do.good.stitches October; a block tutorial

I'm super psyched for my first month as a quilter in the Happiness circle of do.good.stitches.  I wanted to make a quilt for Project Linus that would make a boy or girl happy and I think this one might just do the trick. 

I was really inspired by this bundle that Nicke put together for Pink Castle Fabrics.  Hopefully the girlies in my bee have bits and pieces in their stash that will work.  It's a perfect way to bust some of those scraps, though I've got to admit my scrap bins are towering infernos of terror so I cut strips from yardage.

The blocks we're making are 12" finished but I discovered after making my first one that it's a lot easier to draft the pattern at 13" then cut down to 12½", it gives a little more wiggle room.  So start by drawing a 13" square on the dull side of some freezer paper.  If you don't have freezer paper you can use other wide paper, even newspaper.  The great thing about using freezer paper is you can use the pattern twice and there's no paper to tear away.

Once you've got your paper piece measured out pick a spot that will be your center point and mark it with a dot.  This should be offset from the actual center of the square by at least 1" so that it looks deliberate.  Draw 4 lines going through the dot, dividing it into your wedges.  Piecing will be a lot easier if none of them go right through the corners of the block, but if that's the look you want, go for it.  Mark the pieces so that you can figure out how to reassemble them.  I marked mine as sections A and B then pieces 1 - 4 in each section, but do whatever makes sense to you.  Cut the block apart along the lines and you're ready to piece!

I like to start piecing at the point of each section, that way I know I'll have enough fabric there that the seam won't get too bulky.  If you went the freezer paper route, iron your piece of fabric to the shiny side of the freezer paper, leaving about 1/4" not stuck to it where you'll be adding your next piece of fabric.  If you've used regular paper, pin or glue stick this piece in place.

Now fold the freezer paper back so that the seam allowance is visible.  Add your next piece of fabric and sew it on, using the freezer paper as a guide but not actually sewing on the paper.  If your presser foot is sticking to the freezer paper and causing drag you might want to try ironing your freezer paper pieces to your ironing board cover then peeling them up.  The freezer paper will get a little linty then and your foot will travel along it much more easily.

Flip your newly added strip of fabric over and press it down.  If you're using regular paper or newspaper you'll have to sew the strips to the paper.  It's a good idea to use a smaller than usual stitch for this since pulling off the paper at the end often pulls out stitches, too.

If you look at the back of the freezer paper you'll see that nothing is actually sewn to it, it's just holding the pieces in places.

Keep adding strips of fabric until you pieces are covered, then trim your seam allowances.  You'll need ¼" seam allowances for all the interior seams.  Outside edges of the block can be cut flush with the paper.

Reassemble your block using the marks you made earlier as a guide.  When I sewed my blocks back together I did them in subsets, sewing A1 + A2, A3 + A4, then sewing both A chunks together.  I repeated this with the B pieces then sewed everything together. 

To reduce bulk only sew to the triangle tips, and press seams open.  Then when matching pieces don't worry too much about the outside edges and concentrate on making the 8 points at the center come together fairly well.

Once all your pieces are sewn together trim down to 12½" and remove the paper.  Your freezer paper pieces can be reused for your second block or you can draft another one for more variety.

Thanks so much to everyone in the happiness circle for working on this with me!

xox,
c

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I have conquered ties!

Yes!  After messing with 2 patterns, crawling around on the floor with a roll of unco-operative paper and a few scrapped attempt, I've created a decent tie.  Come on, high fives!

I started with the 2 most popular free patterns out there, the one from the Purl Bee and the one from Puking Pastilles and kind of mashed them together.  Both have great features but both have some issues. Purl's pattern style didn't work for me, plus it's a little short.  With Puking Pastilles' pattern I couldn't get the pieces to fit together properly, they created a weird jog.  But as I said both have great aspects to them, so here's my combo meal:

I decided to go with Purl's pattern, modifying it a bit.  It's divided into 3 sections, the tie front, middle, and back.  I knew from making this before that the tie ends up a little short so I added an extra 4" to the middle portion.  This is really easy to do - the middle prints out in 2 pieces that need to be taped together.  Just insert the extra length between these 2 pieces.  The hubs is 5'11" and this worked out pretty well for him.
I also had problems with my first attempt at getting the grain line right.   Their instructions are to fold the fabric on the bias then line the pattern piece up on the fold.  I know it sounds easy but with pieces this long and a small cutting table I was all over the place.  So I drew out the pattern full size and added the grain line.  The easiest way to do this is to draw a line on a big piece of paper.  Put the "place on fold" line of the pattern against the line you drew, then trace around it.  Flip the pattern over along that center line and trace again.  This results in pattern pieces with Ms at the ends, but the Purl post has a good visual on how to trim them. To mark the grain line, draw a line at a 45 degree angle to the center line.  When you go to cut your pieces all you need to do is line a ruler up with either the selvedge or the squared off end of the fabric.  Line the grain line marking on the pattern up with the ruler and your pattern pieces is good to go.

