No Quarter-Inch Foot? No Worries!

To me, one of the greatest things about being a quilt and kit designer is encouraging other people to take up this wonderful craft that I love so much, and I was so happy to inspire a lovely Dutch lady who bought one of my Quick & Easy Beginner’s Quilt Kits at last weekend’s craft fair.

After a long conversation about our love of the Netherlands, and their love of the UK, I managed to ease her worries about making her first quilt - even the fact that the ‘inch’ (rather than metric) was about to take over her life, in particular the scant ¼” seam allowance. I wrote a blog post about checking the accuracy of your seam allowance last year, but thinking about it again, I wanted to add that you don’t actually need a specialist ¼” presser foot, which many machines don’t include, but that you can use your normal straight stitch foot with a little adjustment of the needle. So I have since added to that tutorial which you can read in full here.

Back at Sewmotion HQ…

As I mentioned in my previous blog, we have a new Vintage Rose Strip Set – a 20pc pre-cut made up of Riley Blake’s Backyard Roses with a couple of co-ordinating Kona Solids.

To celebrate we’re hosting a Giveaway!!! If you haven’t entered yet, or want to tell a friend about this great chance to win a set of these new Vintage Rose pre-cuts – just think of that beautiful quilt you could make – click here to go to my last blog and enter there. The draw will be made on Wednesday 27^th July.

Upcoming Events

This Sunday (24th July) Sewmotion will be at the Teesmade Festival at Preston Park Museum & Grounds in Stockton-on-Tees. This great family event will be exploring the rich history of heritage skills in the area, with live demonstrations of leather working, willow weaving, pottery, foraging and quilting.  
You can then discover the modern-day crafts emerging from Teesside in the Music Room where local makers will be selling their unique handmade items.

 

A new Hexy Kit on the block - and we have a winner!

Thank you to all you wonderful people who entered our Prize Giveaway to win a Mono Flowers strip set and charm pack bundle! I am very pleased to announce we have a winner… Penny H, who on Facebook said these fabrics and colours are very her, so I can’t wait to see what she makes! Congratulations Penny! I have messaged you on Facebook :) 

 

New gems from Sewmotion

As well as our Mono Flowers pre-cuts above, I’ve been busy cutting away and have just released this Japanese beauty.

This Japanese stripper set consists of 40 strips - four each of 10 designs, all from Sevenberry’s Japanese collection, and are priced at £35 each - and don't forget we offer free UK postage! I do love these rich colours with highlights of pink and cream, so Japanese! I have so many ideas of what to make with this, and if I can get away from the computer, I may just do that! 

The other pre-cut released this week is this cute 6-piece Fat Quarter Bundle made up of four prints from Dashwood Studio’s new Fablewood collection, plus two blenders from their Twist range. These bundles are £17.50 each (with free UK postage) - I can see another Beginner’s Quilt Kit coming on ready for the Craft Fair season. 

Talking of craft fairs, our first of the year will be on Sunday 24^th April, 10am-3pm, at The Rainbow Plant Centre’s Vintage/Craft Fair in Nunthorpe, near Stokesley – if you’re local it would be lovely to see you there.

This week, we also have a new Hexy Cushion Kit on the block – this version of our pre-cut hexagon kit features this gorgeous soft pink from Sevenberry’s Japanese range, together with Robert Kaufman’s Essex Linen and a Kona Graphite. 

Each kit includes 10 fabric strips, 80 hexy papers, a Sewline Glue Pen, Aurifil thread and full colour instructions to make a 16”sq. cushion – the perfect portable holiday project, or a great introduction to hand-sewn English paper-piecing.

It seems I've been staring at the computer screen all week, I’ve been updating sewmotion.com and have a new checkout, you can now pay with all major credit cards without having a Paypal account!  Having said that, one of the things I love about writing these blogs is that it makes me realise the amount I actually get done in a week and that I haven’t been stuck at the Mac afterall!

