Running with Scissors...

Sometimes the fun I have with sewing just makes me smile inside and out...

Who'd have thought a pair of scissors could be this much fun?

Paper piecing along with Kristy @QuietPlay's "And-Sew-On BOM" This pattern is free till the end of April.
May's block is not too far away either.
My January and February blocks are here...March is still on the cutting board...oops!

thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

Party Time…

Well Hello…it’s been a while…but for good reasons…

There’s been a 21st birthday party here for this little fellow…

Preparation for a 16th birthday party for this little lady…

Though I know the answer, I still keep asking “where did all those years go?”

As the children grow up, the theory is that I will have more time to do what I would like to do…sadly it is still just a theory…big ones are hard work too!

All is not completely lost though, the sanity saver, and friendship builder, that is the GWSMQG Sunday Sewalong, happens once a month. My sewing machine gets dragged along to get a bit of a run! One day I will have something finished to show!!
In the mean time, here is the paper piecing I have been partying along with:

and a whole lot of partying with these….

This is the quilt for the 21st…it’s alright I’m only keeping to my tradition of having these late for my own children…

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So I don’t run out of things to do I have joined up for:

* 2 Flickr swaps – The DS Doll Quilt Swap and Modern Scrappy Bits Swap are both due early to mid March…I’d better get a wriggle on there and start turning up on Flickr!

* My other favourite Flickr group – Modern She Made, is opening up signups on 25 February…do you dare? DO I DARE?

* Quiet Play’s  And Sew On...BoM- the next one is an "unpicker"…I should have a competition to guess how many times I need to use the real thing to make the block…at least there is no deadline for this one.

* GWSMQG has started a challenge and the info is on their facebook page – for this one, I have till April to finish –  plenty of pondering time to work out the main colour.

Well that’s me back on the blogging wagon – till I next fall off…

thanks for taking a peek over the fence…

Queen Bee

It’s my turn to be queen of the hive over at Sew & Bee Happy.
August seemed to be so far away and now here it is staring me in the face…


What I have in store for my online quilting buddies is a bit of paper piecing.
There are many tutorials for paper piecing that go into much better detail than I am able to…
http://www.caroldoak.com/weblog/?p=928
http://artisania.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/learning-to-paper-piece/
http://www.quilterscache.com/StartQuiltingPages/startquiltingthree.html

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SNB MEMBERS:
The block that I’ve chosen is this Kaleidoscope Block (printed from my Sew Precise software). 
This first picture shows the general colour scheme.
The block can be scrappy, just keep within the general colour scheme of

Light blue, mid blue, light grey and dark grey.

Mosiac of the Kaleidoscope quilt block

Here is the link for the pattern:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4rAKxGHRX39MS1HdC00VTV4TFk


You will need to Download the file to get it to print at the right size. These are the steps:

1. The above link will take you to a page that is headed “KaleidoscopeUpload for SBH”
2. Click on “File” and a dropdown menu will appear.
3. Near the bottom of the list, click on “download”
4. Print the page 4 times. Paper from your printer is fine.
5. The side of triangle ‘5’ on unit “G” should measure very close to 3.5” (don’t worry if it is barely under or over…only worry if it’s closer to 3.25” or 3.75”…which hopefully it won’t be!)

I’ve only given you the pattern for two of the wedges because it would have meant joining several smaller pieces to make the other wedges (and I wouldn't put myself through that - yet alone you lovely ladies!). Just make 4 of each wedges as shown below – one is labelled Unit G (made up of 5 triangles and the other has no label (but when I printed it off I hand wrote "4 UNIT WEDGE" on it) and consists of 4 triangles.

Cut out each wedge just past the dotted line (seam allowance) – don’t cut the solid line – that’s your sewing line!

