Well I think I might be a little crazy.  See, a friend of mine gave me this unfinished quilt top.  She tried to use on of those fabrics that come in stripes of say 10 different fabrics to make a lone star quilt by cutting strips to make it look like she had pieced them together.  Well, it worked ok  - see on the right that strip of white?  That and the fact that the top is a little wonky.  But, she was frustrated and about to throw this, and all the scraps, in the garbage.  Picture this - there were a tone of pieced panels that were going to go to waste with this method too.  So, I said, "Hey don't throw them out I'll take them!"

 

Famous last words!

 

I thought that I could process these panels (see the last couple top right?) with my die cutter - NOPE!  it just didn't work so I had to pull out my rotary cutter.  And I cut and trimmed and cut some more until I finally reached the end of the stack - why oh why did I say I'd take them?! 

 

At the end of all this cutting I had some nice stacks of fabrics: 2" squares, 1.5" finished HST and some already pieced HST - all ready to be used in a project! 

What am I going to do with the lone star top?  I think it might make a really nice back for whatever I choose to do with the other pieces.  I'm not sure what yet but I will do something with it!

What would you have done?  Chuck it or salvage it?

Quilt in a Day - no - ok 24 Hours

I have always wanted to see if I could do this!  I have always wanted to see if I could make a quilt in a day - meaning 24 hours - and - guess what?  I did!

 As you know I just got my Studio Bread and Butter set and with it came the 6.5" square, multiples, die.  A while ago I saw a great tutorial by Sherry at Cherry Bomb Quilts for making a Take 5 variation using this die and I decided that this should be my first Studio cut quilt!

 

 

What do you think?  Cool huh?  Now I am not going to re-invent the wheel.  Sherry's tutorial is great and you can find it here.  As a matter of fact Ebony Love did a video on this too - it probably would have helped me out to find it before-hand but oh well.  Did you know that Ebony is running a Kickstarter campaign to help fund her die cutting book?!  If you are a die-cutter you are going to want this book.  If you are someone who is comparing the different die-cutting machine - you will want this book!  All I can say is I have had a little preview and it is great!  My copy is on pre-order already.

 

Needless to say, I followed the tut and  cut some fat quarters that have been siting in my stash forever (are you seeing a trend with a lot of my latest quilts?  Pulling from the stash!).  I followed Sherry's tut and cut and got these stacks.  I did some shuffling and made these stacks into blocks - and then the blocks into a top.  So fast, so easy.  This can also be cut on the Go! using some of the mix-and-match set to cut 3.5" squares, 6.5" squares and 3.5 x 6.5" rectangles - or - of course rotary cut.

 

Next I loaded it onto my mid-arm frame and did an all-over meander loop fill using a 40 weight cotton YLI variegated thread top and bobbin - my machine loves this thread!

 

Next, because I was fully committed to getting his finished I machine sewed on the binding, sleeve and label and got to work machine turning it - this will just be a throw so I am not hand turning it!

 

Don't believe me that it is all done?  There is the sleeve nicely hand sewn down ;-)  BTW the backing is pulled from my stash too!  It is a fabric I bought that has 2007 on the selvage - time to use it up - yey.

All done!!  A quilt in 24 hours!

My New Addition!

Look at what I got yesterday!!!  I gave a little teaser on my Facebook page with this yesterday and a few of you guessed what was in the box correctly - well done!

 

Can you guess what's in the boxes yet?

 

Yes!  I got the Accuquilt Studio cutter! I am so excited to start using this.

 

And I didn't just get the Studio - I got the Bread and Butter set which includes multiples of the popular geometric dies.  yey!! Why did I get the Bread and Butter set?  I took the advise of a knowledgeable Studio owner and when I looked at the different starter sets I could see that this one would be the best for me.  Aren't all of those multiples just lovely?!  The Bread and Butter set also comes with all the cutting mats and trays so that I could get cutting right away.

I know that many of you will be wondering why I upgraded from the Go!  Well, when I bought my Go! I knew that I would enjoy die cutting; but, I had no idea how much I would LOVE it!  Soon after buying my Go! I started to regret not buying the Studio - keep in mind that I have a dedicated sewing room that is quite large 21' x 14' so I have the room for this cutter.  Not everyone has the space for a cutter like this or, frankly, the budget or desire for one.  Also, the dies are HEAVY!!  This is a good thing - much like a heavy sewing machine is good.  It means the dies are sturdy and will last a long time!  But, if you have strength issues or injuries you might not be able to lift the dies for long.

