Friday Finish

This is the third quilt I quilted the week I was home alone. I just got the binding finished last weekend.

It is the jelly roll race quilt I made at my guild's last retreat using 2.5" strips I cut from my stash. For the back I used a flannel my mom sent me. It says "I love my cat" all over in various fonts.

The best photo I could get of the backing fabric is the one above with Spooky quilt testing for me. I had it laid out on my big tables to trim up the sides before attaching the binding. It received her stamp of approval even before it was finished.

It is now washed and ready to be donated as soon as I decide which group I'd like to donate it to.

New Toy

After using the Accuquilt Studio cutter we have at my LQS for over a year I decided that I needed one at my house.

I got a great deal on the cutter and the dies were also on sale.

I got the circle die on the right because I'm planning to do a quilt that requires 99 circles for  just the border. I haven't counted how many circles the blocks require. I'm not sure I want to know at this point. My Sue Spargo BOM also requires a lot of circles so I'm hoping this will help me with that project too. I got the flower dies on the left mainly because of the small circles on the die.

The half square triangle die will be used for cutting scraps. I love to use HST units in my scrap quilts but I really don't like trimming them down. I'm not an accurate enough seamstress to sew them correctly without trimming, unless I have them cut perfectly to begin with. I've made a few store samples using the die cut HST pieces and they have all gone together so nicely.

I could just use the cutter at the store and I have. But sometimes I'd like to be able to cut on my off days and if I go in to the store I always get sucked into doing something in addition to the project I went in there to work on. I'd also like to be able to cut in the evenings. Now I can!

Winner!

The winner of the pillowcase kit giveaway is Mary Beth.

MaryBeth said...

I'm a follower and I like the too many snowmen kit. thanks for the chance to win.


I've sent you an email Mary Beth. Congratulations! 

And thank you to everyone who entered.

HST Trimming Trick

Click here for the giveaway which ends Monday June 23rd..

I learned a new-to-me shortcut for squaring up half square triangle units. I tried it out last week and was impressed with the results. It was much faster than the way I usually do it (like taking about half as much time) and was just as accurate after a little trial and error for how I need to line things up.

The tutorial I followed is by Little Miss Shabby. She calls it the Epic HST Technique. Click on the link to go to the tutorial.

I found that using a square ruler and my rotating cutting mat worked best for me.

The disadvantage of using a square ruler is that unless it is the exact size you need to cut, you will still have to rotate your unit and make two cuts. Using a rectangular ruler with a drawn on line like she shows in the tutorial you can cut both sides without having to move the ruler or the unit. The advantage to using a square ruler, as opposed to a rectangular ruler, is that you can cut the dog-ears off as you cut the sides.

I was shocked at how quickly I had them all trimmed. Lining up four HST units at a time on my rotating mat also helped speed things up.

I had everything trimmed and pressed in time to play around with them. Below are my three favorite layouts I tried.

The photos only show four blocks. I have enough HST made up to do 12 blocks. I may make more though so I can have more blocks.

Giveaway!

Today I am shamelessly promoting my LQS, Heartstrings and Heirlooms.

We are in the process of getting our online store up and running.  I now view things differently when shopping online. Before I began working at my LQS I had no idea how long it takes to properly list a single item for sale in an online store. I sure hope I get faster, but when you include setting up for photos, taking the photos, and editing the photos it can take 20 minutes or longer per item to get it listed. But enough whining and on to the giveaway!

I'm giving away one of our pillowcase kits. The kits include all of the fabric you need to make one pillowcase plus a free pattern.

I know that one of these kits says "Out of Stock" but I can assure you that we can make more. So choose the one you like best regardless of whether or not the system says it's in stock.

To enter, you need to go to the Heartstrings and Heirlooms online store. Just click the link in the previous sentence and then click on "online store." Look around in the store and on the rest of the website while you are at it. The pillowcase kits are in the KITS category. Decide which one you like best, come back here and leave a comment telling me which one you like best.

If you are a follower of this blog you may leave a second comment saying "I'm a follower and I like _____ pillowcase kit" or something similar. You must include which pillowcase kit you like in your "follower" comment so that I don't have to search through the whole list of comments to find your other comment saying which kit you like.

PR Angels are also appreciated. If you blog about, post on Facebook, Twitter or promote this giveaway in any other way you may also leave a comment (third way to enter). As with the follower entry, please include which kit you prefer in the comment telling me how you publicized this giveaway.

Choose carefully because if your name is drawn you will win the one you chose.

Please be sure that I have a way to contact you if you are the winner. If you are a Wordpress blogger or a no-reply blogger, just leave your email address or blog address in your comment. I will pick a winner on Monday, June 23rd using a random number generator and pop your kit in the mail to you shortly thereafter.

This giveaway is open to everyone no matter where you live.

Good luck!

And if you don't win you can always purchase a kit. It might even get mailed off to you by yours truly!


Edited to add: This giveaway is now closed. The winner of the is Mary Beth.

Finish::Woven Heart

My "sew-cation" is over. I had a great time and got a lot accomplished! I made a list of projects I wanted to work on before the week began. There were 20 items on my list and I finished or worked on 14 of them. Pretty good, I think.

My second finished quilt of the week is my Woven Heart. The first was my Stars & Scrappy Stripes.

I really love this one! The extra time required to cut the solid background fabric and piece it back together really paid off when it came for quilting. The quilting design is simple but I love the texture it creates.

The finished size 45" by 54". I have already made a bag for it since it will be going to my local hospital "quilts for oncology" project. It will be hard to let this one go, but I can make another.

If you'd like to make one you need 70 squares of heart fabrics and 200 squares of background fabric. You can click here to see the first one of these I made with a scrappy background. For the first one I also used individual fabric squares for the heart fabrics rather than using rail fence blocks. The layout is 15 squares across and 18 squares down. You can see the fabric placement in the photo above. Any size squares will work. I used 3.5" squares (which finish at 3"). Bigger squares will of course make a bigger quilt and smaller squares will make a smaller quilt. I used 3.5" squares because I had bunches of left over rail fence blocks that were 3.5" squares and it made the perfect size for my "quilts for oncology" project.

Stars & Scrappy Stripes is Finished

Despite my feline helper, I'm finished with this one.

I did a meander in the stripes, outlined the stars and did a little detail work in the center of each star.

Piecing all those little rail fence blocks took some time, but I love the look! This would be easier to do with a honey bun pre-cut.

Here is the back.

It is now washed and ready to donate as soon as I make a bag for it. It will be given to the oncology department of my local hospital.

The details:

Finished size is 45" by 54"
The pattern is Stars & Scrappy Stripes. Click here to go to the tutorial.