One of the things I really like about the Puking Pastilles pattern was the idea of machine stitching the lining.  I thought their idea of lining the entire tie resulted in too much bulk, though, so I went with Purl's smaller lining pieces that just cover the ends of the tie.

Once the lining is flipped right side out, you really can't tell that it wasn't hand stitched.

To finish the tie I also found it easiest to use the instructions from Puking Pastilles.  On one side of the tie, fold over a ¼" seam allowance.  On the other fold the side in so that the ¼" seam allowance lines up with the center of the tie.



Fold the other side over so that the folded edge lines up with the center of the tie.  Press well then hand sew the seam down.  Yeah, I know.  I tried to find a way not to hand sew this but unless you want a raw seam down the inside of the tie, there's no getting around it.

Hope that made even some sense!

Happy Friday
c

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Baptist fan - quilting the fans

Stitching the curved arcs of a baptist fan aren't much harder than straight lines.  It's really just echo quilting.  To start, quilt one of the marked arcs.  You can start at an edge or in the middle of the quilt, depending on your preference.

I forgot to take a photo while quilting this, so imagine that only the line the guard is resting on is quilted!

After your first arc is quilted you'll quilt a second line that echos it.  If you're starting at an edge of the quilt, this second line will also start at the edge. If you're starting in the middle of the quilt and working out, this line will start on the marked arc in the same row and to the left of the one you're working on.  Decide how far apart you want your quilting lines to be and set your walking foot guide to that distance.  I set mine at 1" but if I were doing this on a big quilt I'd probably go for 1½" or 2". 

Keep echoing each line in the fan until it can't fit anymore then move on to the next fan arc.

Quilting baptist fans this way leads to lots of starts and stops in the quilting.  There are 3 ways of ending off your quilting lines, 2 of which I've pictured above (the 3rd is back sitching, which all of us know how to do). 

On the top line I've slowly decreased my stitch length to zero in the last ¼" of quilting.  I've done this on quilts before and it's held well over numerous washes.  The downside with my machine, though, is lots of pushing of buttons to change the stitch size. 

The bottom line I've opted to just stop my stitching and pull both tails up to the top of the quilt for tying.  This is the method a lot of show quilters use because it's invisible.  The downside though is tying all those knots!

If you want to attempt the tying method, you'll need to thread your ends into a hand sewing needle, then tie a knot in the thread.

Slip your needle into the knot and tighten it.  This will make sure the knot is not right up against the last stitch so that it can be buried.

Insert the needle into the quilt top and batting, right at the end of the line of quilting.  Poke the needle up again ½" to 1" away, pull the thread until the knot pops into the quilt, then snip the tails.

Keep quilting your fans across the quilt top until the whole top is done!  Then check your quilt for stray threads before you take a photo!  I chose to back stitch most of my quilting lines and this little place mat (about 11" by 16") took me half an hour to quilt.  Space your lines farther than my 1" and use a bigger template and it should go faster.

If you want an even more detailed explanation of this technique, Krista from Poppyprint has a great tutorial up on flickr.  Hers is for quilting concentric circles, but an arc is just part of a circle, right?
xox,
c

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Baptist fans - part one, marking the fans

Whoops, well I guess I missed yesterday.  I had a last minute opportunity to go visit another guild for an all day quilt in and I jumped at the opportunity.  The dog was already at doggy daycare as her birthday gift (she turned 2 yesterday!), laundry was done, the freezer was full of leftovers, woohoo, sewing marathon!  If anyone is ever on Vancouver Island in the Courtney/Comox/Cumberland area, I really suggest getting in touch with the Comox Valley Schoolhouse Quilters' Guild and going to one of their Thursday sew ins.  It's a great bunch and we had so much fun!

Now on to the fans!  This is such a great quilting pattern for anyone who is looking to stretch themselves a little and go beyond straight lines.  It's not as scary as free motion quilting and it looks really cool!  It does require a little setup, though, a template and some marking.  Oh, and a free motion foot with a sewing guide.

To start we need to make our template.  I'm using a side plate to make my template, but for a bed quilt I'd suggest something a lot bigger.  You could use a compass to draw a big circle or check around the house to see what sort of big circles you have kicking around.  A tray, garbage can lid, old record (not the husband's limited pressing orange vinyl, please), heck go big and use a hula hoop.  You also need some cardboard.  Lighter is easier to cut, but use what you have.  I recycled a priority mail envelope.

Trace your circle onto the cardboard, cut it out, then fold it in half twice to create guide marks.


Darken the guidelines up a bit at the edges with a pen or pencil then punch a hole through the very center.  You can use a hole punch or just the end of a pen like I did.