What cinched the deal for me was when Accuquilt introduced the Go! Adapter pads!!!

Now none of my Go! dies will go to waste - I can use them all on the Studio.  This is what made me make up my mind to upgrade.

Now before you ask - I am keeping my Go! and the dies for it.  The Go! is portable - the Studio is not.  The Go! dies are lighter and less expensive than the Studio dies - so buying an applique die, for the Go!, that I might only use a handful of times, is still feasible. 

Why did I choose the Studio over the Sizzix Big Shot Pro you might ask?  Well frankly with the Studio I am not limited at all.  It has the largest opening and can take all manufacturers dies with the right adapters.  Also, Accuquilt has more variety of dies available than Sizzix - please keep in mind that I am not a scrap-booker and a lot of the scrap-booking dies are really not suitable for quilting so delving into that side of things didn't appeal to me.  Some dies that really appeal to me, like the new huge rag die, will not fit on the Sizzix machine.  So, my choice was clear to me.  I didn't want any limitation - this was a good choice for me.  That said I love my little Big Shot and do buy dies for it too!

I know that this is going to sound silly - but - I also love the way it looks!  It is slick!  I love the grey and black clean lines of it.  Since it is going to be out - I wanted to like the way it looks ;-)

Also, as a Canadian, we now have a Canadian Distributor Cherished Pieces who is in Southern Ontario so it will be easy for me to shop when I am down there visiting.  This will be easier than bringing it across the boarder.

Anyways that was quite a long ramble about my new addition - now to unpack everything and get it organized!

So, what do you think?  If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them here!

1000 Pyramids is Done!

Have you been wondering where I was?  Well, it's summer so we did a little camping and then I was at the Zumba Convention in Orlando Florida!  What's Zumba you might be asking?  Zumba Fitness is a dance based fitness class that is so fun and very effective.  It's based around Latin and international rhythms and very addictive.  I teach fitness classes so I really wanted to attend the convention - if you can believe it I booked my room a year ago to attend this!  Lots of fun.

After I got home I was very tired, happy, but tired; so, I needed something easy to do and I grabbed the 1000 Pyramids quilt I have been working on and I finally finished hand turning the binding!

 

It got a little cloudy out today so I ran outside and snapped a couple shots of the quilt.  I am really happy with how this turned out.  I don't know why I love one block quilts so much but I really do.  One block quilts like the 1000 Pyramids quilt or the Tumbler became really popular in the 30's and they hold a special place in my heart!  I cut this quilt using the Accuquilt Go! Isosceles 5" x 6" die.  This is another great die and perfect for using up scraps or fat quarters.  I had a bunch of FQ's that I had purchased on sale and were crying out to be included in a quilt so here they are!

 

Here is a close-up of the quilting.  I quilted this in 50 weight off white cotton thread top and bobbin in a sort of meandering wave.  I took inspiration from one of the fabrics I used.  See the greeny one second from the left at the top?  It has green scribbles that kind of looked like that to me so I went with it!  So often when I can't decide how to quilt something I look to my fabric for inspiration.  I wanted to keep this an all-over pattern and, since I think this quilt has a modern feel to it, even though it is a classic block, I wanted something a little funky in the quilting.

Well that's all for now!  Except to say - that I am expecting an addition to my sewing room and I am over the moon excited to get it!  Sorry for the tease but I will let you in on the secret soon :-D  Can you guess what it is?

Finally a Book on Die-Cutting!

I have some great news to share!

A book all about fabric die-cutting is finally being released by none other than  Ebony Love, of Love Bug Studios, herself!  I am so excited to see the release of this long needed book.  For those of us that die-cut we know that there is a need for information about die-cutting.  Many of us have released YouTube videos on this topic, like Ebony, but having this information in book format is going to be great for all those people who cannot access these videos - and I know that there are lots.  Or, for those of us that want to learn every tip and trick out there!.

You can pre-order Ebony's new book by simply pledging $30.00 for her Kickstarter campaign - I've already done this and I am sure you will want to too!  She's got lots of great rewards in her program that I am sure you will want to take advantage of.

I'm egerly looking forward to the October release!

To Border or Not To Border?

Hi all!

If you have been following my Facebook page you'll know that I've been playing with these fabrics for the past little bit!