I would just like to leave you with pics of my latest quilt, Monochrome Sunset (soon to be released as a kit). I forget it was only last weekend that we had glorious sunshine, and we managed to take some beautiful shots at our local landmark, Teesside’s Transporter bridge. I hope you like them!

This week I'm linking up with Needle & Thread Thursday over at My Quilt Infatuation, and Sew Fresh Quilt's Let's Bee Social - come and say hello and be inspired!

Designing a quilt back - and a Giveaway!

When working on my latest quilt kit, I realised just how much I love a pieced quilt back! I know there are more pretty extra-wide backings available than ever before, but there's just something about using some of the same fabrics you've used on the front, on the back, and sometimes, depending on the quilting, you can end up with two quilts in one!

It does make me laugh when some people see my quilt backs and then step back in complete awe, as if I'd just scaled Kilamanjaro! Let me tell you folks, pieced backings are really not that difficult! Or should I say, they're only as difficult as you make them - with a little maths and some added creativity, you can make your quilt backs just as beautiful as your fronts!

Read my new tutorial on designing and piecing your own quilt back - hopefully you will be inspired to try your own!

Elsewhere, there is still plenty of time to enter our free Giveaway! To celebrate springtime (well, it seemed so last week anyway) we're giving away a set of our new Mono Flowers Strip Set and Charm Packs. Featuring Riley Blake's Dot & Dash fabrics together with Kona Solids, this monochrome colourway would make a stunning modern quilt, with just a hint of yellow for the spring sunshine (she says hopefully...)

You can enter in a three ways – the more ways you enter, the more chances you have to win:   

a) Like our Facebook page, and leave a comment on the top Post telling me which is your favourite quilting pre-cut and why. If you have quilty friends, why not Share this post and spread the word!

b) Subscribe to our monthly Newsletter to be kept up to date with our latest products, pattern releases and events.

c) Leave a comment below on this Blog post telling me which is your favourite quilting pre-cut and why.

The draw will close at midnight on Wednesday 13th April 2016, so good luck everyone! For full term and conditions of this competition, click here.

This week's I'm linking up with;

* Lorna's Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts
* Needle And Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation 
* and Tips & Tutorials Tuesday at Late Night Quilter - come over, say hello and get inspired!

Spring is here – she says tentatively…

Time to celebrate with a FREE GIVEAWAY!?!

We’ve been busy adding to our fabric pre-cuts collection recently, and one of my favourite is our Mono Flowers range. These fabric strip and charm square packs are made up of six designs from Riley Blake’s Dot & Dash collection, plus co-ordinating Kona Solids in White, Banana and Silver (the charm pack does not include white).

The Mono Flowers Stripper consists of twenty 2½ x 44” (approx.) strips, and the Mono Flowers Charm Pack has forty-two 5” squares. Monochrome is very popular at the moment, and with a hint of yellow as an accent colour, a quilt made from these modern, fresh prints should fit nicely into many modern homes.

Both of these pre-cuts, plus many more to come, are available in our Sewmotion shop, our Folksy shop and on Etsy. The Strippers are £19 and the Charm Packs are £10, with free UK postage! I am also in the midst of designing some new quilt patterns to go with these, so if you’re stuck for inspiration, subscribe to our Newsletter to be kept up to date with our new pattern releases.

Are you inspired already? Or know a friend who will be? Why not enter in our Free Giveaway with a chance to win both a strip set and a charm pack?

You can enter in a three ways – the more ways you enter, the more chances you have to win:

a) Like our Facebook page, and leave a comment on the top Post telling me which is your favourite quilting pre-cut and why. If you have quilty friends, why not Share this post and spread the word!

b) Subscribe to our monthly Newsletter to be kept up to date with our latest products, pattern releases and events.

c) Leave a comment below on this Blog post telling me which is your favourite quilting pre-cut and why.

The draw will close at midnight on Wednesday 13th April 2016, so you have plenty of time, good luck everyone! For full term and conditions of this competition, click here.

We have a winner!!!

I'm so pleased to announce the winner of our very first Giveaway is Heather, who by her comments on Facebook, really needs yet another hobby to add to her already wide repertoire!

Heather gets to choose which of these gorgeous colourways she would prefer - if you would like one of your very own cushion kits which include the fabric, papers, glue and thread to make this cushion top, plus clear instructions introducing you to English paper-piecing - visit our shop, where you can pick one up for £20 with free UK postage!

 

My first movie!

I must have a hundred different ideas floating around my head at the moment, what with more samples for John Louden (more about that next week), my new Hexy Cushion Kits to get into the world, and the patterns, kits and designs begging to be put to paper, my brain can get pretty overwhelmed! So this week, as it was my birthday, I decided to learn something new just to add to the madness!

Here is my first attempt at filmmaking! Haha! Not the best quality I know – I used an old digi-camera I’d forgotten we owned, and an even older version of iMovie. Still, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out, though that tune now drives me insane after hearing it so many times!

In my first film venture, I wanted to share my favourite technique for glue-basting shapes for English paper-piecing, a method that features in our new Hexy Cushion Kits – great gifts for Mother’s Day (6^th March) – click below for more details.

There’s still time to enter our free GIVEAWAY – for a chance to win a Hexy Cushion Kit of your very own – you’ll be addicted to EPP in no time – leave a comment below telling me which craft you find the most addictive – entries close at midnight, Friday 5^th March, and a winner will be chosen at random.

The Hexy Cushion Kit

I am happy to finally introduce the newest additions to Sewmotion’s collection of pre-cut kits – the Hexy Cushion Kit. There have been glimpses of these two cushions on Twitter and Instagram over the last month, but I now have the kit together and available to buy. Yay!

These craft kits are a great introduction to the wonderful world of hand-sewn patchwork. English paper-piecing is a traditional skill that harks back to the very beginning of the history of quilting, where quilters would sit for hours cutting out their shapes, then thread basting them onto papers before sewing them together. They would then unpick all that basting before the quilting even began! Phew!

Thankfully, these days new techniques and clever short cuts make this method a lot quicker than it used to be... not that you have to rush it of course, this is a project you can take with you wherever you go - a long car journey, to your quilt group, or even on holiday, anywhere where you can relax and enjoy this slow(ish) and therapeutic craft.

Each of these kits are £20 with (with free UK postage!) and include:
* 10 fabric strips - four in Robert Kaufman's Essex Linen, four in Kona Pomegranate & two in Kona Heliotrope (this includes two binding strips)
* 80 paper hexagons
* one Sewline Glue Pen
* one grey Aurifil 50wt thread for piecing
* one 20" square of wadding
* full, easy-to-follow instructions.

I have included the square of wadding in these kits for those who haven’t yet got a stash of wadding off-cuts, and would need to buy a ridiculous amount just for one cushion. 

However, I haven’t included the panel backing that you need when you come to quilt it as it depends on which method you use. If you choose to machine quilt, I suggest using a square of calico as your backing, however if you choose to hand-quilt, I would use a square of butter muslin or something equally as thin so you can stitch easily without putting too much pressure on the needle, or your fingers!

I have also left it up to you as to which backing you would like, though I do have a tutorial on inserting a zip here. For the invisible zip method I used one piece 7” x 16½” and one piece 14” x 16½”, with a 18” zip. I trimmed any excess fabric before attaching the binding which I did in exactly the same way as I would on a quilt, you can learn more about this in my Beginner’s Quilt – The Binding tutorial.    

I'm really excited about these new kits, and what better way to spread my excitement than to host a Giveaway! So if you would like to delve into the joyful and highly addictive world of English paper-piecing, or if you're like me and just can't get enough, simply enter by leaving a comment below telling me which craft you find the most addictive.
For an extra chance to win, you can subscribe to our newsletter to hear all about our latest products and special offers. 
As it's my birthday week, I've decided to extend this Giveaway offer - a winner will now be picked at random at midnight on Friday 5th February!

This week I'm linking up with Lorna's Let's Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts, and Crazy Mom's Quilt's Finish It Up Friday


If for any reason you are unable to comment on here, you can leave a comment and enter on my Facebook page.