Queen Sized Mistake(s)

So….. months ago I started a new queen sized quilt for my bed.  It’s been years since I’ve made myself a new bed quilt.  Years I tell you!  Six years to be exact.

I got everything cut and started chain piecing everything.  Things were really humming along – I was so productive!  Well, I moved on to step 2 of chain piecing and THEN realized that I had cut all of the background pieces wrong.  All 144 of them.  Those were the 144 pieces I chain pieced in step 1.  Ug.  Out of pure frustration, I put everything back into the storage bin and set it aside.  I couldn’t bring myself to even look at it for several weeks.

Last week I pulled the project back out of the closet, determined to finish.  So then I had a dilemma.  Do I unpick 144 seams?  Or do I use those 144 mistakes on another project and start this one over? 

To save my sanity, I started over.  Here’s the new  rectangles ready to be chain pieced to the CORRECT size of background strips. 

The problem is fixed now and once again, things are moving along nicely!  Lesson learned: Everyone makes mistakes and (yes, I know, I know) measure twice, cut once.

Summer Leaves Pillow Tutorial

Remember this pillow?  Well I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  So I made one for myself. 

She looks right at home, doesn’t she?

This pillow gives you a great excuse to pull out your scrap bins and dig through them.

  And guess what?  I have a tutorial for making this pillow up over on the Therm O Web blog!  I’m already planning on making another one of these pillows in the fall using some lovely fall-ish colors. 

The Sew Together Sewalong

Have you heard about this fantastic thing called the Sew Together Bag?  This bag has been on my to-do list for months now, and when I saw that Heather from The Quilt Barn was doing a sewalong I knew this would be just the kick in the pants that I needed! 

So I joined in, and bought my pattern and zippers that afternoon.

Then came the hard part – deciding which fabrics to use for the main bag and the linings.  Let’s just say that I made a big mess of my closet as I dug around to find the fabrics to use. 

But it’s okay because the cleaning fairy is going to show up any minute now to tidy up for me. 

So this is what I decided on – I think.

And this afternoon I started on Day 1 of the sewalong.  I’m a few days behind, but it’s one of those things that you can join at any time.  That means that YOU can join in today and make yourself one of these awesome Sew Together Bags.  You know you want to.

You can get the pattern here.  I recommend buying your zippers from Zipit on Etsy.  Great prices, fast shipping and an amazing selection of colors and sizes. 

Being the overly practical girl that I am, I just chose very neutral zippers.  Boring ol’ white, gray and vanilla.  But check out this card – these are the gorgeous colors of zippers that Zipit offers.  Now I’m kicking myself for not choosing something more fun like “Monster Snot Green” or “Mango Smoothie”. 

Need more motivation to join the sewalong?  Check out the Flickr group to see the progress of some of the other sewalong participants.   

I’m going to admit right now that I’m most likely going to be making several of these bags.  It’s just too tempting when I see the pretty bags that everyone’s making!  Are you sewing along?

Vintage Verona hourglass quilt

Happy St. Patrick’s Day friends!  Hope you’re wearing green today.  I know I am.  There’s plenty of little pinching fingers around here ready to catch anyone NOT wearing their green!  As it so happens, even the quilt I’m sharing with you today has green in it.  How ‘bout that! 

Today I have a tutorial on the Riley Blake Cutting Corners College blog for this fun Vintage Verona Hourglass quilt. 

And as promised, a free printable version of the pattern as well!  You can find it here.

When I was adding the borders to this quilt, I felt it needed a little bit more navy to help frame center portion of the quilt.  So I decided to add a flange.  It’s quick and easy and I love the way it looks.  Want to know how to do it?

First, you’ll need to measure the length and width of your quilt top.  You will need to cut enough strips to go around the outer edge of the quilt.  For this Vintage Verona Hourglass quilt you’ll need at least 1/6 yard.  Remove the selvage and then cut 6 strips that are 1” x width of fabric. 

 

Now we’re going to sew those strips end to end but we don’t want to add bulk along that border so let’s join them with a diagonal seam.  Fold one end down to make a little 45 degree crease (just finger press – no need for an iron!)  Now sew along that line to join the two strips.

It will look like this – pretty!

Once all of your strips are joined, trim the excess fabric behind each seam.

Now head to the ironing board.  Press this long strip in half lengthwise (wrong sides together) just like you do when you’re making binding.

Time to sew the flange to the quilt top.  I like to add the flange to the sides of the quilt first and then the top and bottom. 

Start at the top right corner of the quilt.  Place the flange, raw edge facing out and lining up with the raw edge of the quilt.  That nice, folded edge of the flange should be facing in towards the middle of the quilt top.  Stitch, using about an 1/8” seam.  (If you were to use a 1/4” seam here, your stitching may show once you add the border.)