 

These fat quarters have been in my stash for years!  So I decided to pull out my Accuquilt Go!  and cut them up :-D

 

I grabbed my Isosceles Triangle die and went to town

 

Soon I had two very nice stacks of perfectly cut triangles!  Yey!!  Can you imagine how long this would take by hand!

 

Without any really clear plan I began sewing them together into the print and an off-white; and, then I sewed them into rows etc.  I really didn't colour plan this I just wanted it random.

 

After a LOT of pinning the top went together and I really like the effect!  What do you think?

Now I need to decide if I want to put borders on this or not.  I can put on borders in the off white but I don't have yardage of any of the prints.  I knid of like the idea of a one-block quilts but I might add on to get the size a little bigger.  What do you think?

Psst I will square it all up either before I add borders or after the quilting is done - don't worry ;-)

So what do you think - to border or not to border?

Look What I Found!

I thought that I might squeeze a little sewing in before I had to cook tonight and while I was pulling out a current project  I found a bag with these in it!

 

I remember putting these scraps away years ago but they didn't end up in my scrap heap so they didn't get processed when I did my big purge.  These were scraps from a quilt I had made, called Eureka, as a wedding present and when my LQS-owner saw it she loved it and wanted me to teach a class - so - I made a twin to this quilt.  This was back in 2008!!!  These have been scraps for 4 years *blush* Since I made two identical quilts I had some scraps to work with on the next quilt and now I have these left.

Ok now what to do with this?  This is quite a bit of fabric - with curved piecing.  Should I just scrap process it into 2" squares and strips or do I make something from it?  Keep in mind I really don't need another table runner - sigh.  And, this doesn't look very baby-ish for a preemie quilt

What would you do with this?

Christmas in July!

Hi all!

I hope that you have been enjoying your summer so far.  Here is is HOT and very DRY!  We are crying for some rain and a break from the heat.

I decided to get a head start on some samples for my fall classes since it is too hot to do much at all.  I found this neat pattern online and decided to give it a whirl.

 

 

 This is the Sew Easy Strata Star by Ruth Eckersley and it is a really fun pattern to make!  It is all 1.5" strips - which - I of course cut all on my Accuquilt Go! cutter so the cutting was really quick and easy.  I love how this turned out I decided to do my first one in Christmas fabrics because I could just see it in Christmas fabrics.  Now I will have to make more!

 

The one negative about this pattern is the amount of waste.  This isn't even all of it - and it was just too much to throw away.  So, I started to think about what I could do with these strip sets.  I decided to re-cut them into 1.5" strips again

 

Then I randomly joined them back together to make a piece of fabric.   Doesn't that just look like a hat mess?!

 

Next, I trimmed them down (ahh that's better).

 

And, I added some borders so that this was just over 6" wide.  I layered it with some Timtex and did a little top-stitching to hold everything together.  Can you guess what I am making yet??

 

 Next, I cut them into 4 sections all 6" x 4" - now can you guess?

 

Yep!  Christmas fabric postcards!  I got out my plain fabric and my postcard stamp and made some backs.  Every year I do Christmas fabric postcards to send to friends and family.  If you'd like to see some of my previous years cards you can check them out here, here, here and here.

 

Last, but not least, I added my favorite uneven zig-zag stitch around the outside.  Since I usually need around 30 of these every year I was really happy to get a bit of a head start and use up what was going to end up in the garbage :-D

What do you think?  Am I crazy for starting my Christmas work in this July heat?

Machine Quilting Fun!

Hi all!

I hope that you are all enjoying this hot weather!  Here in the Ottawa Valley it is extremely humid and hot!  Too hot to want any fabric touching me.  So, when a friend asked if she could drop off a quilt with me to quilt for her I said sure!  I don't have to be touching the fabric to quilt it on the frame ;-)

 

Isn't it a beauty??!!  I absolutely love the fabrics - they really POP!

 

I spent a couple of days quilting this for her - not because it was difficult or anything - but because once I got to the black it was later in the day and harder to see; so, I finished it up the next day.  Isn't it beautiful!  I am really happy with how it turned out.

 

I quilted this in a  60 wt variegated red to white thread in an all over meander wave pattern in the center and then switched to a 50 wt black for the borders.  Here you can really see the quilting on the back.  The fabric is actually black but it didn't really photograph well :-(   I love how striking  the thread is on the back (in real life LOL).

