Giveaway Day

Welcome to my blog! For those of your just stopping by, here are a few quilts I made this year. 

For Sew Mama Sew's giveaway day, I'm offering a few things up to a lucky winner!

First up is an Amy Butler Weekender pattern. When we were doing the Weekender sew-along, I accidentally bought a pattern when I already had one. You could benefit from my oops! 

Second, the winner will receive a PDF of one of my quilt patterns of their choosing. 

Finally, the winner will also receive a copy of McCall's quilting, where my Framed Up quilt is featured. 

  

And I'll also throw in a few surprise items for the winner, like some thread or zippers, or maybe even some fabric!

You have four (4) chances to win. I will announce the winner on Friday, December 13th. International entrants are welcome. If you're a no-reply blogger, please leave your email address so that I have a way of reaching you. 

1. Leave a comment on this blog telling me what your favorite quilt pattern is. (one entry).

2. Follow my blog (via Bloglovin, Google Friend Connect, email, RSS, etc.) and let me know in a comment. If you're already a follower, leave me a comment letting me know (one entry).

3. Follow me on Instagram (@aquiltingjewel) and leave me a comment letting me know. If you already follow me on Instagram, leave a comment letting me know (one entry). 

4. Like me on Facebook and leave me a comment letting me know. If you have already liked me on Facebook, let me know in a comment (one entry).

Winner - Nest Charm Pack

Thank you to all who entered the giveaway for the Nest Charm Pack. 

The winner is...

JenJohnson who said... 

Congratulations Jen. Please check your email and send me your address so I can get your charm pack out to you!

Giveaway Day: Nest Charm Pack

As part of Sew Mama Sew's giveaway day, I decided to part with some very hard to find fabric. For those who follow my blog, you might remember this top, which I still need to quilt.

I had four Tula Pink Nest charm packs that I had been hoarding for quite some time. I finally found the right pattern, slightly modified, to really showcase the fabric without having to cut it up. Fortunately for someone, this quilt top only required three charm packs, meaning I still have one left over to give away. 

Now, this is pretty hard to find these days and I've seen these for sale for 4-5 times what it originally retailed for. 

To enter, leave a comment below telling me who your favorite fabric designer is. 

Followers of my blog are eligible for a second entry, just leave a second comment telling me you're a follower. If you're not a follower, have a look around and stay a while. Make sure you check out the details for "Quilts for Boston" - an effort my guild, the Boston MQG is putting on to help those affected by the bombing and subsequent events. 

If you are a no-reply blogger, please make sure I have a way of contacting you if you win by leaving your email address in your comment. 

I will pick a winner on Friday, May 10th. 

Good luck!

QuiltCon Giveaway

I've posted quite a bit about QuiltCon the past couple of weeks.  One thing I didn't mention was all of the swag I managed to come away with.  I'd like to share some of that swag with my readers through a giveaway.

First, you need to have a bag to put all of the goodies in.

Now to fill that bag.  You've got several fat quarters, a mini charm pack, two quilt labels, a couple of stickers, a seam ripper, a hexi kit and a couple of buttons.

Of course, I might throw in a few surprises a well, like these half yard cuts of Art Gallery fabric, or some zippers.

To enter and win your very own QuiltCon goodie bag, just follow these steps:
1. Comment on my blog letting me know what your favorite color combination is right now.  If you are a no-reply commenter, please leave a way for me to reach you.
2. For an additional entry, let me know you're a follower of my blog.

I will announce a winner on Monday, March 11th. 

And the Envelope Please...

The winner of the Quilter's Way giveaway of the Echo fat quarter bundle is...

Karyli who said...

I really don't think I could live without my sewing machine. Is that too obvious? It's true!
Thanks for the give away!

 Congratulations Karyli.  You have an email waiting for you.  Please send me your address and your fat quarter bundle will be shipped out to you.

Thanks again to everyone who entered the contest.

Quilters Way Blog Tour Day 2

Today is my day in the Quilter's Way Blog Tour.  If you haven't already checked out Alice's review, hop on over to her blog and don't forget to check out the rest of the blog posts this week.  Here's the schedule.

Yesterday

alidiza

Today

A Quilting Jewel

Tomorrow

Salt Marsh Designs

Thursday

 Pippa Patchwork

Friday

Dodging the Butterfly

I've mentioned it before, but Quilter's Way is one of my favorite quilt stores.  It's where I took my first quilting class and how I became addicted to quilting.  It was close to my college and always had some more fun, modern fabrics.  I've been a regular there for about 7 years now.. Now, Quilter's Way has launched a quilt kit designer tool.

Review
Here's how the tool works:

To start, select a kit design.  Right now you have a choice of 10 quilts.  For this review, I'm going to make the Twisting Again quilt kit. 

When you select your kit, it appears initially in the pre-selected fabrics that the kit template comes in.  This is where you have fun in designing your kit.  Begin selecting fabrics for each design element.

Here you can see that I'm auditioning fabrics for the quilt that I'm designing.  Some of the initial colors are still there as I add and remove fabrics.

