As many of you know, I send out free monthly patterns to my Newsletter subscribers, and for the last few months we have been working on a mystery block-of-the-month, the Birds of a Feather quilt.
Well, last month saw the grand reveal, and then I thought I would add a bonus email with instructions for a pieced backing, and then ideas for quilting.
I then one step further and made up a quick video on how quilted my own version in a concentric circles design using my walking foot on my home machine.
Even though this design does take a while, especially on a domestic sewing machine, it is still possible (though I strongly recommend an extension table and quilting gloves) and the time and patience is well worth the effort! I love the texture this design creates and I think it accentuates the idea of the birds flying out of the centre nest. I'm hoping to put this quilt together as a kit soon, so watch this space!
Elsewhere at Sewmotion, I'm in the middle of Festival of Quilt prep madness, surrounded by kits, papers and patterns that all need sorting into boxes! I also came across some tickets for this year's show, so I'm holding a little competition on my Instagram page for a chance to win not only two show tickets, but also one of my new Hoop Art kits - visit my page for more details here. Wishing you all a fun and creative week, linking up with Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday
Have you sat down to start a new quilt, fabric all chosen and pressed, tools and equipment all set up and ready to go, then you read the instructions and you have to cut a million WOF strips? Well not a million maybe, but enough to for your heart to sink. Well, I wanted to share the quick and accurate method I used for cutting over thirty 1" strips to make my new version of my Mosaic Garden Quilt, kit coming soon.
By using the full width of your quilter's ruler and moving that instead of the fabric every time, you're able to cut a lot quicker, believe me! You can see my full tutorial here. The quilt above is just waiting to get quilted - I have something special planned for this baby, so watch this space. Amy over at Amy's Creative Side is holding her annual Blogger's Quilt Festival, this online event is a great opportunity for quilters to enter their favourite creations of the past 12 months in this virtual competition, and for us to be inspired by and vote for these truly stunning quilts. I have decided to enter my Blueberry Park Lone Star wall hanging which was featured in Quilt Now magazine a few months ago.
This was probably the start of my love affair with English paper-piecing, and these fabrics by Karen Lewis just bring the star alive! Please go and visit Amy's post, enjoy and be inspired. I know I said I'd be away this week, I got my dates wrong, so there will now not be a blog next week! Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Needle & Thread Thursday
For my second new quilt kit of the month (!) I decided to develop one of my existing patterns, Snowballs in Spring, this time using these gorgeous Papillon fabrics from Makower. I've named this kit Snowballs Around the World as the blocks are laid out in an off-set Trip Around the World - can you see the centre snowball five rows down, three in? This quilt finished at approx. 52" x 61" so will sit comfortably on top of a single or double bed.
Each of these kits contain 104 pre-cut 5" squares, plus 2.10m of solid ivory for the corners and borders, so you'll have some cutting to do yourself! The kit also includes a 50wt thread, six binding strips in that cute stripe and of course, full colour instructions.
To accompany this new release, I thought I would do a quick tutorial on quilting concentric circles to accentuate the off-set Trip Around the World layout. I know Twiggy & Opal wrote a similar tutorial last week which you can read here, mine is more or less the same, I just start differently.
To create my first circle, I use freezer paper as a guide. Draw around something circular - a cup, glass, use a compass - onto the paper side of the freezer paper and accurately cut out. Use a hot iron to press this into place where you would like your circles to grow out from, in my case it was the centre square of my Trip Around the World pattern. This quilting is done with a walking foot and with the machine's teeth up as normal, so no clever free-motion business here! The trick is to just take it slowly and to gently manoeuvre the quilt around to create each circle. This gets easier the larger the circles become. When you wish to start quilting anywhere on your quilt that's not off the edge into the wadding, you need to bring up your bobbin thread to the top so you can move both top and bottom threads out of the way before you start stitching. So, holding onto your top thread, place your needle down where you want to start sewing, bring the needle up and pull up your bobbin thread, tuck both threads under your foot and out of the way.
How you secure your threads is up to you, on my Snowballs in Spring quilt I left all my ends long and like a good girl, stitched each of them into the wadding at the end - hard work! Luckily my Janome machine has a 'locking' stitch so I decided to use that this time at the beginning and end of each row. This basically just sews a few tiny stitches on top of each other to secure the thread, which you can still do yourself if your machine doesn't have this function. Just take the stitch length down to say 0.6, sew three or four stitches, then take it up to your chosen length for the main stitching, I think I had mine on 2.8 - you don't want them too long else you'll lose the smooth curve in the circle. Moving slowly, stitch around the outer edge of the freezer paper, when you come to where you started, Jayne of Twiggy & Opal had a great tip, if you hold your starting thread ends in front of the foot, you will be able to see your starting point and where to stop sewing. Secure and break thread, and remove the freezer paper.
To start your second row, move your quilt so the left edge of your walking foot is sitting against your first line of stitching which you're going to use as your new guide. Secure your threads as before, and slowly sew your second circle. Try to move your quilt round in small increments to avoid getting sharp angles in your circle.
Carry on sewing circles - when you get to an edge you'll be able to start and end your threads into the wadding which makes life so much easier! As long as you keep that edge of your walking foot against the preceding line of stitching as a guide, your concentric circles should be nicely evenly spaced.
This is a great quilting pattern for so many quilts and always looks impressive! If this quilt kit takes your fancy, get 15% off by subscribing to my Newsletter I'm also having a fat quarter bundle sale this weekend, with all these new fabrics flying in, I want to share the fun! Use the code Bundle20 until midnight on Monday (24 April) and get 20% off all fat quarter bundles.
