Lately I've been wanting to sew but I haven't been able to decide what I want to sew. I keep seeing so many awesome projects online and not able to choose one. I did eventually manage to get off the computer and sew up a couple of things, so far, this week.
While at the Dallas Quilt Guild Show, me, my MIL & my daughter saw Cynthia England demonstrating her Picture Piecing technique. Her booth was filled with amazing examples of quilts made from patterns designed by her using this technique. Her process looked easy so we chose that as our next group project. It was very hard for the three of us to decide but we finally chose this kitty quilt pattern & kit. I also bought a pattern for a rose block that was 1/2 off.
After we got home, we took out our patterns and looked them over. Woah, there were a lot of tiny lines all over it! It looked so hard! We went to the computer to check out her website. She has a great video tutorial, and a print one, with plenty of tips, so that made us more confident that we could handle the challenge. We planned to do the free pattern and tutorial the next time we got together before starting on the project.
Well, that was a while ago and since I'm the experienced quilter, I thought I'd try my hand at it first. The pattern was for an ice cream cone. I printed it up on freezer paper and a master pattern on normal paper and jumped to it with what I remembered of the directions.
It's broken up into sections and you have to cut apart each subsection within a section. You work one section at a time so you don't mix up the pieces. The freezer paper pattern pieces are actually ironed onto the right side of your fabric. Then you cut the fabric a 1/4 inch away from the pattern. Basically, you then piece them together following the numbers, though there are many "cheats" and tips she shows in the videos to make it easier, then you piece the sections together to get your block, all according to the master pattern. Square it up and then you get this 12.5 inch block after taking off the paper and adding borders:
It looks fairly awesome and working through it made the other patterns look much simpler than at first glance. The key was to block all the other sections on the master pattern and only focus on the one part you're working on. I would also choose a lighter color for the background next time. I encourage anyone who wants to try something new or a new way to design "paper piecing" type patterns to check out her website, patterns and book. She's a nice lady and demoed her product very well. She was the liveliest looking one on the last day of the show. My MIL also bought a lot more of her patterns on her website so you'll see more of these from me in the future.
As for this block, I wanted to put some words on it and quilt it up but all the ones I could think of my daughter vetoed. I don't know what else to do with it so I think I'm going to go with "Sweet Treat", maybe find some summery buttons to put on it and make this a small wall hanging. I'm also going to suggest to my MIL, this weekend, to skip doing this block and just jump into the pattern we purchased because it took me a few hours to do this and that would just set us back.
The last thing I sewed today was my March block for the LJ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=2)
blockofthemonth comm. Here it is and I'm finally caught up because they haven't posted April's yet!
While at the Dallas Quilt Guild Show, me, my MIL & my daughter saw Cynthia England demonstrating her Picture Piecing technique. Her booth was filled with amazing examples of quilts made from patterns designed by her using this technique. Her process looked easy so we chose that as our next group project. It was very hard for the three of us to decide but we finally chose this kitty quilt pattern & kit. I also bought a pattern for a rose block that was 1/2 off.
After we got home, we took out our patterns and looked them over. Woah, there were a lot of tiny lines all over it! It looked so hard! We went to the computer to check out her website. She has a great video tutorial, and a print one, with plenty of tips, so that made us more confident that we could handle the challenge. We planned to do the free pattern and tutorial the next time we got together before starting on the project.
Well, that was a while ago and since I'm the experienced quilter, I thought I'd try my hand at it first. The pattern was for an ice cream cone. I printed it up on freezer paper and a master pattern on normal paper and jumped to it with what I remembered of the directions.
It's broken up into sections and you have to cut apart each subsection within a section. You work one section at a time so you don't mix up the pieces. The freezer paper pattern pieces are actually ironed onto the right side of your fabric. Then you cut the fabric a 1/4 inch away from the pattern. Basically, you then piece them together following the numbers, though there are many "cheats" and tips she shows in the videos to make it easier, then you piece the sections together to get your block, all according to the master pattern. Square it up and then you get this 12.5 inch block after taking off the paper and adding borders:
It looks fairly awesome and working through it made the other patterns look much simpler than at first glance. The key was to block all the other sections on the master pattern and only focus on the one part you're working on. I would also choose a lighter color for the background next time. I encourage anyone who wants to try something new or a new way to design "paper piecing" type patterns to check out her website, patterns and book. She's a nice lady and demoed her product very well. She was the liveliest looking one on the last day of the show. My MIL also bought a lot more of her patterns on her website so you'll see more of these from me in the future.
As for this block, I wanted to put some words on it and quilt it up but all the ones I could think of my daughter vetoed. I don't know what else to do with it so I think I'm going to go with "Sweet Treat", maybe find some summery buttons to put on it and make this a small wall hanging. I'm also going to suggest to my MIL, this weekend, to skip doing this block and just jump into the pattern we purchased because it took me a few hours to do this and that would just set us back.
The last thing I sewed today was my March block for the LJ
blockofthemonth comm. Here it is and I'm finally caught up because they haven't posted April's yet!
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