On the right hand side is a drop menu that allows you to select different fabric lines. When you select a fabric line the fabrics available in that line appear to the left.  You just drag the fabric that you like down to the fabric position you choose.  As you change fabrics, you'll see the price of your kit change based on the price of the fabrics you choose.  For example, if you use all solids, your kit will probably cost less than if you select all designer cottons.

Here I'm pretty happy with how my quilt kit looks.  As you can see with this screenshot, you can see where the fabrics are placed in the quilt below the fabric swatch. As you change each swatch you'll see the fabric change in the kit in the upper left and below the swatch.

At any time you can enlarge the quilt to see a close up.  The quality is a bit grainy, but you have a good idea of what the quilt looks like.  I like it!  I think this will be my final quilt kit.

I decided to make another quilt to keep playing around.  Here's a second quilt kit that I designed using all solids this time.

What I like about the tool:

• You can see what the quilt looks like with the fabrics you select.  
• I love that you can see how much the quilt kit will cost you as you go.  
• The kit designer is very intuitive to use. I really think that most everyone can use the kit designer.  If you've used EQ, this tool is MUCH easier to use.
• You can design a quilt kit very fast.  
• You can save your design and come back to it later on to see if you still like it or if you want to make changes
• Instead of just laying fabrics out next to each other, like you would in a store, you can get a good representation of what the quilt will look like with the actual fabrics. 

A couple of areas for improvement:

• I'd love to see additional quilt designs added to the tool.  I'm sure additional patterns will be added over time.  An added bonus would be if we could upload our own pattern and create a kit for our own quilt, but I imagine that's a ways out.
• You can't press the back button on your toolbar, you mist use the navigation in the tool. I pressed the back bar on my browser and had to start over.  It's just a matter of habit to press the back button on my browser.  User error on my end, but just be aware. 
• You need to know your fabric lines and what they're called to search through the fabric.  Luckily, I know my lines, but I know many folks who don't know the names of fabric lines and might struggle to find the right fabric.  Maybe a search feature by color would be helpful.
• I also needed to do this on my laptop and couldn't do this on my iPad because it requires flash. Not a huge deal, but it could annoy some people.

 Giveaway
Onto the giveaway.  The winner of this giveaway will win a fat quarter bundle of four fat quarters of Echo by Lotta Jansdotter provided by Quilter's Way.

To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is comment on this blog and answer the following question, "What is the one quilting tool you couldn't live without?" If you are a no-reply blogger, please leave your email address so that I have a way of contacting you if you win.


The winner will be announced on Monday, January 23rd.  Good luck!

Winners of Giveaway

First, I'd like to thank everyone for commenting.  I've discovered some great new blogs from some amazing quilters.  Everyone provided some great quilting tips.  I'll post a bunch of them coming up.

Now for what you're all waiting for.  The winners.

The winner of the first fat quarter bundle is: Peaceful Piecer who said, "I guess leader enders are my best tip .... once I got the hang of it I use this all the time."

The winner of the second fat quarter bundle is: MoeWest who said, "This fabulous tip comes from Lois Hallock, author of “Creating Your Perfect Quilting Space”.
To get the best folded stash and maximize the space available on a shelf for your fabric, use an 8 1/2" wide acrylic ruler to fold fabrics that are half-a-yard and larger. When you wrap your fabric around the width of the ruler and then fold the piece in half, the size of your folded fabric will be the same width as a fabric bolt; which will allow you to see more of the print when you look at it on the shelf. Magically, the piece is also flatter so you can stack more fabrics than with any other folding method.
For fat quarters and quarter-yard pieces, use a 4 1/2" wide acrylic ruler to wrap the fabric around, again folding the wrapped fabric in half."

And finally, the winner of the layer cake is: Lisa who said, "So many good tips have already been given! I would say remembering to change your needle and using a good machine quilting needle and a nice smooth thin thread like Aurifil 50 wt. to achieve accurate 1/4" seams!"

Congrats to all of the winners.  Please email me your mailing address so that I can send out your prizes.  Email me at jensorenson05 at gmail dot com.  

100th Post Giveaway

As I mentioned earlier, I would like to hold a giveaway for my 100th post.  I'm a bit delayed as I had ordered 2 layercakes, one for myself and one to giveaway, but only one arrived.  It took two weeks for the shop to finally respond to me and ship out the missing, but paid, for layercake.

This past year and a half blogging has been a fantastic time.  I've become so inspired from everyone else in the blog world.  It's fantastic.  I also have enjoyed all of the support I've received on all of my projects.  I truly appreciate all of the kind words that everyone has shared with me since I started blogging.

Without further adieu, here's the giveaway...

I will be giving away 2 fat quarter bundles and a layer cake.  The giveaway will be open until next Friday, July 9th.

Giveaway 1: A fat quarter bundle with more traditional fabric

Giveaway 2: Another fat quarter bundle

And, the grand prize, giveaway 3: a NEST Layercake by the fabulous Tula Pink.

Here are the rules - You may enter up to 3 times, but you must post separate comments in order to have your entries counted multiple times.

The ways you can enter:
1. Post a comment on this blog about your favorite quilting tip.
2. Follow this blog and tell me about it.
3. Blog and about this contest and post a link to where you blogged about it in the comments.

The giveaway will be open until next Friday, July 9th.  I will announce the winners next weekend.

Good luck!