Tuesday, March 26, 2019

All About Strings Blog Hop - Spring Strings

Hey everyone and welcome to my day of the All About Strings Blog Hop hosted by Carla of Creatin' in the Sticks.



The Hop is running till Thursday, so make sure to follow along for some fabric String inspiration.
The full schedule is listed at the bottom of the page.




 It is officially Spring here. Flowers are blooming all around town and in honor of all the beautiful blooms and colors sprouting up...

I decided to go with a Springtime theme with my Strings.





 I am calling this one Spring Strings. It measures approximately 72 x 54 inches.



 These tulips are big blocks coming in at 11 1/4 x 21 inches and today I would like to share my tutorial on how I made them, but before we get into all that...





 I want to show off  another smaller string project I made for the hop.  A mini tuffet pin cushion.  Isn't it so cute! I have the pattern for the regular size tuffet but decided to start out with this mini one.  It was quick to put together with some of my batik strings and not as frightening as I imaged it would be.  I sewed it up in one evening. The pattern suggested spray painting the legs and I may do that once I figure out what color use.  

And now for the tutorial on the Tulip Block.

If you would like to make your own, start by picking fabric strings in your favorite color,
 or if you like, you can even make scrappy tulips.  My strings measured from 1.25 to 1.5 inches.




Create a 10 x 4.5 inch strip of your favorite strings.

The strip can be a wee bit longer than 10 inches if your strips are longer. No need to trim them to exactly 10 inches, we will trim later, but the width does needs to be trimmed to 4.5 inches. 

Clean up the right edge with your ruler and rotary cutter. 

Using a 45 degree ruler, cut off a triangle from the right edge. 

Make sure you leave 1/4 inch seam allowance on the right side.  This can be easily done with the "Easy Angle Ruler" or any ruler that helps you make flying geese.  I used the Flying Geese ruler by Mari Michell because it was close.  But you can also eyeball it.  Just be generous if you eyeball it.  It's easier to trim it down than cut a whole new piece.








Cut a 5 inch White Square, sub-cut it on the diagonal to get two white triangles.

(If your going to cut a lot, you can cut a 4.5 inch strip and used the "Easy Angle Ruler" to cut the triangles. That is what I did and why one end of my triangles has a notch at the top.)
Cut a 2.5 inch White Square.

Make a small 2.5 inch square from your strings.

Cut a 2.5 a 4.5 inch White Rectangle.

Angle the two pieces from the original string 10 inch strip set to form the base of the tulip.  Make sure all the strings are going the same direction.

Sew a white triangle to both the  angled edges of your larger string pieces.  Press.  Trim the smaller square to 4.5 inches. This creates a Half Square Triangle and will make one side of the tulip.

Trim the longer string strip to measure 8.5 x 4.5 inches. 

Sew the 2.5 inch String square together with the 2.5  inch white square.

Press and then sew the 4.5 x 2.5 inch white rectangle to the newly sewn String/White rectangle.  This creates the 4.5 inch square for the top of the tulip.

Sew the 4.5 inch top square of the tulip to the 4.5 inch half square triangle that makes up one side of the tulip.




You should now have two halves of the tulip.  Sew these two halves together.

If all has gone well you should now have a cute tulip block that measures 8 inch square.



Cut two 7 inch white squares, sub cut these on the diagonal to give you 4 triangles.

Or if you are cutting a lot like me you can use the easy angle ruler and cut a 6.5 inch strip and cut your triangles that way.






Sew these four white triangles to the tulip block. I sewed opposite sides first, then flipped the block and added the other two sides.


For the leaves, make a 10 inch strip of green strings, sub-cut to make two 4.5 inch squares.


Cut four 2 inch white squares.  Draw a line on these on the diagonal using your favorite method. I pressed mine in half with the iron to create a sewing line.

Align your two green squares side by side with the strings going vertical.  Place a white square in the upper right corner and lower left corner of the Left square.

Do the opposite for the right square, placing a white square in the upper left and lower right.

It is good idea to lay them out by your machine in the way you want to sew them.  This will save you time you don't want to spend with the seam ripper later.

Sew on the line you marked. I like to sew a thread's width on the side of the line towards the seam allowance.  This way my triangle won't shrink when I iron it out.

Trim off the excess fabric from each  each white corner by cutting 1/4 inches away from the seam.  Press.



Cut two 4 x 4.5 in white rectangles.

Align the 4.5 edges together and sew the white rectangles to the top of the leaf square.

Cut a 1 x 8 inch green strip.
Sew the leave sections to the strip.

This creates the stem.


Cut two 8 x 1 7/8 white strips.  Or you can cut them 8 x 2 and trim them down later.  Sew these to the sides of the leaf block.

Cut one 2.5 x 11.75 inch white strip.
Sew this to the bottom of the leaf block.


Sew the top of the tulip to the leaf section.

My unfinished tulip block measured  21.5 x 11.75.

