Saturday, February 28, 2015

Charm Square Quilt Along Part 7

Hello everyone! Welcome to this week's block in our Charm Square Quilt Along.  I am enjoying all of your blocks you are sharing on flickr and in the link party below.  All of these color arrangements are inspiring!


Charm Square Sampler Quilt Along

If you are new to this QAL, visit the old posts.  To get fabric requirements and ideas, click HERE.


STEP ONE: Layout 16 of your HSTs that were created in part one.


STEP TWO: Sew vertical columns together.  I like to pair column two on top of column one so that all HSTs are in the correct orientation when I take them from the layout to the sewing machine.  Then repeat with column 3 on top of column 2 and then complete with column 4 on top of column 3.



STEP THREE: Pressing seams and pin-match points.  By now, you know that I am picky about this.  I enjoy the "X marks the spot rule"--but I also know that it is important to press seams to avoid bulk.  No one wants to quilt through 8 pieces of fabric together! 

How the seams are pressed to avoid bulk in the row intersections.

X marks the spot!
See where the threads cross?  "X" marks the spot!

Now, these work great for our "beginner blocks" but in this block and the last block, we have a "hidden X" to pin through to avoid blunting our seams.  It has to be this way or there will be too much bulk in our intersections.

Here is a close-up of  what I call the "hidden X".  You can still see where to pin.
The top row will have two "hidden X" to pin-match.

STEP FOUR: Sew the three rows together and press it open.  All done!
VARIATION:  If you were to swap rows 1 and 2 with rows 3 and 4 in your final row seam, you can get this variation instead (outer rows are now inner rows).  It's fun to play around.
Row-swap variation.

Now it's your turn to share!  Enjoy!
Share your projects here:

flickrPool

Link party:







Monday, February 23, 2015

KISMIF #40

Welcome to Keep It Simple, Make It Fun!

All this week, I have been binding 5 quilts.  So, not too much to show you as they are patterns that haven't been released yet.

Thank you for your patience when I got behind by one week on the QAL and all of your good wishes.  Yes, my exam went well enough, I scored 87%, so I'll take it!  I was telling my husband last night I'm not sure why I am attempting graduate school with 4 kids, preparing our yard for horses and still quilting...just a little nutty!

Also, I still have the fabric giveaway open until March 14th.  Your comments have me laughing so hard!

Some of the funniest ones so far:

Machine quilting is like.....

Like wrangling a small child into a sweater that they're on the verge of growing out of!
eating chips, just one more motif before I quit. Aggghhh! Ran out of bobbin!
...wrestling an octopus.

Ketty Nester

machine quilting is like a scary story... I want to do it, but don't know how it will end!  
Pretty funny stuff!
My favorite project shown on KISMIF last time was by Afton Warrick.  Her pillow to accompany her Layer of Charm blog hop quilt was adorable and a great use of leftover half-square triangles. I'm choosing to feature her this week and as such she can choose a free PDF download pattern from me by scrolling through my Craftsy and Etsy shops.


Now it's your turn...what have you been up to do "Keep It Simple and Make It Fun" (KISMIF).