Making Kits!

Hi all!

Ahhh fall!  And, my quilting classes are in full swing and busy.  It's so much fun to have busy classes with fun people in them!  One thing I know from past experience is that I have to stay well on top of my class prep work or I will be frantic the night before I teach - and sometimes I teach 3-4 classes in a weekend!  So, I don't like to fall behind at all.

This weekend (coming) I teach the first of a 3 part Crazy Shortcut Quilts (CSCQ) class.  I have been teaching this class for about 3 years now and it is always fun!  You can see my very first CSCQ here.

I make a little practice kit for every student to take home after the class so that they always have a physical reference to go back to to remember the quilt as you go method from the book.  These little quilt samples take quite a bit of time to prepare as there is cutting and sewing and quilting involved with EACH one!  I love the looks on their faces when they get them though - it's so worth it!

3 years ago I did A LOT of prep for this - I mean A LOT!  Enough prep that I had little samples to give away for three years - and I taught a lot of people!  My sample stack was over 2 feet high!  But, I didn't finish it all - only a lot of it LOL - so I had some unfinished work that I could pick up and finish to make more samples - since I finally ran out.  There were a lot of the little pieced tops and even some battings, backings and sashings cut and prepped.

I spent time today making samples to get ready - and I decided to just finish up everything I had started so that I could have samples for more classes already complete.  But, of course, I looked for a way to stream-line it ;-)

 

After layering and quilting, each of the little quilt sandwiches gets squared up to 5" (for the samples) - and I thought - hmmm I have a 5" square die - I wonder . . . . .

 

I placed the little quilts on the die - these are all quilted with batting and backing - and ran it through my Studio cutter - the Studio can take up to 10 layers so the little quilts were under that.

 

I removed the excess and voila!  Perfect little quilts ready to kit up - and I didn't have to square them up with a ruler!  So much faster!

 

I bundles these into groups of two with the sashing and I am ready to go for 3 - 4 more classes!

I love finding new ways to use what I have to stream-line production like this - yey!

So what did you do with your extra daylight saving hour today?