Have You Tried Alphabitties?

We probably all agree that chain piecing is a fast and easy way to sew our pieces into units, units into blocks and blocks into quilt tops. But what if you lose track and sew the wrong pieces or blocks together? Then out comes the seam ripper!

I have been using a system involving fabric pieces stacked up on a cutting board. When it came to sewing rows together, I didn't chain piece. I would pick up two things, sew them together, then take them out of the machine, put them back where I got them and pick up the next two.

All that changed for the better when I was at my friend Linda Petrik's house and saw a stack similar to this:

I pounced on the stack! What are those? Linda said "They're Alphabitties and I got them from the Fat Quarter Shop!"

I always have two or three quilts in the piecing stage so I ordered three sets. Then I went to Target and bought a bunch of itsy bitsy binder clips.

I use the letters for the rows and the numbers for the blocks in a row. I can clip the numbers on my blocks and sashings for a complete row, gather them up and take them to the machine to sew -- and not get them mixed up!

As I finish the quilt assembly, I put them on my work table in order so I know I have a complete set ready for the next quilt.

I used the Alphabitties while piecing a quilt from the Rainbow Seeds line from Wilmington Prints. It made the whole thing faster and I only had to rip one little seam in the whole thing!

Love these!

Have You Tried This? The Original Thread Cutter!

We love this little goodie!!  It came in a Quilty Box and has become a necessary tool!! 

What do you use to make cutting go quickly??

Fall Bundle Giveaway

Now that Spring is officially here, the excitement has worn off and the reality of drizzly, chilly days has set in.  Now don't get us wrong, we LOVE the warm sunny days of spring, just not the cold rainy days so much.  It got us thinking of fall time...  snuggling in a warm cozy house sewing and baking. And hence, the Fall Bundle Giveaway!!

Included in the bundle are 5 Fat Quarters of Crossroads Denim, a Sulky Petite Pack of thread, a Quilted Kitchen Patterns packet, and a Quilted Cook and Carry Pattern.  Total value is over $65!

To be entered in the giveaway simply like our Facebook Page and share this post on Facebook!  ***Double entry if you comment and tell us what you'll make with these fat quarters!!***

Good luck!! 

Leaders? Enders? Am I Always the Last Quilter to Hear About This Stuff?

Warning: Tip to make piecing better that, while I hadn't heard of it, you probably already know all about it and have made your last 20 quilts this way!

When I was teaching at Calla Lily Quilts in Greensboro NC, I was happy to be able to stay with my friends Karen & Graham in Reidsville. Karen is an avid quilter, owned a quilt shop at one time, and knows just about everybody! So as I was leafing through some of her back issues of Quilt Moderne (yes, of course I subscribed -- those quilts are killer!!!), Karen asked me if I used the leaders-enders technique, to which I intelligently responded, "The What??"

Well, she explained, we've all been using leaders for the whole time we've been piecing our quilts -- those little scraps of fabric that we fold in half, feeding the creased edge into the presser foot to prevent thread barf at the very beginning of sewing. Straight edge = possible thread barf; folded edge = much less chance of said TB. I knew about the leader method and have been doing it practically forever. But now there seems to be a variation on that theme that results in a more productively piecing you -- and still no barf!

Goes like this: Basically you cut the pieces for two quilts, the one you are actually working on and another one that is fairly mindless, like sewing a bunch of squares together for something that turns out like this:

This is from a book called "Moda All-Stars - Lucky Charm Quilts". All of the quilts in the book are based on charm squares and the quilts are arranged by how many charm packs it takes to make them -- one, two or three. This was a three charm pack design, so I purchased three Kaffe Fassett charm packs and a coordinating solid from Calla Lily Quilts when I was there. It's just a bunch of little squares, so I should be able to get a good start on it using the leader-ender method, right? This is kind of a long name and spellcheck keeps trying to correct it, so I'm calling it the L-E method from now on!

So I started by cutting a charm pack into fourths, yielding 168 2-1/2" squares. Stacked them into piles on a cutting mat and took them to the machine.

First a pair of squares from my L-E quilt...

..then as many pieces of the "real" quilt, the one that I'm actually doing on purpose, as I need to run through before taking them out and going to the iron. In this case, 4. So I sewed the four, and then...

...another pair of squares from the L-E quilt. (Actually, I should call this the Dividend Quilt because you get a second finished quilt as a extra added bonus from working on the first!) Then I cut the others off, go to the ironing board, come back to the machine and that sewn square is just waiting patiently for me to start on my next group of pieces for the primary quilt.

The way I see it, I'm doing pretty much what I've always done, while getting another project done at the same time. If you used small projects for the L-E quilt, like table runners and baby quilts, I think you could get a bunch of bonus projects done.

Do you use this method? If not, do you think it's worth trying? I'm going to keep track and see how long it takes me to get the bonus quilt done this way.

All Finished! The Presents Quilt

Seems like I've been working on this forever -- started cutting and piecing the blocks at the Pieceful Hearts retreat in South Carolina in January and was hoping to have it finished by end of February. But end of March is pretty close, right? 

All the hearts were done using pink Mettler PolySheen 40 weight polyester embroidery thread in the 24 blocks with pink sashing and red PolySheen in the 6 red sashed blocks.

Drew in a few to see how it was going to look and then freehand quilted the bows and ribbons with the same pink and red PolySheen threads.

It was already bound so that quilting was the last step before being washed and dried.

And there we go -- all done! Just in time for NEXT Valentine's Day. So am I two months late or ten months early?

Quilts & Art @ Eddie's Sewing Bee!

A few weeks ago I got to teach for three days at Eddie's Quilting Bee in Sunnyvale, California.  It was a WONDERFUL weekend with WONDERFUL people!!  Their shop is incredible and has quilts from Eddie and his mother hung all over the place.  I got a special tour and want to share it with you.

These quilts are AMAZING!!!

Click the image below to play the video!

Going Through the Cruise Pics

While we were on the quilting cruise last month, one of our stops was Belize. I was going through the pictures with some friends a couple of days ago and realized that I hadn't yet posted them. Wendy, Millie and I all got off the ship and took one of the tours that explored the Mayan ruins.

The pic above is our whole group following our guide around. I was surprised there weren't barriers, or at least ropes, to keep the tourists from climbing all over everything. Instead, there are stairs (albeit steep ones) to help us get up to the top of some of the ruins so that we could see better than at ground level. Here are a few of the pictures I took; some of them were taken from the top of one of the pyramids after climbing some scary stairs!

 

All in all, the experience of exploring the ruins of such a long lived, as well as long gone, society as the Mayans was rewarding and I'm really glad that we were able to put life on hold for a bit and see this.

So if anyone says to you, "Let's go on a quilting cruise" -- say Yes!!

Giveaway Winner!!!!!

Thanks to everyone for participating in our Springtime Giveaway!!!

Congratulations to our winner... Allison Church Bird!!!!!

We'll ship out your goodie box this week!  40 hexagons (big, bright, springtime hexagons), a fun pattern, and a 2500 meter spool of grey Wonderfil thread!!

HAPPY SPRING!!!  

Continuing the Presents Quilt

First I'd like to thank all of you who sent me emails and texts wishing me a quick recovery from my cataract surgery last week. (And a big special thanks to Rhonda for the recovery care package including peanut M&Ms!) Eye #1 was a total success with a vision correction lens that allows me to see better than I have in over 20 years! I'm wearing a contact lens in my left eye until that surgery on April 20. So, hooray! All is great on the vision front.

While I was taking it easy at home over the weekend, I finished the hand stitching on the binding and then started quilting the hearts.

Decided on the double hearts -- just enough quilting.

Played more with the ribbons in the bow portion of each block and nothing was working for me.

I drew in one side -- instead of just stitching ribbons on each side of the pieced bow, I decided to stitch a curvy bow and then the ribbon tails. This will work!

I had hoped to finish this by the end of February since I want it to be a Valentine's Day quilt, but end of March is good, right!

What do you think of the bow?

Playing With My New iPad Toys!

Earlier this year, I decided to do what my husband calls a tech refresh.  Both my iPhone and iPad were a few years old and starting to malfunction in exceedingly inconvenient ways so it was time.  As I've been getting older, my vision certainly isn't getting better, so I had already decided to purchase the larger format iPad Pro; accessories I hadn't seen before were also intriguing and helped lead to this decision.

So I purchased the iPad, the cover with the built in keyboard (although that has to be exchanged because the space bar has died, already!) and the Apple Pencil.  My hopes for the pencil would be twofold -- that I could use it as a drawing board using the Notes app when I'm teaching on camera in front of a classroom and that it would serve as a tool to draw on quilt photos to audition quilt designs.

With that in mind, I started researching programs that would allow me to do that.  Starting by Googling "best apps for Apple Pencil", I found You Doodle!  I can choose a photo from my camera roll (or take one with the iPad) and draw on it to my heart's content with my Pencil.  Now I can narrow down design choices and then practice them a little, developing muscle memory without wasting fabric or thread!

Working on the presents quilt, I brought in a photo and practiced a bit.  I think I would like a piece of ribbon on either side of the bow at the top of each gift, but I really don't like how that looks.  However, I'm really liking the triple heart arrangement! I started drawing in the upper right hand corner and then decided it would be easier if there was a diagonal line marked to define where the points at the top of the hearts should go. After that, they were easier -- the last set is at the bottom right and i'm pretty happy with that.

 

Now that I've decided on the heart design, I can stitch those in.  Still not crazy about the ribbon, though -- anybody have any ideas for how to quilt those small spaces? I have my Pencil in hand!