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Last week I got an email from Beth asking me if I was interested in the Around the World Blog Hop.  Since I enjoy reading other people's answers to these kinds of questions I said that I would love to participate.  But these questions are hard to answer!   1. What am I working on? Right now I am working a project inspired by the fabrics in Hadley.  There are a few prints from the collection included, plus lots of other Denyse Schmidt prints and a few others.  It is a little out of my comfort zone, but a lot of fun.  The quilt is made up of 9 patch blocks and churn dash blocks set on point.   I also pulled fabric today for a baby quilt for a friend of mine.  She has a very minimalist style so I am not quite sure where I am going to go with it, but I think it will involve a lot of white, blues, and grays.   2. How does my work differ from others in its genre? I have no idea how to answer this question because I feel like I am still trying to f...

Before anything else, I need a little advice.  In a couple weeks I am going to be teaching a beginning quilting class to some ladies at church and I am not quite sure what to make in the class.  I am going to have 45 minutes (ha ha, I know, that's not enough time) and we are making a quilt top.  The fabric will need to be cut in advance so that time needs to just be for piecing. Someone suggested that we make rag quilts, but I have never made one and I am not a huge fan so I would rather do something else.  I am thinking that we should just do a baby quilt with big squares (maybe 8" or 10"), but is that too boring?  What would you want to make?  Thanks in advance.  I have never done anything like this so I am a little nervous! Ok, back to the bee blocks.  For August in the do. Good Stitches Wish Circle, Steph asked us to make Friendship Star blocks using this tutorial in pink, red, maroon, aqua, or mustard. September is my month as quilter in th...

I am excited to share this tutorial with you today.  This quilt is pretty quick to put together and is a great introduction to curves since these are pretty easy.  You can read more about the quilt in my original post here . If you have any questions or if you make your own, I would love to hear from you! Cutting Instructions When cutting your shapes it is faster to leave your fabric folded in half.  Kona Navy -  Cut 1 strip 4.25" x WOF.  Subcut into (4) 4.25" x 10".   Cut 1 strip 7.5" x 40" Kona Celestial, Cyan, Capri, and Aqua -  Cut 1 strip 6.25" x WOF.  Subcut into (4) 4.25" x 10". Cut 1 strip 4.25" x WOF.  Subcut into (4) 6.25" x 10". Kona Sky - Cut 1 strip 6.25" x WOF.  Subcut into (4) 6.25" x 10". Cut 1 strip 3.5" x 40".   You can download the templates for the quilt here  (the original link was incorrect, if you downloaded it before the afternoon of 8/26 you should re-download).  Make sure that when...

A while back (more than 2 years actually) I took Rachel's Curves class and made this Scallop Quilt .  It is still one of my favorite projects and I have wanted to try something similar.  But I had no idea how to make templates for my own quilt until I started using  EQ7  recently. I knew I wanted to use some of my favorite blue Kona colors, but I mostly had darker blues in stash so I ordered a few lighter options.  But then they didn't arrive labeled so I am not sure what the 3rd color from the top is (oops).   I think it might be Azure  I was wrong, it's Capri!  The others are Navy, Celestial, Cyan, Aqua, and Sky.  I really need to get a Kona card. I was surprised how quickly the quilt top came together.  It has curves, but they are pretty big and wide and not difficult at all.   If there is any interest I might post a tutorial next week so let me know.   The tutorial is available here.   I quilted it with lots of wavy l...

Today is the first day of school.  Not only will by daughter be starting first grade, but my son will be in preschool 3 times a week for 3 hours.  I don't know if this will mean more time to quilt, clean, or nap, but I will have 9ish child-free hours a week.  I won't get to find out until Friday though since my son's preschool class requires parents to volunteer 3 times a month and I'm on the schedule for today. Photo of me with my kids on Sunday.  I am only including this photo because otherwise this post would have too many words and not enough pictures :) I am looking forward to doing more sewing.  Over the past couple weeks I have been re-thinking my fabric storage and trying to rework my sewing room.  The plastic drawers that were holding my fabric have started to fall apart under the weight (oops!) so I bought an inexpensive dresser to hold everything. Sorting through everything has reminded me that I have lots of fabrics that I want to use.  Tha...

In the past I have admired Electric Quilt form a distance.  I am a loyal Mac user and, until recently, the program was only available on the PC.  Earlier this year they made EQ7 available for Mac computers.  Yay!  I contacted the company and they graciously offered me a copy of the program in exchange for a review.  I am going to try to be as thorough as I can and share what I have learned over the past couple months, and I will continue to share more about the program in the future because I am still learning. So here is my review.  Let me say first that I didn't really know that much about the program.  Up until recently I have primarily done my quilt designing with a pencil and paper.  That method is limiting for me because I am not very good at drawing and it took quite a bit of time.  I have tried Photoshop, but I don't really know much about the program beyond photo editing, and designing quilts took me forever. I have also used Touchd...

If you have been reading my blog over the past few months you might remember that I am making scrap quilts for my Mom and sisters this year (you can see the first two here and here ).  I have 2 more quilts to make this year, including this one, and enough scraps to make at least a half dozen so I imagine that there will be many more scrap quilts in my future.  I may be making scrap quilts for my sisters-in-law next year. Working with scraps is really satisfying for me; I could destash my scraps which would solve my scrap-bin-overflowing-all-over-the-place much faster, but I am attached to them.   Kara, the sister I made this one for, is also the recipient of the Washi quilt that I made almost exactly 2 years ago.  I like to make quilts for my sisters because they are awesome and they all live places that are much colder than San Diego.  I feel like they are appreciated and get used.   I focused on small, square-ish scraps and long, skinny scraps for this ...