On 3 August Nicole Calver (of Snips Snippets) and I will be kicking off the Jen Kingwell’s Gypsy Wife Quilt Sew-along. Jen...

megan, of jaffa quilts, and i are co-hosting a 2016 quilt along for jen kingwell's gypsy wife quilt pattern. this is the home page for the project where you can find the schedule and other information links. i will keep it updated as the quilt along progresses. our quilt along officially kicks off in february 2016, but feel free to join in whenever you'd like. we hope you join us on this journey! pattern scources you can purchase the pattern at these locations: amazon etsy fat quarter shop amitie (australia) rainbow patchwork (aus) jones and vandermeer running chicken (uk) if you have an original pattern, you will need the (slight) corrections, available here. fabric selection january is for ordering the pattern and collecting fabrics. my post about fabric is here and megan's is here. you can find other participant's pulls on instagram at the hashtag #GWqal2016FabricPull. schedule a detailed post about the month's section construction, blocks, and strip measurements will be posted on the first of each month. once the month has posted, you can click on it to see the post for the month. here is a quick overview of what each month entails: january - get pattern and collect fabrics *if you want to get started asap, we suggest you cut the strips or begin section 1 now february - section 1: 5 blocks (1 sm, 2 md, 3 lg); 19 strips (2 - 1") megan's post, including tips for partial seams section one link party ***originally, we were going to start in march. you can still do this. you will just need to do sections 1 & 2 in march, or you can break up section 2 over march and april. march - section two: 6 blocks (2 sm, 1 md, 3 lg); 6 strips (2 - 1") megan's post, with tutorial on pershing block tutorial on old maid's puzzle block section two link party april - sections three and four: 7 blocks (2 sm, 1 md, 4 lg); 10 strips megan's thoughts on the colour wheel block tips for the hst block megan's partial seam instructions for section joining may - section five: 6 blocks (3 sm, 3 lg); 9 strips (2 - 1") megan's crazy anne tutorial june - section six: 21 blocks (13 sm, 5 md, 3 lg); 25 strips (2 - 1") this is a big one! you might want to get a jumpstart or leave some for july july - section seven: 7 blocks (4 sm, 2 md, 1 lg); 14 strips (2 - 1") august - section eight: 4 blocks (1 sm, 3 lg); 11 strips (1 - 1") september - section nine: 5 blocks (2sm, 1 md, 2 lg); 11 strips (4 - 1") october - section ten: 11 blocks (6 sm, 2md, 3 lg); 22 strips (5 - 1") november - quilt and bind relevant posts why you want to gypsy along in 2016 - introduction fabric selection: hydeeann, megan completed quilt guest series: sarah schraw, liz gellert. cath mosely, elisabeth woo, nicole calver all the information and link party - welcome party megan's introductory tips all about strips, including a spreadsheet megan's guide to partial seams spreadsheet guide to each month's blocks alternate method for the 3.5" sq-in-sq blocks and 4.5" sq-in-sq blocks salvaging blocks that turn out the wrong size by adding borders questions and replies i am getting quite a few comments and questions from no-reply bloggers. this is frustrating for me and you, both! i would love to answer your questions or reply to your comments. leaving your email in your comment will help me reply to you. if you do not hear from me within a reasonable amount of time (day or two) after posting a comment, please email me directly at hydee ann sews (at) gmail (dot) com. i will leave replies to a question from a no-reply blogger on the comment. you will just have to check back later. i apologize for the inconvenience this poses! it makes extra work and frustration for me, too. please keep in mind i have no control over this and i'm just a volunteer trying to share and help others. i'm doing my best. if you aren't sure if you are a no-reply blogger or how to change this, please check out this post here by adrianne of "on the windy side". you can follow along on instagram with the hastag #GypsyWifeQuiltAlong2016 (caps not necessary) and find us there @hydeeannsews and @jaffaquilts grab your button! Generate your button code

Designer: Jen Kingwell Second edition Quilt Measures 150cm x 173cm (59” x 86”) Gypsy Wife is Jen’s top seller. A puzzle of beautiful blocks – a signature style of Jen’s! This clever quilt will keep even the most advanced sewers entertained. This pattern is written for machine piecing. Block of the Month friendly. Skill Level: Intermediate-advanced. Printed in Australia We will customize your order to combine shipping for International, If you want to buy multiple items,Please send us a message

On 3 August Nicole Calver (of Snips Snippets) and I will be kicking off the Jen Kingwell’s Gypsy Wife Quilt Sew-along. Jen...

My newest obsession is Jen Kingwell's Gypsy Wife . I knew I had no other choice but to make it when the BOM came out last year, but I could ...

It’s the first of two assembly weeks for the Jen Kingwell’s Gypsy Wife Quilt Sew-along. This week you’ll be assembling...

