A mini quilt that had been in my sketchbook for awhile. Finally executed!
Hello hello! I've been lucky enough to have had the chance to play with Tilda's new fabric range Harvest over the past few weeks. It's such a pretty collection of colours and prints and today's the day I get to share what I've been making as part of the Blog Hop 2 Green
If you have been following my posts, I shared the re-cap of my Instagram based Alison Glass Mini-Quilt Swap experience last week. This week, I’ll share how I hacked and re-sized the Astrodeli…
Strip piecing quilts can save time and money. Top US blogger Amy Smart shares tips to accurately cut and piece fabric for fast quilt blocks.
Transform your fabric scraps into beautiful new scrappy quilts by making string quilts. A tutorial from NewQuilters.com #stringquilts #stringquilttutorial
I'm being a tease, but I bet that peaked your interest. Read on brave quilter because we are going to talk about inset seams. Inset seaming is a technique I’ve adapted and applied to quilting but it originates from a couture sewing technique used to place delicate thin strips of fragile lace/ other delicate fabrics into garments such as lingerie and special occasion wear. Inset seaming in quilting allows you to place very thin strips of fabric into a larger piece of fabric (or pieced quilt top). Once you get comfortable with this technique you can inset fabric strips of 1/8th of an inch wide (sometimes even less as you get better). Read between the Lines- 3rd place use of Negative Space at QuiltCon 2015- Austin, TX The inset seams are seem here as thin colorful straight lines in the quilt top. Tools of the trade some of the supplies you will need You will need the following to tackle inset seams: Patience and a desire to try something new and maybe even a bit scary. Sewing machine and basic sewing supplies Coordinating thread (or contrasting thread for the basting - see Step 10 below) Fabric (background) This is what you will set the seam into Fabric (inset) This is the fabric you will inset. Inset straight seams: cut strips 1” x WOF Inset curved seams : cut strips on the BIAS 1” wide Rotary cutter/cutting mat seam ripper (very important) washable glue stick Machine sewing feet 1/4” foot zipper foot standard straight stitch foot Ruler (preferably 18” long) *iron/ironing board/ spray bottle of water/starch Before you begin Iron all fabric being careful not to stretch bias strips Step 1: On your ironing board, fold your background fabric over, right sides together, and iron a crisp seam. (If you are working on a finished quilt top and insetting seams after piecing, I suggest you plan your fold on a flat surface and pin, then take this to your ironing board to set the seam). decide Fold iron Step 2: Take this fabric to your sewing machine. With your straight stitch selected, choose the longest stitch length. choose a long stitch length Keeping the pressed folded over seam directly to your right, and using your 1/4” foot, sew the length of your pressed fabric. fold immediately to the right *If you are insetting your seam into an already pieced top, use your standard straight stitch foot to sew the seam. You are likely to encounter some of your pieced seams and having slightly more fabric to work with helps greatly. Trust me, I know this. Step 3: Take the fabric to your cutting surface and using a rotary cutter and a ruler barely cut of the folded edge of your pressed seam. If you have never cut into a pieced quilt top, this part is scary. I suggest you practice first with something not quite so precious, even though I did not follow my own advice when first attempting inset seaming, I did learn (the hard way) that it’s critical to use your standard foot in an already pieced top and equally important to conserve fabric so be very stingy cutting the folded edge open. be stingy cutting off the fold I'm serious about the skimpy trimming Step 4: Press your seam open. On already pieced tops, using a bit of spritzed water or starch will make your task easier. seam ironed open Step 5: Take your fabric back to your cutting board and place it seam side up. Step 6: Use your washable glue stick, or preferred method of glue basting to run a line of glue on the pressed open pieces of the seam allowance. Try and keep glue out of the center basted seam. For straight inset seams: Using your 1” straight of grain inset fabric, place right side down onto the glue trying to evenly distribute the fabric strip across the pressed seam. For curved inset seams: Using your bias cut 1” fabric strip, place right side down onto the glue gently following the curve and trying to evenly distribute the fabric strip across the pressed seam. fabric inset strip right side down on glued seam allowance Step 7: iron fabric strip in place to set glue. Step 8: Back at your machine and working as gently as possible, lift one side of the pressed open seam/glued inset strip away from the background fabric. Unless you have been neurotic with your gluing some of it will be stuck. Once lifted away, you should be looking at one side of the basting stitch from step 2. Place your fabrics onto your machine with the basting stitch to your left and the glued inset/background fabric cut edge to your right. Set