Not a lot to report

I’ve been away over the weekend so no sewing except a little bit of handsewing in the car. I took OH and his friend to see Tenacious D for his birthday present and did the driving. Even though I went to the cinema, I still had two hours to kill in the car but the light wasn’t great for my eyes and this is why I haven’t got it to show you today.

So to keep up with Blogtoberfest, here’s a picture of the signature block for my Around the Block and Across the Pond Free Two Bee round robin. I sewed together randomy selected strips from ym scrap drawer and then trimmed it after piecing for a scrappy, wonky look. I’m hoping the other ladies will write in the white spaces and I’ll piece this into the back when the top is back with me in a few months’ time.

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Fat Quarterly Challenge

I’ve seen other people blogging about this so I think it must be safe to do so now!

I was sent a bundle of lovely brand new Katherine’s Wheel by Nel Whatmore from Fat Quarterly to make a block with. Here’s my stack…

Most people have then sewn this block into something. I must confess I haven’t… I decided to plan mine on Electric Quilt. EQ7 has a new “swath” tool which puts curves and curls of flying geese on your quilt block design. I had a few problems with printing this because I wanted to create a design where these were appliqued on. This is what I came up with…

Do you think it looks like fireworks in the sky- cos that’s what I was going for! Anyway I had to unpick from the black base fabric because when zigzag stitching the applique on, it puckered really really badly. I spent about an hour unpicking it all and then fused some interfacing on the back to stop that. Much better that time! I must confess though with all of the layers of fabric involved in the geese it was really hard to turn the fabric under before appliqueing and I really really wanted turned under applique. So I cheated and coloured in the edges where it wasn’t perfect with a black Sharpie. Result!

Here are the out takes….

Me trying to get the edges to turn under and almost succeeding! The chalk marks are there to help me place them symmetrically.

And the horrendously wrinkly first version!

How do you like this pattern?

I’ve just been having a play with Electric Quilt 7 again and come up with a paper pieced block that looks like this…

Which when made into a cushion panel will look like this- pretty!

Once I’ve sewn one up I’m thinking of submitting it to a magazine as a pattern.

But I can’t think of a name for the block! Any ideas? Stars are so hard to name!

Free Paper Piecing Pattern: Daisy Star Block

I drew this up the other day on Electric Quilt. Of course it is unfinished, so the edges will meet the side points. It’s actually quite an easy block to do and consists of four pieces. There are loads of tutorials on the internet for how to paper piece so I’m not even going to attempt to talk you through it as it would be rubbish in comparison, however I will say that to match the four main segments up after piecing the other bits, I like to keep the paper in, trim to an exact 1/4″ seam allowance along the edges to be joined, pin through the layers at the points to make sure they match and then pull out the paper before stitching them together.

For the template, just click here, it’s sized to a 6″ block but feel free to size it to whatever you like!

You will need Adobe Reader to open this file. Go ahead, make this block into quilts, bags or anything you wish, just please don’t sell my actual pattern, cos I’m letting you have it for free…

And because I haven’t shared a picture of my animals for a bit, here’s Fletcher in my sewing room…

Savvy Star block done!

This morning before I went to work I sat down and sewed the pieces of my star together. It’s not perfect by any means but it has proven how good the Electric Quilt software is at making correctly sized templates (and how rubbish I am at cutting them out)!

I’m going to be that annoying person that sends out their Bee block before anyone else has even chosen what block they want for the centre of theirs 😛

 

Savvy Star Bee Block Tutorial

So the UK Borders Agency Quilting Bee now has all the members it needs, and now I am working on my centre block. Well, sort of. I haven’t actually sewn it yet but we have a couple of weeks so I’ll probably do it on Sunday after the craft fair.

This is what I am planning on making- I’m not sure of its traditional name- and there’s bound to be one- I’m just calling it the Savvy Star for now. I’m going to go for bold colours but they may not exactly be these shades when I’m done. I’m probably going to use some baby blue Sherbet Pips dogs in the centre.

If you fancy stitching one up at the same time as me, you can find the templates here and here’s the instructions below… You could do it using freezer paper piecing if you prefer.

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1) Trace the outer lines of the pattern pieces onto card or template plastic. For a one off block you can probably get away with printing, cutting out the paper pieces and pinning to your fabric and cutting out that way. Or if you’re feeling clever you could transfer the lines straight onto your fabric.

2) Cut out all the pieces from fabric using your templates- you will need 4x A, 4x B, 4x C, 4x D, 1x E, 4x F (or invert your C template and cut four) and 4x G. That’s a total of 25 pieces.

3) Make the centre block first. Align the corner pieces (marked D) and sew into place onto E. Always use a 1/4″ seam allowance otherwise the block won’t work!

4) Next, make up triangle blocks in the same way, making four pieces with B and C sewn together and four of  F and G.

5) Sew the BC and FG blocks together to make four rectangles.

6) Next, arrange in rows, so you will need to make the top row by sewing block A to a BCFG (making sure it’s the right way round- refer to the diagram if you’re not sure) and then to another A.

7) Continue the method with the middle row and then the bottom row, then stitch the rows together to complete.

Other option… You could paper piece this together by hand by making paper templates of the inner shapes and folding and stitching fabric around them before piecing together (here’s my way of doing English Paper Piecing)

EDIT: I have now completed the block!

Block a Day: Day 2

Boring post, but it’s good to prove that I’m still on track! This one is a Rolling Pinwheel, which should have been the8th or 9th block I think, however I did a big batch of chocolates last night so I looked through to see which was going to be the quickest to piece and skipped to this one…

No disgruntled doggy today because it was raining and he didn’t fancy going out in it!

A Block a Day: Day 1

I am making a quilt for my grandparents based on the scary William Morris jelly roll a few posts ago. I say “scary” but it really isn’t anymore as it’s all cut up into the correct pieces and ready to piece together. However I have under 3 weeks to finish the top so I can get it quilted professionally in time so I’m going to have to piece like a demon as there are 12 different blocks, plus sashing plus borders to do. So my aim is to do a block a day, and maybe two extra ones over the weekend.

Here’s the “Tulip” block I did last night before bed. I pressed it this morning whilst grumpy dog looked on wanting to go for his walk…