Winner of Gigi’s Thimbles Prize

Oh boy the mail person was nice to me today!  I had won a little prize from Amber Johnson of A Little Bit Biased who is starting her new pattern company called Gigi’s Thimbles and today it arrived.  It was more than I thought.  She sent not one but, 4 patterns and a Bliss Layer cake!  I am so excited and can’t wait to break into them all, but first I must eat then take a shower…then the evening is mine to explore my treasures.  I love all this patterns but I think the bird house is probably my favorite at the moment and would look great done in Bliss!

I also ordered the cutest pattern from Cath’s Pennies Design.  It is a Christmas cookie pattern and hers looked so great that I ordered the whole kit.  It’ll be fun to start on something for the holidays.  These are all made from felt.  I haven’t done much with felt before so it will be fun to try something new.  Too bad I have to work the next few days at my paying job or I would just be sewing away the hours.

You must go to Cath’s blog post about this pattern to really get the true effect.  She has a plate of cookies on the mat that look so much like the real thing but are actually ornaments.  I am thinking they will be fun to put on packages.

Sew many new projects to work on…I’m a happy girl!

Ferne

Harriet Hargrave Class

Last week I took a class at my local quilt shop with Harriet Hargrave as the teacher.  Harriet has teamed up with her daughter Carrie and written a few books with more on the way.  The books are written to be use in order to teach you everything you need to know to quilt like a pro.  She starts with the very basics and teaches you to expect perfection from yourself.  Harriet believes that your seam ripper is your friend and she is right.  She had us all ripping our fabric to find the straight of grain and ironing it with lots of Faultless Spray Starch till that fabric felt almost like paper, but this lets you cut perfectly straight pieces. 

Harriet had lots of products that she highly recommends such as Faultless Spray starch (she converted a lot of us who loved Best Press), Presencia Thread - a thinner, but stronger thread than most on the market, and Perkins Dry Goods Perfect Piecing Seam Guide – to find your perfect 1/4 inch then mark it on your machine.  She also had her favorite rulers and irons to recommend and they were all available for us to use.  I can see why she recommends the products she does because they work and I will be changing over to some of them as I need to replace things I already have. 

This class was tough and maybe not as much fun as some classes, but I did get my money’s worth in knowledge.  I own 2 of Harriet and Carrie’s Quilters Academy books and Harriet’s Heirloom Quilting book and look forward to the release of her future books.  Thanks to JJ’s Log Cabin for making this class available – it seems that JJ and Harriet are personal friends.  JJ’s new partner got together with her neighbor and provided the most amazing lunches and snacks for us all complete with tabl es covered with table clothes and even recipes of our favorite snacks!  It was a great 2 day class!  Here is the resulting small quilt that I am finishing piecing.  

One thing I learned about myself taking this class is that I am a slower quilter than most in the class, but I do enjoy the process of piecing and probably do better at home without all the commotion of a classroom and waiting for irons and rulers.  I also learned that just when you thought you knew a lot you find you know not so much, but quilters love to share their tips and techniques, all you have to do is ask.

Keep learning and sharing your knowledge in all that you do!

Ferne

Dancing Dragonflies

  I have been studying the dragonfly blocks in the the book Dancing Dragonflies by Sue Beevers.  In this book Sue uses one block in many ways and gives you lots of ideas of just how many different ways you can put together this block to get different effects.  Sue talks about how this block could be put together using paper piecing or templates.  She does not give you the exact measurements or directions on exactly how to put the blocks together so I spent a lot of time with graph paper and thinking through ways to simplify the piecing using half square triangles and strip piecing and came up with a few ideas of my own which is what I think her book is for, to get you thinking and creating your own dragonfly block methods. 

