Another Simply Radiant Block

While I had no machine, I prepped a couple of the Simply Radiant BOM blocks from the Carol Doak Yahoo Group.  Here's this completed block.  I just love how these blocks are turning out.

And here are the eight that I've completed.  Just four more to go.

This block is in the upper right corner.  I said it before, and I'll say it again, I love these!

How to Paper Piece - Part 3

I know, it's been a while between my How to Paper Piece posts.  Here I talk about the tools you'll need to paper piece and here I talk about some good books and patterns.

First you want to set your stitch length to 1.5.  You want to reduce the stitch length and increase the number of stitches per inch.  Why?  This perforates the paper a lot to make it easier to tear away after you're done.  It also creates more stitches so that a shorter length comes undone when moving and tearing the paper that you'll see we'll have to do.  I would also recommend using a 90/14 needle as it will punch a bigger hole in the paper, also making removal easier.

Step 1 - Place your piece for the #1, RIGHT SIDE UP on the BACK OF THE PAPER PATTERN.  Your piece should overlap all sides by at least 1/4".  I will double check this by holding the fabric in place and lifting up the paper and looking through the paper to the fabric to ensure all sides are covered.  Once in place, pin your #1 to the paper with the pin PARALLEL to the line connecting #1 and #1.

Step 2 - Place a piece of cardboard or thin plastic on the line connecting #1 and #2.

Step 3 - Fold the paper back on to the cardboard/plastic. Folding the paper down has two benefits, it extends the line to show you where to sew beyond the actual line and it weakens the paper to also make it easier to tear off after the block is finished.

 

Step 4 - Place your Add-a-Quarter ruler against the cardboard and folded paper and cut.  You just created your 1/4" seam!

Step 5 - Place piece #2 on top of piece #1 RIGHT SIDE DOWN.  (All pieces will be placed right side down from now on.)  Place it on the 1/4" steam that you created in the previous step.  Place a pin parallel to the line that you will sew.

Step 6 - Sew on the line between #1 and #2.  Begin sewing a little more than 1/4" from the start of the line and finish a little more than 1/4" after the line. (see below)

Step 7 - Iron your piece open.  The paper piecing will determine where you iron towards.  If you know that you will be ironing towards a lighter fabric, place that lighter fabric just slightly beyond the darker one before sewing so that it doesn't show through when you iron it open.

Step 8 - Continue repeating steps 2-7 for each piece until you finish your block!

Note: This block is from the Carol Doak Yahoo Group's Simply Radiant Star BOM. 

Radiant Star BOM - Block 6

Well, after a break from quilting for a few weeks with traveling for work and pleasure, I finally got back into the swing of sewing the other night.  To start, I worked on catching up on the Radiant Star BOM.  I think we're up to block 9, but I just got to finishing block 6.  Progress is progress though.

I love these blocks.  I think it's fair to say that I really love Carol Doak's patterns and I love to paper piece.

Here are the first six blocks.  Half way done!  I love how using one line of fabric for the entire quilt pulls everything together even though the blocks are all different.  

Radiant Star BOM - Block 5

Last weekend I also finished block 5 of Carol Doak's Radiant Star BOM from her Yahoo Group.  I really love how this star turned out.

My goal for this block was to incorporate more brown into this one.  I think it turned out cute.

Here are the first 5 blocks.

Seeing all of the blocks together makes me glad that I decided to use one fat quarter bundle for the color cohesion.  I still haven't made any of the connector blocks that will go in between each of these blocks.  I'm not sure when I'll get to those.  Right now it's not a big priority for me.

Radiant Star BOM - Block 3

Last night I finished making block 3 of the Carol Doak Simply Radiant Star BOM.

I love the blue squares in this block.  I think this came out cute.

Here are all three blocks together.  I really like how they look all together.  I'm using a fat quarter bundle of Blush for the entire quilt.

And I leave you with some of the goodies that I got at the Lowell Quilt Festival last weekend.  I got a lot of great stuff on sale.

Radiant Star BOM - Block 2, Take 2

So after the size issue with the second block in Carol Doak's Simply Radiant Star BOM, I re-did the second block.  Since I was re-doing it, I decided to change up the color placement and I like it much better. I still think it looks more like a flower though.

