Making Progress

Well, I have been making some progress with my scrap hexagon quilt.  While looking for something else in my sewing room I found the purple and orange block.  It is a leftover from my Flower Garden quilt and fits right in.  If I remember correctly I have a few more extras.  Maybe it is time to do some cleaning....


Linking to Fabric Tuesday and WIP Wednesday.

Best Foundation Paper Piecing Class EVER is on Sale!

Carol Doak's Mastering Foundation Paper Piecing

I've got the foundations printed and fabric picked for on of February's At the Fair Mystery Quilt Blocks.  It is going to be Amazing!  Seriously, it is one of my favorites in the quilt.  It looks so complicated but comes together really simply with foundation paper piecing.  A few years ago I was terrified of foundation paper piecing.  Then I tried it and it wasn't bad at all - totally doable!

But my comfort and skill grew by leaps and bounds when I took  Carol Doak's Mastering Foundation Paper Piecing at Craftsy.  Carol is the Queen of Foundation Paper Piecing and goes over every step in detail.  And her tips for making sure all of the seams and points line up is simple yet brilliant.  She is a great teacher and I cannot recommend her class enough.

I am sure you have heard that Craftsy is having a sale this weekend on tons of their classes.  If you want to learn how to or feel more comfortable foundation paper piecing Carol Doak's Mastering Foundation Paper Piecing is the class to take.  It is worth every penny (especially at $15 off regular price!).  The sale goes through Sunday.

Have a great weekend!

**affiliate links in post**

Scrap Hexagons

I finished going through all of my small scraps (less than a fat 1/8 of a yard) and cut them all up into hexagons.  It is kind of fun to see what fabric I use the most of.  I have tons of red, pink, yellow, aqua, green and black/gray but I was surprised how little blue and orange I had.

I decided to try something different with this English piecing project.  I am making overlapping large hexagons.  The overlap will keep things interesting and will help to use up odd numbers of hexagons.  I am really liking it so far.  I don't know if there is such a thing as improvisational English paper piecing, but I think it will be a lot of fun to make up the design as I go along.  I am aiming for a lap sized quilt.

I set aside all of the strips that were too small to cut hexagons out of.  They range from 1-2.5" and are 4-42" long.  They would be perfect for a string quilt, but I don't think I am going to get to that any time soon.  So, if you would like them, leave a comment and I will send them to you.  (First come, first serve.)

Linking up to Scraptastic Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday and WIP Wednesday.

Christmas Quilt Finished...before Christmas!

 I ended up finishing this quilt before Christmas and I love it!  I love the colors and the fabrics.  I am super in love with the red polka dot flannel backing.  It is so nice to snuggle under.  It is still on our couch and I don't know that it is going anywhere soon.  (Kinda like the ribbon on the columns.)

I was planning on straight line quilting on either side of most of the seams but about 1/2 way across the first row I remembered how much I hate straight line quilting.  I feel like any wavy-ness in the line shows up a ton and I was wrestling with the quilt non-stop.  I didn't wear my quilting gloves like I normally do and wonder if that was part of the problem.  But I didn't think that I would need them with the straight lines.  Anyway, I quilted the bottom of each row 1/4 inch-ish from the seam.  

I was really frustrated with my inability to do the cool straight line quilting everyone else seems to do so easily and well, but a day later I decided that I actually liked it with less quilting.  I think sometimes we can forget how beautiful our quilts are just with the piecing.  It is nice to take a quilt "to the next level" with quilting but a quilt can be just as beautiful and enjoyed just as much with simple quilting.

     
I hope you had great holidays.  It has been bitter cold here and all of our quilts have gotten a lot of use.  But I can tell it is getting warmer because the cat meows at the door to go outside instead of me having to forcibly throw her out the door twice a day to do her business.  :)

And now that the kids are back in school there might also be more time to get down to the business of writing about some of the other things I have been working on!

What's Going On

So this afternoon after wrestling with an uncooperative computer, I sent out the first installment of the At the Fair Mystery Block of the Month.  The block on the left is my coloration and the block on the right is the coloration of the original tile block at the fair grounds.  If you would still like to sign up click on over to my Etsy shop and the first month's files will be immediately available for download.

 Earlier this month I was able to go and visit friends in New York City.  I brought some English paper piecing to work on during the flight and got one of their girls hooked on it.  We decided to go to the fabric district to look for some fabric for her to work with.  (I wanted to go anyway.)  Most of the shops carry apparel fabric (there was one street with 4 spandex stores!) but we asked in one shop if they had any remnants we could buy and the owner gave my cute little friend some fabric for free.  While wandering from shop to shop I realized that I need to sew more.  There are so many wonderful things to make and beautiful fabric (and trim!) to make them out of.

A bank facade inside the museum.  The street lamps use to stand outside the Met until the lights were updated. 

I think my favorite part of the trip (aside from just hanging out with my friends) as visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It was AMAZING!  Some of my favorite things were seeing all of the real rooms from different time periods.  The Met is immense.  I kept saying I was going to leave and then I would get sucked into "just one more exhibit".  I really liked the exhibit of mourning dresses from the 19th and early 20th century.  And I got a new quilt idea from a jade (?) piece of art found in an Egyptian tomb. 

Then I was home again just in time for Christmas.  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year's celebration!