The blocks I came up with measured 6 1/2 inches on my first one and 12 inches on my second one.  After doing the first one I knew I would need it to be bigger and simpler  if I were going to make more.   Sewing together 1” squares is a little difficult, but sure looks great.  I was able to get a lot more blending going on with the colors though to create a very pretty dragonfly.  It also kind of looks like a flower.  This block is made up of 3 different blocks and the wing is repeated for the 4th block.  There is the head, wing and body.  As I studied the wing block I could see that a wing is actually similar to the head but cut in half and then a half square triangle is added in the background fabric.  When I tried to make the block this way though it didn’t work.  Looks simple, but it took a lot of thinking and math to make it all work.  So it was a fun challenge and looking through my notes I am not sure I could tell anyone how I did it or even come with it again.

The 12 inch block was much simpler and I used a lot of strip piecing.  If I were going to make several blocks I would do it this way.  I have to go through my notes though and fine tune them and make some adjustments in measurements so I can do it all again.  I also think that I have the body too thick.  I used a 1 1/2 in wide strip and I think I would stick to a 1 inch strip, dragonflies do have skinny bodies. 

Maybe I can work this in with some butterfly blocks and make a fun throw or pillow tops.

 

Challenge yourself, it’s good brain exercise!

~Ferne

My Machine is Smokin’

  It was 110 degrees today outside and  just as hot inside.  No really, the air conditioner was on and it was very comfortable so I was cutting and piecing a very special project for my Son and his future wife and my machine was on fire.

I have been collecting fabrics for months in fall colors since the wedding is on Halloween I even have some fun Halloween prints.  I have played with so many possibilities on EQ6 that my head was spinning, but last week I went on a trip to spend some time with my sister and her baby boys and we took a trip to a quilt store that was making a change in ownership so they were clearing out a lot of merchandise.  One of their sales was 50% off all books, so I loaded up!  What fun I had!  The boys were very patient with me and well behaved and we all had a great time.  They are precious and my sister is an amazing Mom.  I only wish we could have had our babies together because I could have learned a lot from her.  I don’t know if you can read the tee shirt on Brody, the top picture, but it says “SAVE Energy Take a Nap”, words to live by for sure!

I love when you are working on a project and all the pieces just come together beautifully and fit so perfectly like it was meant to be.  Well, that is how this project is going so far.  Once I decided on a pattern I found in one of the books I bought and it all made sense.  I have been seeing this on a lot of  blogs lately also.  It is a double hour glass, and I was able to use the fabrics I had been collecting in such fun and interesting combinations and I think it will all look great with a 2 inch black border.  Next to decide on the outer border and the backing, but for now I am really liking my progress.

When it gets hot, get quilting!

Ferne

Charming Butterfly Blocks

I have been seeing a lot of butterfly blocks popping up on the internet.  They are simple to make and don’t require much accuracy to get great results.  I kept thinking though that they would be a great way to use some charm packs.  Charm packs are 5 inch square samples of fabrics.  I had to refigure the measurements though to make it work and this is what I came up with:

Wings:  Cut the charm square in half

Background:  Cut 1 1/2” Strips from a charm square or 1 1/2” X 5” from a background fabric

Body:  Cut 1” X 5” strips I used a brown fabric all the same for each butterfly.

• Mark the wings at 3/4” from the top for the section near the body and 1/4” from the top.  This is where you will put the background strip to sew.  Lay the background strip on the wing and sew 1/4” from edge.  Be sure you have extra fabric hanging over each end for full coverage.
• Fold background fabric back and iron in place.
• Square up the wings to 2 1/2” X 5” .  I turned the piece upside down to square it up and I didn’t cut the extra backing off because it was so small and it helped with the squaring up.
• 
• Sew wings to body and iron towards the body. 

Voila!  a 5” Butterfly block ~ Charming!   I sewed 4 together and it made a 9 1/2” block.  Not sure what I will do with this but, I have lots more charm squares to play with and see what happens…

Be sure to check out what some other bloggers are saying about this fun block:

Pam Kitty Morning  - She made it even smaller than mine

Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts – She posted a tutorial on this that might be easier to understand than what I just did.

Choccybangles  - summer project

and I’m sure there are some I missed and more to come!

Let’s see some more beautiful butterflies flitting around out there in blogland of all sizes.

Ferne