Saturday, September 24, 2011

Designer Mystery BOM - Block 9

Whew, I'm on a roll.  I not only finished block 8 of the Fat Quarter Shop's designer mystery BOM, I finished block 9 too.  This one is supposed to be two matching ornaments, but i think it looks more like two Chinese lanterns.




Can I keep this momentum up?  I certainly hope so. 

Friday, September 23, 2011

Designer Mystery BOM - Block 8

Yet another BOM that I'm way behind on.  Okay, so I'm not AS far behind on this one as I am on the Radian Star BOM.  I made block 8 last weekend.  This one is a gingerbread house.  I think it turned out cute. 
I'm still totally in love with this fabric line and this quilt.  Well, I'm in love with every one of Kate Spain's fabric lines.  They're all so awesome. 

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Simply Radiant BOM - January

As I was preparing to teach the BMQG paper piecing, I was looking for just the right pattern that didn't have too many pieces, needed to be pieced together to show how to join two paper pieced blocks, and had different angles to show how to take care in lining up the fabrics.  I decided on the January BOM from Carol Doak's Simply Radiant Star BOM.  I hadn't made this block, but it appeared to be the easiest block out of the bunch.  It would be perfect.
Here's my finished block.  I really like how it came out.  As I was preparing and picking out fabrics I decided that I needed a block with red as the dominant color.  I think this works well.

Here are all seven blocks so far.  See why I thought I needed another block with red as the focus color?
I put this aside for a while, but I'm going to TRY to pick it back up again and get a few more blocks done.  All of the patterns have been posted for the quilt, I just need to finish them all. 

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Paper Piecing Lesson

On Saturday I taught a paper piecing lesson at the BMQG meeting.  Those of you who've followed my blog for a while know that I love paper piecing.  When the guild asked me to teach a lesson on it, I was honored to share my love of paper piecing with the guild.
This was the block that I taught.  I picked this one because it was fairly simple yet it allowed me to show several techniques, including piecing the four sections together.

I only had about an hour to show folks because we had lots of other exciting things going on, but I think hope it was enough time to give everyone a good sense of what to do. 

Here's the progress that some folks made.

This one will be a crazy pieced heart.

It was very rewarding to hear people express an "ah-ha" as I was explaining the method that I use to paper piece.  I really hope that I've inspired folks to at least attempt paper piecing.  I know it's not for everyone, but it's certainly worth a try.

Monday, September 19, 2011

My Free Spirit Challenge Quilt

As you may have seen lately, Free Spirit issued a challenge to Modern Quilt Guilds across the country with using a stack of Jay McCarroll Habitat fabrics.  I wasn't crazy about some of the fabrics when I saw them in the photo, but I decided to go for it and try something out of my comfort zone. 

Here's what I was able to come up with.
I used a template by Sue Pelland Designs to make the petals.  Each petal is 2.75" long.  I created a grid of squares using a disappearing marker on the Kona white and placed the petals on top of the grid. I tried several different patterns before settling on this one.  After I pieced this, I saw several other layout possibilities.  I'm definitely going to make more quilts using this template.

Once I heat set the petals onto the quilt I stitched down along the edge of each one to quilt it.  I really loved the way the machine quilting looks on the back.

For not really loving the fabrics, I actually love how this turned out, of course I only ended up using about half of the fabrics provided, but still, it was a challenge. 

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Labor Day Quilting

I hope everyone had a fantastic labor day weekend.  I spent some time with my family up at the beach and relaxing a bit back at home.  While I was relaxing, in both places, I managed to finish the second block of the tile quilt. 
I'm really linking how these are coming out. Here are both together.
I like having these to do when I'm not around my sewing machine.  Now to get the next one prepped.