One Piece at a Time

My Tweets Block 12…sigh

Happy Friday Everyone.

I can hardly believe this is the last Tweet of 2011. It’s making me kinda sad here I have to tell you…well sad until I realize that there is still an appliqué border to do (which I am working on and hope to have up really soon). I’m still in love with these little birds.

Anyway, here is the full sized block:

And here are the printer sized downloads:

 

 

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/

or the yahoo group at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/erinsquilters/

and join the fun.

Enjoy!

P.S. For those of you who notice these things I did decide to leave one of the pink flowers off...I found it looked better with an odd number of flowers. If you really want that flower, by all means put it back on!

And the winner is.....

Shirley Rae who is called, appropriatley, Mama Rae...congrat!

Thank you all for sharing the wonderful gradma names with us all. Some brought a little tear to my eyes...some were hilarious

Design Wall Monday

Good morning everyone one. First off I want to thank you all from the bottom of my swelling heart for all the lovely comments and orders of Miss Mimi. Doing these Block of the Month’s is one of my favorite things ever and having such a special group of quilters along for the ride just multiplies the pleasure.

Speaking of BOM’s…it’s time to finish the blocks for My Tweets. The picture is a sneak peak of Block 12. I will be a little MIA this week because I need to get going on that and getting the appliqué border done as well. I will have the block up on Friday.

Head on over to Judy's blog to see what loveliness is out there!!!!

Miss Mimi…the back story

I think I mentioned earlier this week that I was originally working with some super bright fabrics for the 2012 BOM and I was going to call it Bossy Bloomers. Once I decided on the less bossy color scheme I couldn’t really name it Bossy Bloomers so I had a dilemma on my hands. Those colors are pretty not bossy. Then I found this picture.

This is my Mom’s best friend Barbara. I claim her for my auntie even though we don’t have a blood relationship. I do look like her kids though and when we are all together I am often mistaken as a sibling. I love her and I have so many happy memories of her home and her looking after me. I toyed with the idea of calling it Miss Barbra but then I remembered that all her grandchildren call her Mimi. That was perfect! I could go on and on but instead I think I will just have a give-away. If you have already purchased one of these patterns, please enter anyway and I will give you a refund if you win. To enter, please leave a comment telling us what your favorite grandma name is, even if it isn’t yours.

As for me, I have told my children that their kids will have to call me Mimi…but please wait a bit to have kids.

 

Working With Large Patterns…Part 2

Last week I did a short tutorial on how to work with large patterns. This week I have a second method that is a little less time consuming. Since my new quilt Miss Mimi has a LOT of symmetry in it, I can get away with only printing ¼ of the pattern. If you are not in the mood to trace the whole thing out here’s what you can do.

First, mark horizontal and vertical lines on you quilt background…

I do use these water erase markers from time to time. I know some people have had trouble getting the marks out but I’ve found that if I am careful to avoid heat and intense sunlight they erase just fine.

Here is a copy ( not all pretty yet) of ¼ of the pattern. Lay it out on a nice flat surface…maybe even tape it down.

Now, line your horizontal and vertical lines up with the lines on the pattern. From here you either trace the design onto the background fabric or just start basting your appliqués into place.

Easy peesy!

Mimi’s Bloomers Fabric

For next year’s BOM I decided that, since I am truly crazy, I would attempt doing it in two colorways. The first colorway is shown here.

When I first started brainstorming about the BOM I was going to use really really bright colors and call it Bossy Bloomers. Every time I started working on it, however, the color really started to bug me because they were clashing…getting bossy with each other. So I finally had to put them away. As I sat in front of my stash these colors just kept jumping out at me. This is one of my favorite combinations of colors and I just needed to work with them this year because they make me really happy.

Here is the colorway I am using for the smaller quilt (no center block). This is what color people call an analogous grouping since all these colors are next to each other on the color wheel. I find it very soothing and think it would make a really pretty summer quilt for my bed.

Here are my recommendations for fabric for YOUR versions of Mimi’s Bloomers. First off, work from your stash if you have one. You can do this whole quilt from scraps since the pieces are pretty small. You will need ½ yard for stems, so pick your color scheme and then choose a good all purpose green and buy ½ yard of that. For backgrounds, if you don’t want to go scrappy, buy 4 yards of what suites your color scheme. There will be sashing and a border but you can wait to buy that until you have some blocks done to see what will work. I cannot tell you how many times I have invested in border fabric only to find it doesn’t suite the quilt when I am done. The colors for my Miss Mimi quilt are very close to some of the solid-ish fabrics in the Pam Kitty Morning line from Lakehouse Fabrics. If you really need to buy fabric you can find them here:

http://www.fatquartershop.com/Pam-Kitty-Morning-Lakehouse-Dry-Goods.asp?Store_Id=499&T=1

I have started a new tab in the categories section called Mimi’s Bloomers where I will link all the posts for this quilt for easy finding.

Introducing 2012 Block of the Month…Mimi’s Bloomers

Phew! Nothing like a speed appliqué job to make your fingers really sore!

Here it is, the center block for my 2012 BLOM, Mimi’s Bloomers. This BOM is going to run just like My Tweets did this year. There will be free patterns, one per month. If you want to make the large quilt I ask that you purchase the center block, Miss Mimi. At the end of the year there will be finishing directions for a quilt with the center block and a smaller one without the center block. The small patterns for this one are going to be 12” x 12” and the center block will be 26” x 26”. The blocks will be really fun floral sprays. I am, hopefully, going to be doing this in two color ways: the one shown and another in soothing blues, greens and yellows…more on this latter.

Miss Mimi, the center block, is up in the shop and the patterns will be shipping out later this week so everyone can put it on their Christmas and Holiday lists.

I hope you all join me for this…I am BEYOND excited!!!!

The WINNERS are...

The winners of the 100 Blocks copies are:

Nancy, Joan, Terri and Evelyn.

Thanks for playing along everyone!

ALSO for all you social media friends...did you notice I have Facebbook LIKE buttons for each blog post now? It looks like this and is at the botom of each post...go crazy friends, go crazy!

actually it only looks a little like that but you get the idea...

Design Wall Monday

OK, here is a shot of my design wall this fine Monday morning. I am happy (???) to report that I have once again appliquéd my fingers into bloody stumps trying to finish a quilt. This one is the center block for 2012’s Block of the Month and I will have more to say about that later this week. Right now I need to go find the New Skin so I can glue my fingers back together.

For those of you who are worried about missing Block 12 of My Tweets…

DON’T WORRY…you haven’t missed a thing. Block 12 is coming out next week and then I will start working on the appliqué border…which will hopefully be out early next year.(Applique borders can be very time consuming)

Head on over to Judy’s blog and see what other are up to. I will back later today with the 100 Blocks winners.

Let’s Welcome December

This is what it looked like at my house yesterday morning. AND it’s cold, going to be sub-zero tonight! Thankfully my husband cleaned the construction mess out of the garage and I could park in there so my car doors didn’t freeze shut. Nothing like a snow and ice storm and sub-zero weather to get you in the mood for the holidays though!

To celebrate the beginning of December I have 4 copies of the latest Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks to give away. That’s right 4 copies. Just leave a comment telling us your least favorite quilt block to make and I will pick 4 winners on Monday.