A Bit of Quilting and a Greensboro Local Program!

This was my early start at it yesterday morning.

This is what happens when you wake up at 4am with hive like symptoms and you need to keep your hands busy with sewing so you don’t scratch your arms off!

Christmas binding – scrappy style!

It was fun to sort through my red strips and include even the gifted scraps that arrived from Gayle this week into this binding….fun when it can go right on the quilt!

I needed about 350” of binding…joining these on the diagonal.  It’s going to be great!

I posted on Facebook and Instagram on what do do with this backing fabric that had fold lines:

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Flowers, Shout Outs, Quilts & Chairs!

Dear Aunt Pat Dobson in NZ!

You are not my aunt, but you sure have family over here in the states that love you! I have heard that  you have some nephews and nieces in Oregon that love and adore the exceptional quilts that you have created for them.

These flowers are for you along with this message:

I am not a quilter, but I am a quilting fan due to the spectacular works of art that my Aunt Pat has sent my family here in Corvallis, OR over the years.

The latest gifts were 3 outstanding bed quilts for our 3 children..... Which will be forever cherished.

Pat, is a human being with considerable character and passion who has a wonderment for life. She also speaks highly of you, your talent and the delight with which she inhales your blog.

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Welcome, Quiltmaker Scrap Addicts!

There is a new team roaring and ready to go at Quiltmaker Magazine --

A special branch of quilters ready and willing to dig into their scraps behind the scenes and join me with blocks from my Addicted to Scraps column!

I’m very excited about this team thing that we have going on.

Let me tell you in Diane’s words how this came to be:

Bonnie takes ho-hum and sometimes even ugly fabrics and somehow sprinkles them with fairy dust, and they become showstoppers. It’s a beautiful thing.

Did she really just admit that I send in blocks with ugly fabrics!?  HA!  I do! And I dare this wonderful magazine to PUBLISH photos with those ugly fabrics front and center showing you what I truly believe:

The beauty of the scrap quilt is more than the sum of its ho hum and ugly parts!

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Squaring Up the Square in a Square!

Since last night’s post and Quilt-Cam I have received email requests to PLEASE explain a bit further on how to handle Square in a Square units.

I’m happy to!

Square in a Square units are a main-stay of traditional patchwork, and I love them.  But they don’t always love ME – so I have my way to deal with them.

No special tools required, just a ruler with a good 1/4” marking all the way round the outside edge of the ruler.

Here I’m using my Easy Square Junior.  You don’t need a huge specialty ruler that is way bigger than your unit – that is unwieldy to work with.  This does me just fine.  Just make sure your 1/4” seam allowance line is visible on the outside edge of the ruler.

I’ve written about this before with a simple Square in a Square unit when we did our Double Delight Mystery.  That Mystery is still found under the free patterns tab! THIS is the tutorial written about Square in a Square units then.  This is now, and guess what? It's the same!

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