SEWING THE PIECES
Pretend the paper is like a piece of fabric – the right side of the paper is the writing side and the wrong side is the blank side.
Place the first colour – labelled ‘1’ behind the paper, so that the wrong side of the paper and the wrong side of the fabric are together.
I use repositionable glue to hold it in place…it’s ok to iron over because it doesn't stick to the fabric and when you eventually tear the paper away, the glue goes too! -  I just don’t put it near the stitching lines in case it gums up the needle.

Take fabric “2” and put it right sides together with piece “1”
In this picture the medium blue is fabric ‘1’ and the dark grey is fabric ‘2’

Sew with a short stitch and a sharp needle (a jeans needle is good) on the paper side, following the solid stitching line, marked between piece “2” & “3”. Do a back stitch at the beginning and end of each line.

If you want some help working out where the seam line is put pins through the corners. Where they come through you can see there is enough fabric left for a good 1/4” seam allowance. Another trick some quilters use, is to hold the it all up to the light, so you can see if there is the proper seam allowance.

When you’ve finished the first seam, fold the paper out of the way, run your nail along the stitching line to help perforate the paper, but don’t remove it till after the entire block is sewn.

Take your ruler and trim the seam to 1/4”… this ruler I have has a fabulous 3/16” mark which is a touch smaller and neater than the1/4” – but go with what you’ve got.

Just follow the above steps for adding pieces 3 and 4 to the "4 triangle" wedges and pieces 1 to 5 for the "G - 5 triangle" wedges.
Here are the first two that I’ve made, one of each of the wedges.

I’ll put up the finished block in the next few days.


One of the reasons it's taken so long to get this going is that the first colour scheme I went with looked so "blah", that I had to can the whole thing and start again...much happier now!


Thanks to all the Sew & Bee Happy members and I'll look forward to seeing your lovely scrappy creations in the coming month.

thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

A First

Here is the first 'mug rug' I've made -(not sure I can cope with the name - it sounds a bit twee to me, but I do really like the final product).
I paper pieced the tree using this pattern that I have mentioned in a previous post...

 Here it is all packed up and ready to go to it's new owner...

thanks for taking a peek over the fence...

Resolving one Resolution

That idea floating about in my head with the paisley fabrics might just have floated out into the real world. I have something on paper with the help of Quilt Design Wizard (this is the baby program to EQsixtyzillion and has been great for a baby quilter!).

At first was simply going to do colourwash squares to let the 'fabric do the talking'...but that just didn't seem right - with all those beautiful, whimsical, colourful, gorgeous patterns and designs. So I am going all out with a medallion quilt that will include a Mariners Compass, log cabin blocks, pieced hearts and square-in -a-square blocks. I can't even show the full design because QDW doesn't actually have the capabilities to show it properly, so the design is a mix of on-paper and on-computer mish mash. I do know the NUMBERS add up though!.

Now to master the finer points of paper piecing! (Didn't I mention that there would be paper piecing, template and rotary cutting as well as inset seams?)

Can you believe that I have done this much already?

The photos show one half and what the light/dark blue point looks like and the lt/dk pink points will look like when put together (this is one quarter of the block). Toooooooo excited for words.

It took a while to find a 'compass' that I both, liked the look of and that was the right size. (I knew MATH  would come in handy for resizing the printout - he has even taken to calling himself the in-house IT guy!). I have some patterns in books and magazines, but either all the points were not the right length, too skinny, too fat, didn't go to the edge of the compass, had a circle in the middle etc - in short were NOT what I had in my head. In the end I settled on the Bear Paw one and have just adjusted it to square it off, rather than the separate 'template A'. (If you hear a scream from the vicinity of quilary-land you will know I stuffed up somewhere...).

For some Mariners Compass goodness try looking here at Quilted with Love or here at Bear Paw Productions.

This should be a piece of cake if I pin carefully, sew in the correct sequence, sew along the marked lines, finger press the folded fabric, keep the loose fabric out of the way, match points and remember to trim the seams before going onto the next piece.

                                          

Yeah, paper pieceing and I can be good friends for a while yet (*maniacally crossing fingers*).

Thanks for taking a peek over the fence...