Sewing with triangles always makes things tricky, so if the top of your tulip block comes out wider or smaller, just adjust the width of the white side strips on the leaf section to match the top of your tulip section. Then cut the length of the bottom 2.5 inch strip to match the width of the top of the tulip.



For even more inspiration, here are some throwback images to some of my previous string projects.
Almost all of them were made for Project Quilting.


The Marsh. One of my Project Quilting entries from last year.


Winter Sleep - Another PQ entry - Theme was trees that week.


Lollipop Orchard. - String background. Another PQ entry.


Relaxing Starfish - My first ever entry for project Quilting.

Shirt Quilt


Make sure you find time to check out the other projects being posted today.





And if you missed any yesterday,  Here is the whole schedule.  We will be here all week! ...  well at least till Thursday. 

Monday, March 25th



Tuesday, March 26th



Wednesday, March 27th



=^..^=


Sunday, March 10, 2019

Project Quilting 10.5 Abecedarius

This was a hard challenge for me this week.  Abecedarius: where the first word of every line of a poem follows the alphabet.  Or in other words, do something with the alphabet. I like words on quilts, but wasn't sure what to do with so many word options.

I got to thinking about names on quilts. My husband loves names on quilts.  This is our usual conversation when ever I make a quilt for someone:

Hubby:  Are you going to put their name on it?
Me: Yeah, it will be in the label.
Hubby: Are you sure you don't want to put their name real big on the front? In the piecing? or glued on there in fabric?
Me: This design doesn't call for their name real big on the front.
Hubby: Oh, well I think it will make it look good with their name on the front.  Real big.

So in honor of that I decided to go with a name...  real big... on the front.  I just had to pick a name.  Kid names are the easiest, nieces and nephews are always easy to make quilts for, but which one?

I still wanted to keep it somewhat on the theme of Abecedarius,  I didn't want to do the whole alphabet though.  Just wanted to focus on one letter.  I do love to work in rainbow color.  So I was going to do "R is for Rainbow" and "R is for (insert name here)". So whose named started with R? there were several, but one jumped right out at me because her name also had the same number of letters as the colors in the rainbow:  Raelynn.  Perfect.  

R is for Rainbows and Raelynn


I love the geometric block letters designed by Quiet Play.  They are nice and big and blocky, just what I was looking for.  They finish at 6 inches.  I just needed a rainbow to go around them. So I got to designing.  Each letter would represent a color in the rainbow and have three shades of that color in strips above and below it.  And since the letters were going to have a white background they could be in a cloud.

  I used excel for this one.  I do have EQ8, but haven't mastered making my own layouts yet and since I was pressed for time I went with what I know I could design with pretty quick. 


All the strips are 2.5 inches and I needed three of each color  plus an extra red and purple for the ends x 2.  That is 46 strips.  I decided to use the Accuquilt cutter that was sent to me as part of being an Island Batik Ambassador.  I used the die that cuts 2.5 strips and cut out all my strips lickety split and they came out perfect. I used to think I was already quick enough cutting 2.5 inch strips with my rotary cutter, but this was super nice and I did it in about the same time and they came out perfect, no shaving off 1/8 of an inch when the ruler moves.


The quilt measures 46 x 72. 


My husband loves this quilt.  It has all three things he thinks a quilt should be.

1. Has to be big
2. Has to have a name on it - on the front.
3. Has to have blue in it.




Make sure to check out all the other entries  HERE to see how everyone else interpreted the theme.  Scroll down till you see all the square thumbnails and at 1 pm central time vote for your favorites by clicking on the red heart in corner.



=^..^=

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Island Batik Magnificent Mini and Project Quilting 10.3

Week three of Project Quilting lined up perfectly with the timing of my Magnificent Mini project for Island Batik Ambassadors.  


The theme for week three of Project Quilting was "Bigger than a bread box".  We could create anything quilt related as long as it was bigger than a bread box.  

The February Island Batik Ambassador challenge this month is "Magnificent Minis". 
Ambassadors were asked to make a quilt smaller than 24 x 24 inches.



I had several ideas to choose from and even printed and cut out two different paper piecing patterns, but my heart kept thinking of Valentines day coming up and the fact that I don't have any valentine themed quilts at all.  Can you imagine that?  I didn't believe it at first, but after rooting through the quilt cabinet, there were no hearts to be found, so I put away the paper piecing and decided to get festive.  



I drew up a quick heart block that measured 3.5 inches and started pulling pink batiks.I grabbed two of the pinks from the stash builders that were sent to me from Island Batik, and grabbed the rest from my own Island Batik Stash.

- FYI -
From one 5 inch square you can get two 3.5 inch hearts and
from one 2.5 inch strip WOF you can get eight 3.5 inch hearts

    I still didn't have enough pink, so I added some purples and reds, all from older Island Batik fabric lines I already had. Isn't it wonderful how all the fabric lines play so well together, even the older lines. Island Batik fabrics never go out of style.  