your machine to your standard stitch length (I can't tell you how many time I have forgotten to do this), making any needle adjustments for your zipper foot and stitch as close as possible to the basted seam. Reset your stitch length, reset your stitch length, reset your stitch length (The distance you now stitch from the basted seam dictates the width of your inset seam. Some machines allow side needle adjustment so that you can be consistent every time with your seams and get very small inset pieces.) you can just see the basting stitch to the immediate left of the zipper foot (The glues is a bit of a give away) Step 9: repeat step 8 from the other side. Step 10: Using your seam ripper and working from the top( right side) of the background fabric, rip out the basted stitch seam. Yes, there is glue in the seam. Yes, I know you don't like seam ripping. Yes, it's a lot of sewing for one little seam. I will however give you a little hint: you might consider using a contrasting thread for the basting if you have trouble with ripping seams of closely matched thread/fabric. It does require threading and then retreading your machine before step 8, but for some it makes this step a bit easier. And you only have to replace the top thread if you don't want to baste top and bobbin in a contrasting color. Even little bits help sometimes. Step 11: Take your fabric back to your ironing board. Mist the set in seam. Using a hot iron and a leap of faith, gently pull the seam and glue apart and iron open. There will be bits of glue and tread stuck in the basted seam. Gently pick out the tread and after you are all done, once your quilt is all pieced and quilted, wash your quilt and the glue will go away, until then pretend it's not there.. Step 12: At this point (after ironing and admiring you can trim the excess inset fabric from the back if you prefer. As you can see from the picture above the fabric shows through. So for some color combinations it is a good idea. Just be very careful when trimming. trimming from behind, be careful not to cut top Step 13: Repeat as necessary, then pat yourself on the back for a job well done. With an inset seaming skill base securely under your belt, there are several variations that can be done with very little adjustment. inset cording inset flanges inset curved bias seams inset binding (peek below) Because the inset seams are so striking I continued the visual impact through into the binding. I thank Christine (ccpquilt) for the show of support and great insight on working the binding with such tiny seams. Have fun with your new found skills!!! Hopefully as I have projects that demonstrate the above variations I will blog about them here!
Thank you for your interest in my tutorial. The tutorial has moved and is available in its entirety at this link . Best wishes, Bloom. ...
Hey All! Hope your Monday is off to a wonderful start! We had a weekend full of swimming and hanging out with family at our annual family campout. We all had so much fun and today we are slowly …
This mini quilt is the perfect addition to an office, kitchen, or any space that needs a pop of color! Mini quilt can be hung using command strips. Piece measures 6”x6”. This was pieced and quilted using Aurifil 50wt thread; fabric is Ruby Star Society for Moda Fabrics. Made by Amanda Birdwell.
Say hello to Binary Star, a modern, geometric mini quilt pattern perfect for beginners looking to try something new, as well as intermediate and advanced quilters. Practice or perfect constructing half-square triangles, a bit of strip piecing, and piecing half a sawtooth star.
I realize that this is NOT a news flash, but I've been playing with scraps again. Ha! It's messy work, but someone has to do it! I made these banner blocks for the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild. The only requirements were to use brights and white fabrics and they needed to be 6.5" square. I had a lot of fun making them. This one is my favorite! It's a mini version of my bright birch trees quilt. The block is made up of 31 teeny tiny scraps....and one big white scrap. I love it so very much! I like this one, too, although not quite as much. It also uses 31 scraps...that must be the magic number or something. After making these teeny tiny ones, the pinwheel pieces felt absolutely huge! I could have kept going and made scrappy blocks all day long, but I kind of ran out of time. I'm counting these blocks as scrap project #58/101. These name tags are for some of my friends at the MMQG. (Can you tell that it's meeting night?) Also made from scraps. I love making these because they use small scraps of batting, too. There is never a shortage of those floating around the craft room. These are scrap project #59. This is an orphan block-turned-pot holder. Each square finishes at 1"! I used Insulbrite AND batting, so the quilting got a little bit funky....but it will just get used and stained...so, to quote my daughter, "it don't matter!" This is scrap project #60! Woo-hoo! And these are still waiting to be sewn up into something, someday! I wonder what they will become...
Use my mini string quilt blocks sewing tutorial to make use of even your smallest fabric scraps! No fuss blocks require no corner matching!