I hope that you are all enjoying this summer weather!  Anything quilty in the works?

Charity Bags

I thought that I would share this photo with you all.

 

This is a shot of the area behind my quilting frame where I have been storing some of our guild charity quilts.  Cool huh?!  The closest to us are the hospice quilts that are completely finished and ready to go.  Thrre are about 8 still to come in this month.  The farther ones are all preemie quilts!  So far we have 120 to donate to our local NICU!!  I am so thrilled!

But, I will say, I am looking forward to ALL of these quilts getting OUT of my quilting room LOL!  Although, I love to do charity work - the quilts have taken on a life of their own and are taking up a lot of room in my sewing room ;-)

11 Little Preemie Quilts All In A Row

I finished another 11 little preemie quilts for our local NICU today!

 

I have to say I am so happy that these are finished as well!  This makes 15 preemie quilts for me so far this year.  My other 4 preemie quilts can be found here.  I usually do between 5 - 20 of these a year.  My youngest was in a NICU for just 5 days but it really impacted our family - so I try to give a little back for the excellent care we had while my son was there.  The nurses and doctors really, really cared about the babies and did their absolute best for us.  That's why I brought the preemie quilt charity program to our guild years ago.  Since then, it has taken on a life of it's own and grown and stabilized.  It is wonderful to see.

I usually make my preemie quilts out of my left-overs from all of the baby quilts I make; but, sometimes I find a great deal on some kid fabrics and I buy it up!  It feels so good to give to others in this way.  This might be the only baby quilt for a lot of these babies.

If you would like to see how I make my preemie quilts you can find my preemie quilt tutorial here.

I encourage you all to make a few little preemie quilts!  They are an excellent way to use up some scraps of left-over blocks and they go to a great cause.  Just check with your local NICU to see what size etc they would like first.

Happy Quilting All!

Where Have I Been??

Where have I been?  Why haven't I been blogging for a bit?  Well, I will tell you - unless you are a member of my Facebook Page - then you already know.

I have been marking this quilt to get it ready for hand-quilting.

 

Remember this quilt?  I finished the top in March of 2011 and put it into my quilting closet until now!

 

Take a look at all that marking!  I marked this with the Clover wash-away blue pen at 7/8" cross-hatch.  Wowzers!  This quilt is about 98" x 120" and this marking took me FOREVER!  I think it took around 40-50 hours - or season one of Game of Thrones and seasons one and two of Ghost Whisperer.  Crazy huh?  All the blue lines I had to mark and we will hand quilt along those lines and in the ditch around each of the red units.  The quilting will take a while but it will be worth it I think!

 

Here it is loaded onto the hand quilting frame with a few stitches in.  Looks great doesn't it?

I am so happy to have this on the frame!  Now I can move onto other things - yey!!

It's Finished and Ready to be Given Away!!

Yey - Yey - Yey!!  It is finished finally the maple leaf is quilt is DONE!

 

Didn't it turn out well?  I love it.  This quilt will be donated to the town of Arnprior to celebrate our 150th Anniversary.  The maple leaves symbolize our logging industry.   Our local guild members made the blocks and I put them into a quilt top.  A guild member long-armer machine quilted it for us and she did an amazing job.

 

Didn't she do a nice job??

 

The quilting is lovely Thank you Shirley Cavanaugh fo a wonderful job.

 

Next I pressed myself to get the binding, label and sleeve all finished so that I could hand it off in two days.  Wowzers what a lot of work!  I always forget how many hours go into the finishing touches!  I got pretty nervous though because the thread that I had, that worked with the binding, was right down to the little bits to finish!  I kept thinking - oh no - what if I don't have enough??  Everything is closed for the long weekend - I was fine!  Yey!

 

The label was another thing to do - we had two extra blocks come in.  You know when you organize these type of things you don't expect to get all the blocks back?  Well, we did!  So we had out two extra that went onto the back with the label.  Nice effect huh?  I like it!

Anyways, this is done and ready to be handed off on Wednesday!!

Finally!!

I finally finished the top!!  My latest leaders and enders quilt top is finished and ready to be loaded onto my quilting frame!!  Well, ok, I have to find/make a backing for it first but you get the idea ;-)

 

Is it weird that I am THIS excited about finishing this top??  I have been working on this top for soooo long now so it just feels really good to have completed it!! 

 

Here's a close-up of the quilt top.  It is completely pieced!  that was the challenge that I set for myself with this quilt.  There are no long straight strips to this quilt it is completely pieced.  Whew!!