And here are the first two blocks together...

Now to work on block 3 which was just put out a few days ago.

Radiant Star BOM - Block 2

I finished the second block of Carol Doak's Radiant Star BOM tonight.  Unfortunately, the block ended up finishing 1/2" larger than it was supposed to.  I'm not quite sure how that happened since I printed it out the same way that I always print off my paper pieced patterns, but it looks like I'll have to re-do this one.  I'm not too devastated that I have to re-do it since I'm not crazy about the dark red on the outside.  I think next time I'm going to put the baby blue on the outside and the brown on the inside.

And here are both the blocks together.  I'm not that crazy about the second block since it's not very star like and is more flower like in my opinion.  You can see the size difference in the photo too.

And I leave you with a cute picture of the new kitten that we have officially named Misty.

September Scenic BOM

I have finished the 12th and final BOM in the Carol Doak Scenic BOM from her Yahoo group!!!  It's a schoolhouse for September.  I'm probably going to attach a bell or something in the top of the roof once I have the top all together.

I forgot to take a picture of all 12 blocks.  I'll have to do that soon. 

I'm going to sash in between each block with three small strips of fabric that will end up being 1/2" thick each strip with a nine patch in each corner of opposite colors.  It's going to be green and white.  You'll see soon enough.  I have the green all cut, I just need to cut the white so I can start assembling it. 

Fire & Ice Top Completed

After a hiatus from quilting after being hit by the dreaded H1N1 virus, I was finally able to get back into my quilting room this weekend and finish the Fire & Ice top that I asked your opinions on earlier this month on the border.  100% of the people I asked, both online and with people that I asked in person, that I should extend the inner border to accentuate the corner squares.  Without further adieu, here it is:

It's not the best picture since it was taken last night at 10:30pm, but you get the idea.  The lime green isn't as bright in person as it looks in the picture too.   Most of the fabric is from the Jacobean Arbor line from Timeless Treasure and Mark Lipinski's Elements line if you were wondering.

Now to come up with a real name for the quilt.  Fire & Ice was the name of the pattern and Carol Doak's quilt that she made for the pattern/class.  I don't think I want to use the same name, so any suggestions? 

I'm Back - Opinions Wanted

Yay, I'm back in the blogging world!  My wonderful DH finally found my camera charger, so I can finally post pictures of my projects.  Now I can post update pics of everything I've been working on.  Here's the progress on my Fire & Ice quilt from the Carol Doak class I started at the Lowell Quilt Festival in August.

Here's where I could use your opinion... Do you like how extending the inner border out into the border to showcase the corner stars or do you prefer to just have the corner stars next to the border?  After photographing it, I think I'm leaning in one direction, but I'm not going to say which one, as I want some other opinions.  I've had this up on my design wall for a few weeks now and I haven't been able to make a decision. Here are close ups of both option.

To give an idea of size, those corner squares are a total of 6 1/2" square, so some of those pieces are really small.  

Thoughts???  

I'll post more later on with more of my recent work that I haven't been able to post about.  

KK's Fire & Ice Quilt

I was really looking forward to quilting a bit last week when i got home from vacation, but unfortunately, as a result of our delays resulting in our 3am arrival at home Monday instead of 9:30pm Sunday, I came down with a bad cold in which I was bed ridden for a good portion of last week. You know you're really sick when you can't even bother getting out of bed and doing a little quilting. I had a fever for a couple of days and everything. Yuck.

The good news is that I'm feeling better now, so hopefully I'll be able to work on a few things this week. I really want to work on getting some of my quilt tops quilted and finished. I just have so many that I need to focus on finishing and I need to stop starting so many projects with so many unfinished ones still hanging around.

Here are a few pics of KK's Fire & Ice quilt from our Carol Doak class at the Lowell Quilt Fest last month.



Here's what she had to say about it... "This poor quilt started at one thing (with the lovely fabrics I bought in Maryland), morphed into something else because of the inner border fabric I picked out, and then morphed again because that inner border fabric looked nasty. So this is what I ended up with. I think it is pretty cool (or hot, with all the yellows and reds). The backing will be green. I thought it needed something quiet on the back. I actually like it a lot, even if it wasn't what I planned to create."