Fabric Play Sewing Mojo Mini Quilt
Improv Wavy Strips Tutorial is my method for sewing improv wavy strips together in a simple, easy method. Take a look!
Introducing Rivulet, a modern, geometric mini quilt pattern perfect for beginner and intermediate quilters alike. This design includes a handful of half-square triangles, a bit of strip piecing, and some blocks cut on the bias.
How pretty are these rainbow quilt designs? Rainbow quilts are great scrap-busting projects. They make great DIY baby shower gifts, and/or brighten up a room. What comes to mind when you see the word rainbow? The songs "somewhere over the rainbow" or "rainbow connection"? Do you remember the day you
I can finally share my latest baby quilt! This is yet another quilt, I made with the help of the lovely ladies of the Quilty Circle of Bees. The block we sewed is called the 'Rocky Mountain Puzzle' block and I picked turquoise, pink and curry/chartreuse as the main colours and white and black/white fabrics for the background. It's always a nice surprise when you open the envelopes from your bee mates and see what blocks they made since we sew with our own fabrics. It gives the quilt such a great variety of different fabrics without looking completely wild and uncoordinated. I made three blocks, my bee mates made all the other ones. I loved how it turned out, it's such a happy and fresh looking quilt! For the binding I used left over strips from a backing of another quilt. This print has large dots, so the binding appears to be stripy - and I like that a lot. As always with baby quilts, I sew the binding on by machine for extra durability. For the backing I used my favourite wide screen cross-hatch fabric in pink. In the bottom right corner is a label, made from one HST. This quilt was sent earlier this week to Robin and her parents, who live in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Yesterday I received such sweet photos from Robin with the quilt... seriously, sewing a baby quilt is just the best! The quilt measures about 48" (123cm) square. Thank you to me bee mates Melanie, Allison, Madga and Saadia for making the blocks!
Two mini quilts made for Curated Quilts mini quilts challenge - Connections / Improv
Even though I loved it last year, I told myself I wasn’t going to participate in the 100-Day Project this year. My schedule is quite busy over the next few months and fitting in another project is …
20" x 20"
I posted a few days ago what I did last weekend while in GA, now this post is what I did this weekend… Sorting the 3rd weeks Pieced BOW fabrics Next I had to trace and stitch on the drawn lin…
the Protostar Mini Quilt Pattern empowers you to practice half-square triangles and strip piecing while practicing mindfulness around boundaries.
This winter I'm in a bit of a sewing slump. I've decided instead of buying more fabric--I want to use what I have on hand, but use it differently. I don't have lots of solids, but I do have lots of fabric. Research: I've been gathering photo ideas to build Modern Scrappy Quilts this year. I'm looking for random--unexpected color combinations and simple construction. Here are some quilt photos from Pinterest that caught my eye. This first one I like. Its simple, simple construction. Take an oversized square, slice it, add some skinny strips, slice it again, and more skinny strips, and then square it up with a 10.5" sq. or 12.5" sq. acrylic template. No rules, just slicing and sewing. No sashing. 📷 The quilt below is so do-able as far as construction. Random. Improv. Beyond the white-black-gray bits for contrast, I see ORANGE dotted with this and that accent colors. Going shopping out of my own stash is fun. Using up lots of sub assemblies already sewn and ready to modify and use in another quilt. I am aware "stash diving" makes a huge mess in the studio. 📷 📷 Calling all Squares . . . calling all squares . . . come in squares. Above is the perfect solution for using up a half yard of this and that. Anything goes . . . but I'm drawn to the use of green, red, and papersack colors in this one. Works for me. 📷 Certainly I've collected lots of silly themes and strange patterns fabrics like this quilt shown above. What is most interesting? Look at the use of red and white fabrics paired with those weird fabrics. Liberally repeating red and white fabrics pull it all together, making sense of all the other weird fabrics that were added. It could just as well be blue and white fabrics paired with the weird fabrics. What I like most about this scrappy quilt is its simple construction, no sashing, alternating four patch. This light airy quilt is so pretty. I think I'll try this quilt concept right away!