If you are not familiar with the leaders and enders technique you can check out my video here:

Leaders and Enders Video

And if you would like to see how I pieced this quilt using my 2" squares you can see it here:

Crossroads Quilt Video (aka this quilt)

This quilt is completely Accuquilt Go! friendly!  It requires only 2 dies - the 2" square die and the 3.5" square die - or of course you can rotary cut this as well.  I love the simplicity of using only 2 different sizes of squares to make this quilt!  However, if you have the 1.5" finished half square triangle (HST) die you could use that instead for your X-Blocks and you would have a bit less waste.  If I was to make this quilt again I think I would construct it this way since I now have that 1.5" finished HST die ;-)  When I made this quilt I didn't.

Ok now to find something for the backing and to decide how to quilt this!  I am thinking a loose all-over pattern in the center - this will be used on a bed so I don't want the quilting too dense.  Any thoughts??

 

 

 

Asian Steps

Happy Mother's Day!  I hope that all of the Moms, soon-to-be-Moms and the want-to-be-Moms out there have an amazing day filled with love and laughter!!!  We are having an absolutely beautiful day here - lots of sun shine and warm weather.

I thought that I would share a picture of the finished Asian Steps quilt that I had so much trouble deciding how to quilt!

 

It is completely finished, bound and labelled - yey!  I really like this quilt now - probably because it is finished ;-)  But hey, I am not going to complain about that at all!  

This quilt was, almost, completely cut on my Accuquilt Go! cutter using the 2 1/2" strip die; so, it made this quilt so quick and easy to put together from my Oriental fabric stash.  Pulling the fabrics for this quilt didn't seem to make a difference to the amount of fabric in there but hey!

This pattern as the Planet Patchwork New Year's Day Mystery Quilt that I took part in.  The top was finished on New Years day but the quilting was finished in May.

Now what to do with this quilt?!!

Quilting Update

Sometimes the best thing to do when you're having trouble doing something is to just admit that you're having trouble with it!

I had so much trouble deciding how to quilt that quilt top and I let it sit there since January.  Too sad.  I just didn't know what to do so I let it sit.  I think that my problem was that everything that I thought to do would suit a different fabrics - they would not suit these orientals in this pattern.

This was a mystery quilt so I had no idea what pattern we were doing, and, if I could do this quilt over I would choose different fabrics.  Although I like the quilt, I would do it differently next time.  I really like the pattern but I think that I would go with some bold colours next time.

 

I finally decided that I was going to decide and so I did!  I decided to do a sort of oriental wave and cloud all-over design.   Done!

I used two different threads on this one.  I used a YLI 40 weight variegated thread top and bobbin in the body and borders and a 40 weight rayon thread in the first border and corners. 

All's well that end well - it's quilted!!!  Thanks for all the suggestions!

I'm Stumped!

So, I am stumped!

 

 

How should I quilt this?  I've been waiting since January 1st for inspiration to strike and it just hasn't happened yet; so, I thought that I would ask all of you for ideas?  This doesn't usually happen to me so I'm very puzzled.  I like this quilt and would like to load it onto my frame and work on it.   It is the New Years Day Mystery Quilt from Planet Patchwork and I would like to git er done!

So what do you think?  Can you help a girl out??!!

Scrap Quilting!

So sorry I have been MIA!!!

My MAC had to go in for repairs and them I had the great pleasure of re-installing and configuring everything - joy!  I thought that computers were going to save us all time LOL!!

So, I had some time to do a little scrap quilting.  You know when you feel like doing some piecing but you don't want to work on anything too specific necessarily?  Well, I find that doing some scrap quilting is a great thing to do.  So, I pulled out my bin of 1.5" strips and made some more log cabins.

 

 

 I am in love with these!  I have lots of fun laying them out and seeing the possibilities with them.  Such a traditional block; but, what a GREAT scrap buster!!  My bin is down quite a bit now - But, not that much.

Does anyone else love log cabins as much as I do??

 

While I was working on these I pulled out my Cheddar Bow-Ties a la Bonnie Hunter!  I decided to do mine with scrappy oranges and so far I am loving it!  I really like how this leaders and enders project is coming along.  I should really finish my current one but I really felt like working on this one - so I did!

So, that's it for now!  What have you all been working on?  Something new?  Something old?  Something scrappy?