Borders: Framing Your Quilt You have many options when it comes to borders or framing your Gypsy Wife quilt. I am wanting mine to h...

Someone has kindly brought to my attention that in Section 6 of the quilt construction in page 28 of Gypsy Wife Booklet there is a strip missing. I am so sorry for this - I was proofing the pattern be

Hello fellow Gypsies (and everyone following along)! It’s time to finish our sampler quilt journey. I’ve really enjoyed cohosting the 2019 Gypsy Wife Quilt-Along with @ScrappyViolet . It’s a quilt I’ve wanted to make for a long time.

I have my first big quilt finish of the year to share with you today - it's my Gypsy Wife quilt. I started this as part of the quilt-along hosted by @GnomeAngel back in the summer and decided to go totally scrappy for the blocks and low volume for the background.This was the recipe I had used for my Long Time Gone quilt and I love it. After a few blocks, I decided I didn't like it this time. We had to take Mia into A&E one Sunday (nothing serious) and while we sat in the waiting room, she played on her tablet, and I coloured in a print-out of the quilt - can't go wrong with a rainbow. And I started again. Of course, I was well behind, and I stayed that way unfortunately. Even in the week after Christmas, I still believed I could make it - a finished quilt top by the 2nd January. I spent a few hours cutting all the background strips (what a job... not just the cutting, but keeping them organised)! But I had to give in. There was just too much to do and definitely not enough time. So the 2nd January passed. I still had some blocks to make and the construction of the quilt itself looked like quite the task. It was my birthday at the end of January, and for the first time in my life, I treated myself by taking a couple of days off work. Two whole days to sew - uninterrupted! Which was exactly what I needed to get this quilt done. I managed to get all the blocks pieced and a couple of the sections together ahead of my two golden days. But let me tell you, this quilt, and the construction part in particular, is not for beginners. It really stretched me - working out what seam to sew next, knowing I had some partial seams, and just making sure my layout was spot on. It was so much more fun than boring sashing! By the end of day 1 I had a finished quilt top, and that evening, at our local quilt group, I got it basted. The next day I set up the machine to free motion quilt and 3 hours later it was done. I quilted it with an all-over free motion stipple with cream thread on the front and pale green on the back. The backing is a duvet cover from Dunelm and I love the large scale of it. I pulled all the dark greys from my stash and cut myself a scrappy binding and by 3pm the quilt was finished! How very efficient! My birthday quilt! With the exception of the wadding, every piece of fabric in this quilt came from my stash. I made a vow this year to try fussy cutting, and I'm pretty pleased with the odd piece I included - I especially love the telephone. I also love that my quilt has "pissed" on it! Wonder how long it will take my mum to notice that! It's just such a happy, rainbowy quilt! I'm sad I couldn't get it done in time for the end of the quilt along, but I had a ball putting it together in peace and on my birthday! This is a finish from my Finish Along list, which you can find here.

Hello fellow Gypsy Wife troops! Today I have for you the partial seam edition. .. There is a partial seam in section one, and if you hav...

The Jen Kingwell Gypsy Wife Sew-along kicks off next week (August 3) and I thought it would be a good...

This is my version of the Gypsy Wife quilt by Jen Kingwell - I used all Bonnie and Camille fabric by Moda. This has been such a fun quilt top to make and I'm excited to work on quilting it!

I started the Ginger Crush BOM organised through Treehouse Textiles in 2015 and although I had finished it by about April this year, it took me a while to find a backing and get it quilted. I'm really pleased with the final product. The colours are quiet but not washed out and the simple quilting gives it a soft snuggly texture. It fits perfectly on my bed, just in time for those hot summer nights when you just want something light over your sheets.