Continue stitching down the side of the quilt and backstitch when you get to the bottom corner.  Simply trim the flange even with the bottom edge of the quilt.  Then repeat for the other side of the quilt.

Now we’ll add the flange to the top and bottom of the quilt top.  Line up the starting edge of the flange like you did for the sides of the quilt.  The ends will overlap here like this:

Continue stitching along until you come to the next corner.  Trim the flange like you did before.  Your finished corners will look something like this:

Now repeat until all four sides of the quilt have the flange attached.

Now just as an FYI, you can add a flange to the inside of a border (like I’m showing here) or you can add it to the inside of a quilt binding.  Also cool.  If this flange were going to be inside of a binding, you would follow the steps above, and then add your binding as you do normally. 

For us, we will follow the instructions on the pattern to add the quilt borders.  Consider the flange just a part of the quilt top.

 

Sew the border on as you would normally do, using a 1/4” seam.

Continue adding borders, following the pattern instructions.  The flange (pre-pressing) will look like this:

Give the quilt top a nice press, especially right along that edge between the flange and the border:

And your quilt top is ready for quilting!

I love that little extra detail that the flange adds to a quilt!  I see more flanges in my future!

I’ve received a number of questions from this post about sewing equilateral triangles.  So this week I’ll have a quick project to show you that uses equilaterals.  For those of you that are new to Eq. triangles it will be a great way to get your feet wet without committing to a large, time (and money) consuming project! 

Happy sewing!

Thankful for Doors

I love that my sewing room as a door on it.  A locking door.  I haven’t always had a room to myself.  One with a door. 

Sometimes I use the door for heating purposes.  In the wintertime I know I can close my door and turn on the iron and within 10 minutes or so my room is toasty warm and ready for working.

My sewing room door also has a trusty lock.  On occasion Santa has had to hide a few things here and there.  And during the rest of the year I sometimes hide other goodies in my room.  For instance, right now I have a stash of those delicious mini Cadbury Creme Eggs that only appear one special time each year.  Shhh! Don’t tell my boys!

And sometimes I love my sewing room door because I can be in the middle of a project, walk away and close the door.  And I know that my project will stay just as it is for days and days if need be.

Then there’s days that I have to  lock myself in my room so that I can get my work done!  That was what had to happen a couple of evenings this week. But I had an amazingly productive week!  I’ll see you on Monday when I’ll be sharing a new quilt and a free pattern.  Have a wonderful Sunday everyone and thanks for being such great readers!

Sprouts Table Runners

Well, I think I can safely say that it’s springtime here in Utah.  My beloved lilac bush has buds, our grass is turning green and we are all spending a lot more time outside these days!

I’ve pulled out my spring door wreath and my spring table runner to help things feel more springy around the house. 

And of course my butterflies are still hanging out on my bookcase-

By the way, do you follow the Craftsy blog?  You should!  Recently my Sprouts Table Runner pattern made an appearance there along with some other really great leaf-themed patterns.  There was also a recent post about 10 great Spring inspired table runner patterns.  All great ideas for when your dining table needs a new Spring look.

The Sprouts Table Runner & Topper pattern is just $5 and is available in my Craftsy shop, my pattern shop and in my Etsy shop.  The pattern has instructions for three sizes of runner and is a quick project.  Really!  It uses raw edge applique and is a great excuse to dig through your scrap bins.

Right now I have the longer (blue) one on my table but I’m thinking of making a circular topper using the coral scraps from these blocks.  Wouldn’t that be pretty? 

Well, happy Friday everyone and I hope you can find a little time to sew today! 

Equilaterals

I have (strangely enough) pretty clear memories of my first geometry lessons waaaay back in 5th grade.  I remember my teacher using an overhead projector and teaching us all about angles.  Acute.  Obtuse.  Right.  Then we learned about triangles.  Isosceles.  Scalene.  And my favorite – equilateral.  There’s just something so NICE about an equilateral triangle.

I started this quilt last fall at The Sewing Summit.  I worked on it very slowly over the next couple of months.  It just wasn’t my favorite thing to work on.  It started to feel like the never-ending quilt.  You know that type of quilt, right? 

Finally I finished the top, quilted it and then all it needed was binding.  I took it with me to Quilt Bliss in January and finished the binding there.  My motivation for finishing it was so that I could use it while I was way up there in the lovely, snowy mountains of Utah.  Worked like a charm- I finished it up the very first evening!

I had backed it with some gray minky and it has now become everyone’s favorite TV watching quilt.  That’s bittersweet, right?  I’m glad everyone loves it, but then I never get to use it.  Ever.  I even tried calling it “my quilt” but they’re not buying it.   

Linking up to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story!