Saturday, November 23, 2013

Fabric Give-Away Winner!

Congratulations to Yvonne Myers!  She won my Connecting Threads fabric give-away!  Thank you to everyone who visited and commented and my new followers!  I appreciate you all!

Here's a picture of the Botanical Beauty fabrics line she won! Until next time, Happy Quilting!
Botanical Beauty Quilting Fabric

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Flying To Paradise QAL Part 4

It's time to finish up that quilt top for the Flying To Paradise QAL.  All of the diagrams and instructions are shared previously.  Today is a WiP Wednesday which I'm sharing with Freshly Pieced,  My Quilt Infatuation  and Crazy Mom Quilts.

Without further delay, here's some action photos of piecing together all of those flying geese units.

It is important not to blunt the tops of the triangles.  To accomplish this, sew with the point on top and try to get your sewing machine needle down into the X where the previous threads have crossed.  In the photo, look for the yellow-head pin as it is jammed into the exact point we're trying for.  This will ensure a perfect seam.

Here's another photo of the alignment going into the sewing machine.
Once these are sewn, the left and right hand sides used 11 flying geese blocks while the top and bottom required 15 blocks.  After I ironed on this border, I became really excited.  Just look how well those colors pop and play with one another!  BTW, many thanks to the folks at Connecting Threads for sponsoring this QAL.  You can purchase the batiks used in this project HERE.Light & Bright Batik Fat Quarter Sampler.

My ironing board never looked so good!

Once I reached this point, I was so happy with this quilt that I considered just quilting this much and binding it.  However, Connecting Threads was so generous to me that I had plenty of the white to add the outer borders.

The Flying To Paradise quilt top without the outer white border--draped on my quilting frame.


The completed Flying To Paradise quilt top.
I love to convert pictures to gray-scale.  Here is the same quilt with the yellow filter on.  It shows lights and darks and helps you choose different fabric lines to create the Flying To Paradise quilt top from.

If you would like to purchase a down-loadable PDF of this quilt pattern in its entirety instead of scrolling through all of the posts, click HERE.

Thanks for visiting!  I hope you have enjoyed this QAL project as much as I have!  BTW, there's only two more days to enter my fabric give-away so leave me a comment HERE.



 photo BlogButton_zps6185a816.jpg

Monday, November 18, 2013

Tuesday's Tutorial--Threadpaths for Machine Quilting--1--Butterfly

Well, after some thought, I decided it would be a good idea to share my machine quilting ideas with you.  In my last post, I shared with you a simple butterfly.

To create this butterfly, you need to know some basics first.  In most circles, they call the four motifs combined to create this little cutie a "clam shell."



When following a machine quilting pantograph, start at the star.  The number refers to the "Pass" number, or how many times you start, stop and connect at the starting star.  To get some practice with this technique, you can print & tape this page and trace it or use a dry-erase marker board to do it over and over until you feel comfortable.  If you are trying to do this using a domestic sewing machine, have someone hold the dry-erase marker vertical for you while you move the dry-erase board.  With a little practice you can awesome clam shells.  These are great motifs for back-ground fillers.

Now...on to creating the butterfly.  The butterfly is simply one center point--which I like to center inside of a block (easily marked using an air-eraseable pen) then repeat the clam shells in four directions.  If you notice, the top two wings are 3 echo-repeats of the  shell while the bottom are only two repeats.  This keeps the wing proportion nice.

When creating a motif, I think it is useful to show how to enter and exit the motif while using continuous thread paths.  It is not necessary to tie on and off to center this motif.  The "enter" line is the 4-pointed cross, the "begin patograph" point is the blue star and the "exit" line is the lightning bolt.  After that, just follow the numbers and the direction arrows shown on the motif.  In no time you will have free-handed a cute butterfly on your quilt! 


Until next time, happy quilting!  Also, if you like this post, share it!  Here is my blog button for Tuesday's Tutorials.


 photo BlogButton_zps6185a816.jpg

I'm also sharing this post with several blog-hop sponsors.  Check my side-bar for instant access and thank you for hosting!  Anything Goes Monday @ stitch by stitch, Linky Tuesday @ Free Motion by the River, and Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story.