Fire and Ice Class Yesterday

Yesterday was the Fire and Ice class with Carol Doak at the Lowell Quilt Festival.  I took the class with my aunt, KK, and co-worker, Lynn.  We all really enjoyed it.  Even though KK and I had paper pieced before, it was fun taking the class because we learned some tips of the trade from Carol to improve our accuracy and speed.  

Here's my work-in-progress block.  It's coming together.  

This is Carol posing with the quilt she made using her 300 block book (I don't remember the exact name off the top of my head and I'm too lazy to double check right now.)  She jokingly referred to it as her "Dear Carol" quilt since it contains ever block in the 300 block book.  

Here's Carol showing the class how to attach several squares together to form your block perfectly, or as we said in class yesterday... "puuuur-fect" 

And here it is... a photo of my finished block.  I love it!!!  I probably should have taken a photo of it on point since that's how it's going to be in the quilt, but you get the idea.  Just tilt your head a little if you really want to get a feel for it on point.  ;o)  I absolutely love the colors here. I can't wait to see how it comes out. 

In this photo, you can see the colors in the little dots in the background fabric.  You can really see how the colors used in the quilt really go well with the colors in the background.  

Here's KK holding her finished block.  It's made of batiks and I think it's going to come out awesome!!!

And here's a close-up of KK's finished block.  

Fire and Ice Mariner's Compass Star Class

I just received my confirmation email from the Lowell Quilt Festival to take the Fire and Ice Mariner's Compass Star class with Carol Doak in August (image of the quilt we'll make below - image from Lowell Quilt Festival website). YAY!!! I'm so excited for it.

My aunt, KK, and a co-worker of mine, Lynn will be taking this class together. I don't know if I'm going to make it until August. It seems like so far away. How am I going to hold out making this until then. I think I'm going to TRY and wait to pick out my fabric for this until a little closer to the event. "Try" is the key word there. I'm really trying to cut back on my spending because DH and I are looking at houses and we're really trying to build our savings to really build a nest egg in case anything happens.

Whenever I hear "Fire and Ice," I automatically think of the Robert Frost Poem:

Some say the world will end in fire;

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To know that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

I've been quiet lately because I've been battling a cold. Yuck. I haven't been sick all winter, so it was about time I got sick. Plus, we've had some really weird weather around here where it's nice one day and snowing the next. I don't think that has helped me. Plus, last weekend a bunch of friends and I went down to Mohegan Sun for a girls night out and spent the night down there. We had a blast.

2009 Quilting Goals and Scenic BOM Series

I really didn't get to quilt as much as I would have liked to in 2008 because most of my free time was spent planning and doing a lot of DIY projects for our wedding last year.  Now that the wedding is behind us I can go back to my quilting.  I have set several goals for myself for 2009.  Here they are:

1. Machine quilt and finish all my unfinished quilt tops
2. Do all the Carol Doak Yahoo Group Scenic Block of the Months (more about this below)
3. Make a quilt for my mom (she's been asking for one for a while)
4. Teach my mom to quilt (she's been wanting to join us for a little while now and it's about time we get her going...)
5. Use as many fabrics and patterns from my stash as possible
6. Spend more attention to color tones and values and how I use them in my quilts
7. Finish our wedding guest book (we had people sign quilt squares instead of the traditional guest book)
8. Name and Label all of my quilts (I know, I know... this is something I should be doing anyway)

Anyways, I started working on the scenic BOM series today. I've never done a block of the month series before and I thought it would be fun to participate in one.  I've decided to do the Scenic BOM series being done in the Carol Doak Yahoo group.  It was started in October, but I'll catch up with it.  I did the January block in about 20 minutes, so I'm sure I'll be able to do the others relatively quickly.  I really enjoy paper piecing.  It's super easy and helps you get an accurate block. The most difficult part was actually choosing the fabric.  Here's a picture of it.  It's a snow covered mountain with a brook babbling through it if you couldn't tell!

I also finished piecing all the blocks of the bright quilt I was making in the previous quilts.  I really think it's a little too fat and could use a little more length.  I think I'm going to add an inner border of the swirl fabric and then add some of the four-patches in a row on the top and bottom to add more length.  I think it will look nice and will be something different that I haven't done before.  Here's the completed, pieced top.