Tag Archives: piecing

Show and tell…

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Jill Isakson sent these photos and the story about this lovely ribbon-winning quilt made by her, Linda Neal, and quilted by Richard Larson The oak leaf border is from my pattern, The Anniversary Quilt. which is in our ebook, Flowering Favorites.

My Lucky Stars, whose applique border is based on your design from the Anniversary Quilt has received a 3rd place award at AQS Quilt Show in Paducah, KY. I did the fabric selection, overall design and piecing, Linda Neal appliquéd our adaptation of your border design, and Richard Larson did the fabulous quilting. Thank you for your inspiration and beautiful border design. It truly is the icing on the cake.  

Regards – Jill Isakson

Well done Jill, Linda, and Richard and thank you for sharing your exciting quilt with us all!

I do love a good review!

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Quilter’s Newsletter has written a review of my book, The Quilter’s Practical Guide To Color. I am honored and grinning from ear to ear!

And Sue (who posts as the Crochet Addict in the UK) wrote a glowing review of our book, Piecing the Piece O’ Cake Way. Click here to read it. If you’ve been wondering whether you can the Piecing book or not, this review might help you decide.

QN-ColorBookReview

Wowie Zowie!

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There’s a quilt in our new book, Piecing the Piece O’ Cake Way, that I called Wowie Zowie. I actually made it in 2 sizes: big bed-size and small baby-size. The bed quilt was designed to go on this bed, to replace that boring gray coverlet…

This is so much better. Wowie Zowie, right?!

This is a queen-size bed and the quilt covers the box spring and the bed rails, just as I intended it to. Angela Walters quilted this quilt for me and she did a terrific job, as always :-)!

Both this and smaller quilt are made solely from half-square triangles. Change the size of the half-square triangle and that changes the size of the finished quilt.

It’s done!

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Before I left town, I put the binding on the last quilt for the piecing book.

BindingWowie copy

I don’t know that I have ever, in my life, made a quilt this big. It’s 118″ x 118″. Angela Walters quilted it and she did an excellent job. I think I would have given up way before I was finished.

I put the thinnest Quilter’s Dream batt in this quilt—the request weight. It turned out to be an excellent choice. This quilt, as big as it is, would have been way too heavy with a thicker batt. As it is, I’m not sure that it’s washable in anything other than a commercial machine. This is a bed quilt with a lot of white and I have cats and grandkids—washing is going to happen.

The piecing book that Linda and I have been working on is a revision of our book, Piecing the Piece O’ Cake Way. That book is out of print, but the information in it is still completely relevant. We, and C&T, decided that it needed to come back in an updated form.

This is a ‘heavy’ re-write, with lots of new information and quilts. It has both fun and actual work. And as of Friday, the quilts and the manuscript are now in with C&T. It feels great to have finished exactly on the date of my own personal deadline.

I know that most quilters do not link Piece O’ Cake with ‘piecing’, but I’m hoping that that will change. We were both piecers first. I hate to toot my own horn, but I can piece just about anything. And to link this train of thought back to yesterday’s post, this is yet another reason that I enjoy teaching an independent study coarse: I get to work with piecing in class!

Summer time is flying by…

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Although my husband tells me that time passes by exactly the same way, minute by minute, day by day, I swear that time moves faster as I get older. It makes him sigh, deeply. At any rate, I can hardly believe it has been a week since I last wrote. (FYI: the new bras are amazing! I hope you found time to shop as well.)

I’ve been working on a new quilt for the revised edition of our Piecing book. I can only show you a snippet of it, otherwise it would spoil the surprise for when the book comes out…

NewProject-Blog

This is the pile of scraps that were left from cutting strips. It’s a very happy quilt!

Scraps-02 copy

I enjoy piecing and am finding it fun to crank out some quilts… as long as I still have applique to do at night :-).

Do you know how to miter a corner?

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I've been piecing more than usual lately. First it was the baby quilts, then it was the Big Fish quilt for Elanor. I needed to get the back made for the fish and I pulled some fabric I've been saving to use for a kid's quilt – from the Castle Peeps Collection by Lizzie House for Andover.

I got the center of the top (below) together before I decided that it really did not go with the fish at all. I added the dark strips top and bottom and am calling this yet another kid quilt (and I have just the child in mind for it – a nephew that never got a baby quilt!).


Castle-Top_01

Those 8" wide border strips around the center had to be mitered to look good. Mitered corners are easy to do if you know how and I do know how. I want to share what I know with you. 

I've made a new Piecing Lessons page. There are only two lessons on it for now; more will come in time. I'm hoping that if you click here the How-To Miter A Corner PDF will open. If not you can get to it from the Piecing Lessons page.

NOTE: In case you don't know, you can save a PDF to your computer from your internet browser. In mine, I go to 'save as' and save it to my computer.

There's a link on the Piecing Lessons to a video that shows how I make triangle squares. To spare you from having to click to get to it, here it is. I hope you find both of these piecing techniques useful. 

 

  

ANOTHER NOTE: We did write a book, Piecing the Piece O' Cake Way, that you may or may not have seen. It's on it's way out of print but it is available as an eBook.Click here to read more. You might find a copy in print if you hunt around the web a bit.