A commentary that needs to be read

I don't usually link to these type of things, but I feel strongly about this. 

It was written by my friend Lisa who blogs at A Woman A Day.

A little background...
A woman posted all about her labor of love in several facebook groups. She decided that she would make 62 dresses by her 62nd birthday, which was this week. They were for Little Dresses for Africa. There were several people who did not like the fact that she did this for people in another country and made it known (FYI those comments have been taken down). My feeling is that this woman worked so very hard and gave many hours of her time and lots of money in fabric, she did a wonderful selfless thing and shame on anyone who said something derogatory. Why anyone in  the quilting community would fault her for that is beyond me. 

Here's a link to the blog post about this. Please check it out...its something everyone in all walks of life need to hear.  

Doing the Twilight Tango!

Yesterday I taught my first Twilight Tango Class at Cabbage Rose in Fort Worth.

I had two of my favorite new friends as students, which was nice, it helped me get the kinks out. I taught this pattern differently that the directions. I foundation paper pieced it. That's my chosen technique with just about anything with points, with the exception of HSTs. 

Here's Susan and Pixie with the first block.

I'm very proud of these two! This was the first foundation paper piecing project ever, I think they are hooked. 

Didn't they do GREAT!

A free app you have got to try!

Yes you heard me...something for FREE!

My friend and partner in crime (well a friend with no crime), Lisa (who blogs over at A Woman A Day) showed me a great app for us quilters who don't even know what we have in our stash.  

Its called Fabric Stash and is the bees-knees. I spent about an hour and a half going thru my batik bin yesterday. I now know what every piece of fabric I have in there looks like and how much I have of each fabric. 

Isn't that nifty?

Besides keeping track of your fabric and quantity, you can add what the fabric is made of (cotton, wool, linen etc) and what type of fabric (batik, calico, fleece etc). Also where you purchased it, the date and price, and of course the name of the line, name of the fabric and the manufacture. But the coolest feature is that you can say where it is located in your stash! And of course all the fields are searchable. 

The best thing is that you get to feel and be surrounded by all you beautiful fabric, what quilter doesn't like that? 

Here's the link http://www.stashstar.com/

I hope you have as much fun as I have with this app.

More Twisting

Today some friends of mine are coming over to Twist with me! That's right I am teaching them how to use the twister ruler!

The Twister ruler is my favorite and I have all the sizes, Although I haven't used the teeny tiny one yet.

Have you used one?

I am currently working on a butterfly one and its huge! Here's the half I have done. It finished at 75" x 75", so you can imagine how big it is when I sew the 5" squares together before I Twist them. It was done at a retreat in January.

The secret I have found is to cut 1 row at a time and immediately sew them together in a row. