Thursday, June 30, 2011

Synchronized Squares: Progress

Well after a late night last night, I have some progress to show for my synchronized squares quilt:

Stack of all the prints sewn onto the solid


This is how they all will be cut up


All of them are cut up

And one of the squares all sewn together

I am still working on on sewing the squares together. Then onto the quilt top. I am supposed to be finished today.... Oops!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Synchronized Squares: All Cut Up!

Look at my pretty fabrics!

Here are all the prints cut up (7.5"x7.5"):


And these are all the fabrics. I am going to use the red Christmas trees fabrics for backing, green for binding, and white layer cakes for background.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Designer Mystery Block of the Month

I have decided to participate in Fat Quarter Shop's Designer Mystery Block of the Month, the link can be found here. I am very excited about this, I should have all the blocks done in May 2012. It looks so pretty! I just received materials for my first block, and I am really excited about this.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Irish Chain Variation Block Tutorial

This tutorial is meant mainly for my Quilting Bee group, as this is the block for my month (July), so I am posting this primarily to simplify all the measurements for everyone. This will be the block we are making:



Supplies:
- Fat Quarter of white fabric with light green dots (will refer to as white)
- either a 10"x10" or 9x11 of light green fabric (will refer to as green)
- 3 10"x10" blocks of blue/brown/darker green fabric (they are mostly prints, so I will refer to them as prints)



Cutting Instructions:
White:
- 4 strips (2 inches wide, about 10" long)
- 16 2"x5" rectangles
Print:
- 5 strips (2 inches wide, about 10" long)
- 17 2"x2" squares
Green:
- 4 strips 8.5"x2"

I cut everything into 2" strips and then cut the smaller rectangles out of those.

Note: I iron my seams open, because I found that you get more precise measurements that way, but you can choose to do whatever works for you.

1. Sew the strips together for the 9-patch squares. (This is the strips you cut before, 5 print and 4 white.) You should end up with 2 Print-White-Print and 1 White-Print-White strips, each about 10" long and 5" wide


2. Cut the strip sets into small strips, 2" wide



3. Sew together into 9-patch Blocks so that there are 5 prints and 4 whites in each. Make sure your square is exactly 5"x5", if not you may want to either trim it a bit or make your seam narrower.



4. Sew white pieces onto the square on the right and left side of your 9-patch block



5. Make rectangles that will end up being 8-inches long, with a 5"x2" rectangle in the middle and 2"x2" print squares on either side.



6. Attach the 8" rectangles to the top and bottom of your 9-patch squares. I found that for matching them up, it really helps to pin the seams that are supposed to match up, and if one of the pieces is shorter, just kind of stretch it out....



7. Iron out your resulting squares, and make sure they are exactly 8"x8", trim if necessary. If it is a bit smaller, mark the 7.5" square inside and compensate when attaching the green "sashing"

8. Make 2 rows from blocks you just made of Block - Green sashing - Block, then trim the green strip



9. Make the middle "sashing, by putting a 2"x2" print block, between two green strips and attach it between the two rows you just made. Trim the ends.

And voila! You should now have a 17"x17" inch block!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Play Quilt with Borders & Quilting

Here are some more pictures of the baby's play quilt. I attached all the borders and quilted the whole thing, I used stitch-in-the-ditch method, but it was a bit hard to do with my not-so-great sewing machine.
This is with all the borders

Corner close-up

In the process of being quilted

All I have left is to attach the binding, which is about 1/4 way done. Look out for pictures of the finished quilt!!!

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Quilting Bee: Block 4

This was another pinwheel block, made modeled after this tutorial. We were sent charm squares (the red fabric), I added the cream. The charm squares were 5"x5". The final square ended up being around 8.75"x8.75". I like the way it turned out. The best part? I made it using my machine and it took me like an hour, as opposed to several days it would have taken me had I done it by hand!