Narragansett Blues, Bedford Style!

So many great beginnings going on!

Every year that I teach in Bedford for Mary’s Quilt Shop, I look forward to meeting the newbies – the ones who haven’t been here before, the ones who are just starting on their quilting journey.

Perhaps this is their first ever quilt class – and there they are, sitting somewhere in the middle of 52 quilters, nervous that they won’t do things right, or that their colors are all wrong, or that their quilt finish won’t turn out as nice as the quilt in their dreams.

My goal – for EVERYONE to feel that sense of success – when pieces measure what they should and things fit together.

And this was the perfect day for a newbie day.  No triangles!

It all starts with four-patches!

Whether quickly made from random strip sets, or sewn from sets of scrap squares that have been waiting to be used in just the right project – even small things matter.

Whatever your color preferences – Go for it!

My biggest best tips include:

Measures the strip set width to be sure your seam allowance is behaving correctly!

Match two short strip sets with right sides together when cross-cutting.  It’s HALF the cutting time with zero matching time since four-patch pairs are ready to be fed through the machine ready to go.

Know “IF” spinning the seams on the back of the four-patch will help or hinder your pressing when units are joined together.  With some quilts it works, with others it does NOT (Today’s Moth in the Window workshop coming up is a DO NOT SPIN example.)

Make sure that all of your four-patches are feeding through the machine consistently in the right direction – Dark square at the top of the pair hitting the needle first, with the top seam allowance pointing TOWARD the needle, not down toward you.  Seams will spin clock-wise on the back side.

Seams that spin the right direction on these babies nest EVERY TIME!

When it’s 100 degrees out – we sew BAREFOOT!

Chris has her 3 center rows together!

Someone has a bit of OCD.  LOL!

(But aren’t they pretty?!}

Love these ladies!

When you dress to match your project! 

We all love Shawn – she is a kick!

Thanks for the awesome day, ladies!

As always – it flew by far too quickly.

Click to Play:

When class was over, our group made a grand exodus while the room as transformed into our lecture location -

I always have a great time sharing my quilts and the stories that go with them with these ladies.  And because it was a driving trip I was able to stick in a couple of oldies that don’t travel with me usually – and my two recent finishes  - with incomplete binding attached – came along for the ride too.

Mary’s Quilt Shop gives great door prizes!

I loved how excited this gal was to win one of my Festival of Quilts puzzles, hot off the press!  Have you picked one up?  Ask your local shop to get them in, or order from Amazon.com!  Hours of scrappy quilt fun ahead in puzzle form.

It was straight to head after a long double-duty day.  It’s another hot one ahead in Bedford, but the quilters will be comfy and cool stitching away to Moth in a Window at the American Legion Hall all day long.

Oh, and before I forget.  Yes, I know my website is unavailable due to maintenance. I’m having some work done on it while I am away, and it should be back and functional after the weekend.  There is no need to send “Did you know your website is down” messages and emails as I do know and I can’t reply to them all. 

Thanks for understanding!  I thought the best time to have things taken care of was while I was away on the road.  Soon to be back, new and improved!

Quiltville Quote of the Day -

Put some action behind those dreams!

Have a wonderful Sunday, everyone!