Check out that half inch sashing and cornerstones.  I love tiny quilt pieces!

For the background I used the white batik fabric that was supplied to me as an Ambassador.  


I had never sewn with solid batik fabric before.  I love sewing with white backgrounds in my quilts so this was super nice to have that batik feel throughout.

And we can't leave out Hobbs Batting.
  I had two smaller pieces of 80/20 left over from a previous project and sewed them together to create the perfect size batting, once it was quilted you couldn't even tell the batting was pieced.



I am calling this one Candied Hearts.

As far as the actual size... well I got the "Bigger Than a Bread Box" part right for project quilting, but I'm actually 2 inches longer one side for the Island Batik February project.

It measures 26 x 21. In my defense, it did start out as less than 24 inches tall, but I had to add another row of hearts.  I couldn't have four on the top and three on the bottom. My brain needs symmetry and technically since the width is 3 inches shorter than 24 inches I do have the correct square footage...or inchage... is that a word?   



Thanks for stopping by.  Check out all the other Island Batik Ambassadors this month to see what minis and fabrics they are playing with.



And around 12pm Central time you can start voting HERE for your favorite Project for week three of Project Quilting.


=^..^=

Monday, February 4, 2019

Island Batik Ambassador 2019

I am super excited to announce I have been accepted to be one of the 2019 Island Batik Ambassadors!



 I have been a happy customer of their fabrics for years and love creating with them so the next logical step for me was to apply to be one of their ambassadors.

I am happy to say I was selected and the next 12 months I get to create and showcase their wonderful fabrics.  Each month I will make at least one project with Island Batik fabric and showcase it here.  Island Batik also partners with Hobbs Batting, Aurifil, and AccuQuilt.  So you will see their products mentioned throughout the year as well.

As an ambassador I get shipped two boxes a year full of fabric, batting, and thread to help me promote the fabrics. This year ambassadors were also shipped a box from AccuQuilt company.  Most of us received the "Ready. Set. Go!" bundle box.

Check out my unboxing video to see all the goodies that were sent to me by Island Batik, Hobbs, Aurifil, and AccuQuilt.


Stayed tuned for some fantastic projects this year!






Meet all the 2019 Island Batik Ambassadors


Make sure you check out the other Ambassador's web sites this year.  
They too will be posting projects all year to inspire and help you create.


Carolina Asmussen ~Carolina Asmussen
Gene Black ~ Gene Black
Pamela Boatright ~ PamelaQuilts
Connie K Campbell ~ Freemotion by the River
Anja Clyke ~ Anja Quilts
Becca Fenstermaker ~Pretty Piney
Jennifer Fulton ~ Inquiring Quilter
Barbara Gaddy ~ Bejeweled Quilts by Barb
Dione Gardner-Stephen ~ Clever Chameleon
Sarah Goer ~ Sarah Goer Quilts
Vasudha Govindan ~ Storied Quilts
Lori Haase ~ Dakota City Quilter II
Joanne Hart ~ Unicornharts
Mania (Magdalini) Hatziioannidi ~ Mania for Quilts
Carla Henton ~ Creatin’ in the Sticks
Stephanie Jacobson ~ Steph Jacobson Designs
Connie Kauffman ~ Kauffman Designs
Joan Kawano ~ Moosestash Quilting
Kim Lapacek ~ Persimon Dreams
Emily Leachman ~ The Darling Dogwood
Leanne Parsons ~ Devoted Quilter
Bea Lee ~ BeaQuilter
Toby Lischko ~ Gateway Quilts & Stuff
Bill Locke ~ Studio Bill Locke
Denise Looney ~ For the Love of Geese
Leah Malasky ~ Quilted Delights
Sally Manke ~ Sally Manke
Maryellen McAuliffe ~ Mary Mack’s Blog
Kathleen McCormick ~ Kathleen McMusing
Carol Moellers ~ Carol Moellers Designs
Karen Neary ~ Sew Karen-ly Created
Jackie O’Brien ~ If These Threads Could Talk
Laura Piland ~ Slice of Pi Quilts
Michelle Roberts ~ Creative Blonde
Vicki Schlimmer ~ Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting
Gail Sheppard ~ Quilting Gail
Sherry Shish ~ Powered by Quilting
Anita Skjellanger ~ Quilt in a not-Shell
Laticia “Tish” Stemple ~ Tish’s Adventures in Wonderland
Jennifer Strauser ~ Dizzy Quilter
Jennifer Thomas ~ Curlicue Creations
Terri Vanden Bosch ~ Lizard Creek Quilts
Alison Vermilya ~ Little Bunny Quilts
Sandra Walker ~ mmm! quilts
(Debora) Anne Wiens ~ Seams like a Plan
Geraldine Wilkins ~ Living Water Quilter
Janet Yamamoto ~ Whispers of Yore

=^..^=