When we first caught site of this delightful photo from Jake Messenger in our flickr…
I've been meaning to update my first simple heart quilt tutorial for years, so this is just a fresh update! I also finally made a pretty printable pattern for Heart Blocks in multiple sizes you can find here. Simple Hearts Quilt Instructions: Finished Quilt: 42" x 44" Heart finished block size: 6" square Materials: ...Read More
Say hello to Protostar, a modern, geometric mini quilt pattern perfect for beginners looking to try something new, as well as intermediate and advanced quilters. Practice or perfect constructing half-square triangles, a bit of strip piecing, and working with blocks cut on the bias.
How to make a beautiful fast & easy baby quilt using diagonal strip blocks and batik fabrics with the easy to follow tutorial
What do you get when you add art to scrap quilting? Scrap art quilts, of course! These beautiful designs will inspire you to create your own.
Karen Eckmeier was our guest quilter/teacher this week. She brought several of her quilts to show us her raw edge machine applique technique. The first 3 photos are from her Village collection. From her Mandala collection This larger, Paducah Quilt Show winner, was quite stunning. Karen also showed us some of her mini-quilts, Accidental Landscapes. She taught a class in this technique. To visit Karen Eckmeier's web page, visit "Favorite Sites" on my right sidebar, which highlights a list of wonderful applique artists.
Mini Stars and Stripes Block Pattern with Step by Step Video Tutorial Finished Size Options: 16", 18", 20", 22", and 24" squares How to Download Pattern Tutorial: https://youtu.be/b160EI3AfGg (copy this to the URL search bar to see how to purchase and download our patterns here on Etsy) *WE PROVIDE VIDEO INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS PRODUCT AND NO WRITTEN DIRECTIONS* These patterns are the exact ones used for all of our creations, so we guarantee that they are the perfect sized templates that we supply. Instead of written instructions, we have video of each block being made through its creation process to give you a jump start by seeing how we make each design, and sub-assemblies of each block required for these creations. We provide exactly what we state in our listing for this item. We are a small business and selling on Etsy, offering these patterns to a worldwide audience. We do not have the time and resources to provide written instructions in all the languages we would like to. So alternatively, we provide a way that anyone from anywhere can watch, follow, pause, re-watch as many times as needed to exactly get the correct outcome. This is the best way to visually teach us all how to make this block, while keeping the price as low as possible. We have learned from feedback from thousands of clients that our visual demonstration videos that can be watched and stopped so you can follow along with our skilled seamstresses, and all our clients love our low cost, high quality patterns. The video will demonstrate the cutting, placement, sewing, and completion of each block for the project and the border. The pattern is labeled clearly and includes a 1/4" seam allowance plus a few tips to get you going. ABOUT THE PDF PATTERN: You will have access to an INSTANT DOWNLOAD of this pattern upon purchasing and payment here on ETSY. When you pay for your pattern, you will be sent an ETSY receipt. Upon this receipt is a download link to CLICK for your instant download. How fantastic is that!!!! This pattern may not be copied without permission, and cannot be resold without express written permission. Due to the nature of the digital downloading, NO REFUNDS can be given, as software code cannot be returned. If you have any questions, please contact us here, and we will try to reply quickly.
This strawberry quilt pattern is a perfect little summer project: quick, easy and oh, so cute! Click here for more infos and the free pattern add-on!
Strip piecing quilts can save time and money. Top US blogger Amy Smart shares tips to accurately cut and piece fabric for fast quilt blocks.
Part 3 of using my Stripology Quarters Mini ruler to strip-piece a checkered mini quilt 😍 Have you ever tried strip piecing before? Would a tutorial be helpful? (I know it’s hard to really absorb...
Courthouse Steps Quilt Block | Exploded version of the Courthouse Steps Quilt Block. Numbers indicate sewing order. Click image to download coloring sheets
The Sew Mojo #1 mini quilt pattern is available for purchase in the shop! This is the first in a four part mini quilt series, each one with a different creative "lesson."Most of us probably know what mojo is, but sew mojo? According to the Williams dictionary of made up things Suzy says (that's me):Continue Reading...
Say hello to Binary Star, a modern, geometric mini quilt pattern perfect for beginners looking to try something new, as well as intermediate and advanced quilters. Practice or perfect constructing half-square triangles, a bit of strip piecing, and piecing half a sawtooth star.
Yesterday on QUILTsocial we looked at 10 ways to use Northcott’s Stonehenge fabrics in your quilts and today my box of Stonehenge Elements fabrics arrived!! Just look at these fabrics – so yummy and rich looking!! I have some ideas about what I want to do with these fabrics but…