Now grab your favorite marking tool (I'm using a crayola wash-out felt pen, they take a little bit more work to get out than markers specifically for quilting, but they're cheap and show up really well).  Line your template up so that two of the quadrant lines are aligned with about the ¼" seam allowances at the bottom left corner of your quilt top.  Trace the arc onto your top.

You should end up with something like this.

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Pick up Sticks block tutorial

NOTE:  It's just come to my attention that this block, and even the name I chose for it, is strikingly similar to one designed by Ali of asquaredw and published in Quilter's Home magazine.  I honestly thought I'd come up with an original block variation and had no intention at all of plagiarizing.  I've sent an apology to Ali and would also like to apologize to everyone who reads my blog.  I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes here, I'm just trying to share the fun I have with my quilting.  I'm still deciding whether or not to remove my tutorial and will make that decision in the next day or so.  C

I've had a few requests for a tutorial on my recent 4 by 5 bee blocks, and I figured what the heck! I based this block on one by Amandajean at Crazy Mom Quilts and I thought she had a tutorial up, but no such luck, so here we go...

Start with a square of fabric about an inch bigger than you want your finished block to be. I wanted a finished 12" block so I cut my square 13". We'll be trimming our blocks later so nothing needs to be precise at this point. I then cut 3 strips of freezer paper 1" wide by about 14" long. Again, the length doesn't need to be precise, it just needs to be bigger than the square.

The pieces of freezer paper will act as templates for the strips of scraps in the block. Take one of the pieces of freezer paper and iron one end of it to a scrap. Now fold the freezer paper back on itself, exposing about 1/4" of fabric. Using the folded edge of the freezer paper as a sewing guide, add a second piece of fabric. Iron the second piece of fabric down then continue adding scraps in this manner until all 3 of your freezer paper pieces are covered. At this point I like to remove the freezer paper then iron it back down since it sometimes gets distorted with all that stitching.

Now trim your strips so they are 1 1/2" wide, using the edge of the freezer paper as a guide.

Ok, time to start inserting those strips! Make a random, angled cut in the fabric square.

And sew in your first strip! Use the edge of the freezer paper as a guide and don't worry if your square isn't perfect after inserting the first strip - remember, we're trimming!

Repeat for the second strip. Now flip the block over and pull off the freezer paper pieces. If you're making lots of blocks, save them and reuse them.

Now it's time to tackle the cross strip. Make a cut that goes through the 2 inserted pieces. Sew one edge of your 3rd strip to one side of the cut.

This is the hardest part, sewing the second seam so that it looks like the inserted strips are interwoven. I like to put my thumb nail along the 1/4" seam allowance where the stitching crosses, then flip over the fabric so I can judge if my placement is good. Because I can't take photos with one hand, I've used a pin in the photos above to show this step. Keep moving the pieces around and checking until you get a good match, then hold it or pin it in place. Then sew!

Your block is finished! Or almost, it just needs a good trim!

Add some quilting, and voila. xox, c

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Frame block tutorial

 Remember this bunny block?  Well, I thought I'd share a tutorial on how I made it!  The one I've made for the tutorial is a little different, switching in more of the background fabric where I've used that aqua print in the bunny block.  Both styles give a great frame effect, one just looks like a floating frame, the other like there's a matt in the frame.  Either one would make a cute cushion, especially if it frames a favorite fabric or an initial embroidery.  Just saying.

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Little hexies all in a row... tutorial

I just love the block I came up with for the 3 x 6 bee, so I decided to write it up as a tutorial.  I hope you love it as much as I do!

This pattern is for a 12" finished block, and is a great way to use up some scraps.  So what exactly do you need?

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The cat pillow

One of my favorite books ever is Neal Stephenson's Crytptonomicon. In it Enoch Root talks to Bobby Shaftoe about Shaftoe's morphine addiction, saying "the Germans would describe you as Morphiumsuchtig. The verb suchen means to seek. So that might be translated, loosely, as 'morphine seeky'."  I like to think of my cats as wärme suchte, or heat seeky. It's cuter than heat seeking but also suggests that they're pretty sneaky about it, stealing your spot on the bed or couch when you get up, pushing things off counters to be closer to heat registers. If they could reach the thermostat, you know it would be 28°C in here all the time. So when we moved a space heater into the kitchen, near the kitchen chair, you know that became a favorite spot.

And you know I had to make a cushion.

I've been seeing a lot of fun dresden plate blocks out there, and they were suddenly looking modern and fun, not grandma. So a dresden it was, with a simpler back. In orange and pink, of course. Our kitchen is white with big doses of pale aqua (love my beach glass corian counters!) and pale grey. It just screams for orange!

While there are a ton of great tutorials for dresden blocks out there, I've put together my own since I felt I had a couple of ideas that no one has posted yet.  If you want to check out my tute, click on "read more" below!

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