In a Jinny Beyer Mood

Jinny Beyer is my most favorite quilt designer.  Well, to be honest, I call Jinny my quilting hero.  I admire her sense of style as well as what she does with color. 

As I've mentioned before, I belong to a small online quilting group and one of our activities this year is a Birthday Fat Quarter Swap.  We all get the opportunity to let each other know what our 'wish list' is, and this year I wished for Jinny Beyer fabrics, particularly fabrics from her Summer Lily line.  Why?  Well take a look:

Summer Lily by Jinny Beyer

I've had my eye on Jinny's Summer Lily quilt for some time.  Since I got a nice selection of fat quarters for my birthday, I can now add other fabrics to it and make this beautiful quilt. 

Summer Lily is offered as a free pattern on Jinny Beyer's website.  Jinny offers free block and quilt patterns on her web site and has them catagorized for beginner, intermediate and advanced quilters . . . so there is something for everyone!  If you are interested in making your very own Summer Lily quilt or want to browse and see what else Jinny has to offer, click HERE

I don't know when I will get the chance to start working on my Summer Lily quilt as I am scheduled for surgery on May 10th.  But, I am going to start gathering my fabrics and maybe start cutting : )

I hope your week is off to a great start and that you, too, are dreaming about making a beautiful quilt.

Until next time . . .

Debbie

Spools

I am part of a small group of quilting friends who each year decide together on a quilt pattern for a block swap.  This year we decided to make Edyta Sitar's Spools quilt.

Spools by Edyta Sitar

I really like this one because it combines applique and piecing ~ my favorite ways to make quilts.

There are 6 of us in our little swap group, and we will all be making 42 spools so each of us will get 7 from each other.  In the end, we will all have a nice, scrappy variety of spools.  So far, I've made 8 spools but just took a picture of my first two.

Edyta's pattern directions make these so easy and so much fun to sew.  She also gives great tips for fabric selection and explains what she calls her 'Rule of 5.'

1) Large print.
2) Medium print.
3) Small print.
4) Stripe.
5) Polka dots.

In addition, she tells you to add at least one batik to each spool.  I think it gives each spool interesting texture. 

I am looking forward to putting this quilt together and may start working on the applique borders so that they are ready by the time I receive my spools.

If you are interested in finding out more information about Edyta Sitar's Spools quilt and others, they are featured in her pattern book, Friendship Strips & Scraps.  Click HERE to visit Edyta's web site.

Until next time . . .

Debbie

Farmer's Wife Progress

I've been using Marti Michell's Perfect Patchwork Templates for my Farmer's Wife blocks and can't believe how much faster and easier the blocks come together.  In the past week, I've completed 8 more blocks.

Marti has generously offered her time and assistance and has put together guides to help us get our Farmer's Wife blocks finished.  I joined Marti's mailing list and each month get a new set of blocks to work on.  Since I joined the mailing list a month after it started, I am a little behind so I've just completed the February blocks.

If you've never tried Marti's templates, I highly recommend them.  They work for either hand or machine piecing and since using them my block sizes are more accurate.  I use my rotary cutter to cut several layers at a time.  All of the templates inclue the 1/4" seam allowance. 

Click HERE for information on the basic Perfect Patchwork Template sets. 

Until next time . . .

Debbie

Happy Birthday to Me!

I belong to a fat quarter birthday exchange and for the past few weeks all of the envelopes started coming in:

It took a lot of willpower not to open these early but I waited until today, my birthday. 

The first thing I wanted to do this morning while sipping my latte was to open my birthday envelopes.  What a wonderful treat.  Here's all the lovely fat quarters and birthday cards that I received:

Jinny Beyer and Kaffe Fassett are my favorite fabric designers and the bottom row is all Jinny Beyer FQs!  I got 2 Kaffe Fassett FQs.  The other FQs I got are all ones that I know I can use for various projects.  What a great way to start out my day and my week . . . I am one happy girl : )

Quilting your Quilts

I have blogged about something new my online quilting friends and I are doing in order to get our pile of quilt tops finished or quilted.  We've chosen to name this "Flimsy Friday" or "Finish it up Friday."  We try to devote each Friday for quilting either by hand or machine.

Lately, there has been some discussion about using Press 'n Seal as a stitch guide for a quilting design.  Some who have used this product say that it can be difficult to remove in the areas where you have to double stitch. 

A product that I have used and really like is the Golden Threads quilting paper.  I find that it is easy to remove after I have stitched out my design, and there are many different ways you can attach the paper to your quilt top for quilting. 

Rather than tell you all the wonderful ways to use this quilting design paper, I found this video on the Golden Threads web site.  The technique of 'dot to dot' quilting is explained, and is a great way to practice if you are a beginner.  In the demonstration they are using a long-arm machine but I use my regular domestic and it works great!



Sometimes I send my quilts out to my long-arm quilter and they always come back beautifully quilted but this can get expensive.  I am finding out that by going through the exercises described in the video and practicing regularly that my free motion quilting is improving, and I am hoping to get to the point where I am satisfied enough with it to do it on a quilt top that I have spent a lot of time working on. 

If you are interested in learning more about Golden Threads and the products they offer, click HERE to be taken to their web site.  There are other learning videos that you can view there as well.

I hope all of you have a very productive Friday getting your quilt tops quilted!

Until next time . . .

Debbie

Design Wall Monday

I thought it was time to get back to my Farmer's Wife blocks so over the weekend, I sewed and cut out more blocks.  This morning as I was playing around with them on my design wall . . . well I should say the computerized design wall . . . I wanted to try out different sashing and border options. 

The fabric I bought for the border is from the Ruby line, and I like the red floral.  Since I don't want this quilt to be too 'busy' I thought that the gray colors from the line would make good sashing and second border choices.  Actually, the fabric I will use for the second border is this one:

And for the sashing thought that this would be a good choice:

I originally purchased this one for the sashing but as I am sewing the blocks I'm thinking that it may be too much red especially with the red border . . .

but then again the gray swirl inner border will break it up a little . . . decisions, decisions!

Stay tuned . . .

Debbie