This was a fun one, and I am so so pleased with how it turned out!! Back in April, Billie told me she'd like to order a quilt. That started off a flurry of messages, and sending links back and forth so I could get a feel for what she liked. We ended up choosing Kathleen's Gypsy Wife quilt as inspiration. I thought at the time that it was not an actual Gypsy Wife, because her fabric choices made it look so different from all of the others I'd seen but Hydee assures me it does follow the pattern. Not knowing that, though, I drew up my own pattern /map. I told Tyler and Brandon during a brain storming session that I wanted a name that was similar to Gypsy Wife but more appropriate for this quilt and for Billie and Andy, and when somebody tossed out 'sojourner', I knew we'd found it. You see, Andy and Billie are currently living in Bosnia teaching English, using the Bible. Not only are they currently literally sojourning, they live their entire lives with a Kingdom focus, as if this earth is not their home, so the name was doubly perfect. I ordered lots of fabric and even ordered a couple of jelly rolls for greater variety (there are at least 156 different fabrics in this quilt!) and started piecing on May 23rd, not long after finishing up my niece's epic quilt. I finished the 64 x 80 inch top in mid July and then sewed the backing. We went with a wool batting and lawn backing to produce an exceptionally luscious quilt and I basted the layers together with Lily's help in late July. I didn't actually start on the quilting until mid September because I quilted Sparkle first, so I could give it to my sister sooner and also so I could just get in more quilting practice. Using a quilt of Kathleen's as inspiration was rather intimidating! I'd already told Billie that my quilting wasn't going to look anywhere near as good as Kathleen's, but still, I didn't want her dissappointed, ya know?! I watched videos and practiced practiced practiced a whole bunch of new to me quilting motifs. And then, to make sure I was ready, I made a whole practice quilt. All of that paid off, and I am ridiculously proud of the quilting on this one! I feel like I have grown so much as a quilter this year, even though I was sooo busy with building that I only made a few quilts. I know that Angela Walters says that seam ripping doesn't make you a better quilter, so you should never un-do your quilting, but I unpicked quite a few less than excellent lines of quilting anyways. It might not make me a better quilter, but it makes the quilt better, so it makes me a happier quilter. And that's better ~ right? Because I love adding scripture to quilts, I quilted in 2 verses; "How beautiful are the feet of them that bring good news" and Psalm 146:9 "The Lord watches over the sojourners." How perfect is that?! I love the image of God himself watching over my friends. My photographer friend, Lisa, was going to take pictures of this beauty for me but I wasn't done with it at the appointed time : / I finished sewing on the binding about 26 hours before they were going to be picking up the quilt. (and still had to make the label!) Even though it wasn't done done, all washed and crinkly, the sun was out, so I threw it down in a spot of sun got a few pics with my phone, then grabbed the boys and told them to grab something to stand on and we quickly ran out in the 15 degree weather and snapped a few more pictures. I made the label after everyone was in bed, sewed it on yesterday, tossed it in the wash and pulled it out of the dryer about 10 minutes before Billie messaged me that they were on their way. Cutting it a bit close, eh?! Sojourner was a joy to make and I am so happy to get to make a quilt for such precious people, and to start the year off giving a couple of machines to Rahab's Rope! Andy and Billie - we love ya! Thanks for being such wonderful examples of love and generosity. Thanks for partnering with me. Oh, and Billie - you know how you said India is becoming more closed to missionaries? That's where our machines are going. 💗 linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts

I am now into month 11 of the Amitie Textiles BOM, the Gypsy Wife. Month 10 involved making a whole series of quick and easy blocks a selec...

I never did make it to the fabric store. Maybe this weekend? But my week was full of Gypsy Wife progress, and since I'm pretty sure I'll thr...

Well, there's a lot of fun happening out there just now, have you seen? The Gypsy Wife 2016 QAL has started! We've all heard about it, we...

We're almost done!!! Just a few more blocks (and a bunch of strips) to go in the Gypsy Wife Quilt-Along. The October blocks were a bit challenging from a fabric selection standpoint. I'm trying to use different combos but make sure the colors are spread out evenly. Here are the "big" blocks. Nurses Cross - not perfect in the center but I still like it. Old Maid's Puzzle (I made the half square triangle blocks and then realized those are for next month so had to go back and do these). And the filler blocks. Next month are the last few blocks, and then it's assembly time. It's always nice to have this QAL as a break from other projects each month. It's the first QAL I've actually done along with everyone (not finding it after the fact), and I've enjoyed it so much that I'm already trying to figure out quilt-alongs for next year. Linking up with the QAL at iamacraftykat!

If you have completed sections 3 and 4 of Gypsy Wife, you might be wondering how it all goes together. The diagram on p.34 of the pattern is kind of helpful but does require a bit of imagination! You can go ahead and sew section 3 onto your completed sections 1&2, and you can also attach section 4, but you need to leave it partially undone. Yes, it's another partial seam, but they're nothing to be afraid of remember :-) Here is a picture of my GW with sections 1,2 and 3 sewn together with section 4 lying in place at the bottom. We need to attach section 4 so that next month we can attach section 5 (simple seam), then later section 6 (simple seam), then finally section 7. Section 7 will be attached to sections 4&6, then across the bottom of section 2 (hence needing our partial seam). If that all seems confusing, don't worry, I'll post plenty of photos along the way. For now, we're going to sew section four onto the bottom of the block that consists of sections 1,2 and 3. As far as I can tell, the HST block should overlap that square in square block you can see by about a 1/4". We're not going to sew all the way to the end though, just to that first orange pin. So there it is, attached most of the way across, with a couple of inches of open seam at the end, so we can attach the other parts later. If you are making speedy progress with this section (and maybe even section 5), then make a start on section 6. It has a lot of blocks in it so will keep you well occupied :-)

Well the time has come in this process to start figuring out how all these blocks are going to come together. As I mentioned previously, t...

These blocks are such fun to make. I just tip my basket of fabric on the floor then pick bits up and sew them together. Some blocks work better than others but I really do want a scrappy looking quilt