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I want to send a special THANK YOU and Hug out to blog reader Lori for setting up a Yahoo Group for people working on my designs. I cannot tell you how thrilled and flattered I am. It's such an honor to see what people do with my patterns.
The Yahoo Group can be found at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/erinsquilters/
I have joined and will be available for questions and suggestions.
Hi everyone,
Just wanted you to know that Miss Kelly, the center block for My Tweets is back in stock...I keep forgetting to check that.
Happy Friday Everyone.
As promised here is block 2 of the 2011 Block of the Month My Tweets.
Since these blocks finish at 14” and many of the blocks are asymmetrical I want to talk about printing your patterns. Each pattern has four downloads. Print each of these and tape them together to make your full sized pattern. Here is a diagram for doing this.
We will do this the same way for all the patterns since it allows the patterns to be easily printed on a home printer.
For those who like to share please go to the FLCKR group at
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1604241@N21/
and join the fun.
I hope everyone has as much fun making these blocks as I have had designing them.
Wouldn’t it be fun if we could all go fabric shopping together? Or if I could have office hours at a quilt shop and you could all come in and show me your fabric personally. That would be so cool, except of course I would have to steal all the fabric from you and then I would get put in jail and I’m not sure they allow quilting and blogging in jail.
Anyway.
It is a HUGE dream of mine to someday design a line of fabric for one of my BOM quilts( tap tap any fabric companies hear that out there?) but for now I’m just going to give you a little coaching on what works for me. Even though I have taken color classes and read about color and all that I keep coming back to this…you have to start with what you LOVE. It sounds so simple when I say it like that but it is true.
The first thing I do when I’m looking for fabric for a new quilt project is look for a multi-color fabric that I just love. In the top example you see it’s the Happy fabric from Me and My Sister +Moda. From there I go looking for tone on tone solidish fabrics in the colors I see in the multi-color print. You can see from the photo that I have two different pinks, one light and one dark. I also have two different yellows, purples and turquoise blues. When I am picking these I try to get a couple of different values so they don’t look exactly alike. I also go to my stash and “shop” from that.
As far as greens go I have a general rule: YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY GREENS! As you can see from the picture I have six different greens in a range of values. I find having a lot of greens helpful, especially if you are doing an appliqué border.
In summary, start with what you love. Pick at least two values of tone on tone solids of each color to coordinate. Buy as many greens as you can find. Shop your stash. If you run out you can always buy more.
The last piece of very useful information: Buy ½ yard cuts. They wash much nicer.
Hope that helps, I’m off to finish Block 2 for Friday.
I realize that My Tweets is a tad more complicated than Florabunda so I am trying hard to have tutorials on things that can make this an enjoyable experience. Here is a little tutorial on beaks and tiny circles that should help you with your blocks.
A little note on small appliqué bits, it is OK to start big and pare down. When I make the beaks I cut the part that goes under the head much bigger than I need too to make things easy on myself. I don’t even trim it after because my birds are purple and the beak fabric won’t show through.
To make the beaks I’m using freezer paper. Sometimes with little tiny things it’s nice to be able to stick your templates down to the fabric. Here I have pressed the beak template to the wrong side of the fabric.
After cutting out the fabric I dab a little starch onto the seam allowance.
Press.
Dab more starch on the other side and press again.
Here is the beak before I turn under the point.
To turn under the point I use my finger to bend that bit of fabric back onto the back side of the beak.
Dab with starch.
Press
Viola…a nice pointy beak!
For small circles I have a few strategies. If I can I like to use a batik for these because the fabric doesn’t unravel as easily when I stitch close to a cut edge. Sometimes this doesn’t work out so then I just start big and cut. Here I am using Karen Buckley’s Perfect Circles. I cut a larger piece than I need and trace around the circle.
Next I sew my running stitch all the way around the traced line.
Finally I very carefully cut some of the excess fabric from the seam allowance so it will all draw in when pull the thread. After this I just starch and press as I’ve always done.
Hope that helps make things go better for My Tweets!
Last week I received my final goody box from McCall’s and it was HUGE. I’m already going through withdrawal. I just wanted to thank all the lovely lovely sponsors of the contest and the really great staff at McCall’s for making this such a great experience.
Pssst…I hear they are going to do this contest again…so I’ll be looking for all y’all’s quilts over there!
So I survived the week of WILD Colorado weather. On Monday I got caught in a blizzard on my way home from a class. On Tuesday I woke up to -12˚F temperatures and had to drive through more snow to get my kids to school. Today, I have the windows open and it is 60˚F outside. My poor little body has no idea what’s coming next. I couldn’t feel my toes until Thursday and now my feet are sweating. Yeesh!
Anyway, I’m back in the proverbial saddle blog-wise and here is my offering for today’s Design Wall Monday.
Next week there is going to be an Aurifil (swoon) blog hop put together by Pat Sloan and you can see my little block in the picture. I also have Block 2 almost ready to launch so look for that on Friday. The valentine-ey quilt has the second corner basted on and I am hoping to get that one finished as well.
Head on over to Judy’s blog and see what everyone else is up too.
Hi Everyone, I’m going to be off-line for the rest of this week so I can get ready for all the blog excitement I have coming. Next week I hope to have My Tweets Block 2 up for you. The week after that I have a special surprise, my first ever Blog Hop…it involves Pat Sloan, Aurifil thread and a free pattern…try not to swoon. I also have two more ruler tutorials coming your way, complete with give-aways. Yikes, I’d better get cracking! Hugs!
Dya, who wrote
"No, there is no super bowl over here, but I hope I can watch speedskating, while sewing. Does that count ? :-) I'm sorry you didn't win, I realy liked your design best."
Gosh, Thanks Dya! Your e-mail is on the way. Thanks to all of you for playing!
