Snowalong Sew-along Starting Monday!

Here’s another one!

I hope you’re not tired of snowflakes yet because I’m hoping for a blizzard!  The fabric kind, with no cold and no shoveling. Let’s have a snowflake sew-along!

You can pop over to the new Snowalong page on this blog for all the details. (click the link or the tab at the top of this page).  In a nutshell, starting Monday I’m going to make my snowflake block patterns available as a free download for a limited time so you can sew along with me, and I will host a weekly linky party so we can see the snow flurries in everyone’s sewing rooms. 

There will be one new pattern for a 9” snowflake block each week.  Depending how you color it, you can make at least 3 different snowflake variations from each pattern!  It will be fun to see which versions different people choose to make, or what new ones pop up. 

This will be a very relaxed party.  Make one block or make many, it’s up to you!  If you miss a week, join us the next week.  Pop in and pop out again, we’re really very informal here.  If you don’t have a blog but want to participate, send me your pictures and I’ll share them for you.

I have been playing with layouts and colours.   Winter colours, Christmas colors.  Big quilts and little ones. I’ll share some of those during the Snowalong too. 

Oh! Oh! Oh!  I even learned how to make a blog button for this Snowalong!  Feel free to grab the code from the Snowalong page!

I’ll leave you with an EQ drawing of the quilt I’m probably NOT going to make, because it really needs a whole lot of snowflakes…but I suppose it could be a long-term project…

Starlight Wishes

It’s in the shop! (Click on the "Pattern Shop" tab above to visit.)  I finished the final edits to my Starlight Wishes pattern yesterday.  Thank you to my blog friend Deb for testing the pattern for me.

Deb has a way with color.  Her version of this quilt just pops.  She chose to make the quilt’s borders the same color as the background.  That made the prairie points float.  And her contrasting binding  does wonderful things too. I’m taking design notes!

Comparing Deb’s quilt with the version I made got me thinking about how fabric choices affect a design.  When I designed this quilt I had a particular picture in my mind and couldn’t see anything else.  Yesterday I went back into EQ and played with different colorways.

Look at these drawings:  same pattern, but very different quilts! (The first one is inspired by Deb’s but hers is better, go check it out!)



I was surprised at how well it looked in Civil War reproduction fabric (middle quilt). It’s a reminder that stars are very versatile.  They can wear any fabric you throw their way.

The last quilt is a calmer one, which would suit some people better than my usual brighter ones!  Someone on a Facebook quilting group suggested it looks like a trellis and would look interesting with flowers and vines appliqued over it.  I’d have to brush up on my applique skills, but I can see it.

These last pictures are a blast from the past.  I thought you might like to see where the inspiration for Starlight Wishes came from. I never did finish the Kansas Dugout table topper on the left, but I saw stars in it and played with that idea in the doll quilt on the right.  Then I let it all simmer for 3 1/2 years until I needed to make a baby quilt this summer.  And there you have it.

Old habits…

In anticipation of cooler weather, when I would enjoy having a quilt in my lap as I quilted it, I made this lovely armchair sewing caddy (Sit & Stitch Pincushion, pattern by Cindy Taylor Oates, Taylor Made Designs).

It’s a great improvement over my previous setup, involving lining up my gear along the armrest, and knocking it off the armrest, and losing stuff.  That pincushion, however, is possibly defective. Well, it isn’t the designer’s fault.  I followed all her directions to get a well formed pincushion stuffed with crushed walnut shells.  You may, however, note that there are no quilting needles stuck in this lovely pincushion.

Old habits die hard.  My family is still hearing “Shoot, where did I set my needle?”

If we’re lucky, the quilt is doing double-duty as a pincushion.

I am making progress, slowly, on my as-yet-unnamed kaleidoscope quilt.  This week I printed out a line drawing of it to help me keep track of how much I have completed.

I didn’t touch this quilt all summer, so there hasn’t been much progress. My husband thought this looked discouraging, but I find it motivating.  I can’t easily spread the quilt out at the end of every little bit of snatched stitching time to survey what my progress looks like as a part of the whole, but it’s easy and satisfying to colour in those bits I just finished quilting and watch the coloured part of the page grow.

This evening I hope to sit and quietly hand quilt for a couple of hours, then break out the coloring pencils again.

Linking up with Slow Sunday Stitching over at Kathy’s Quilts.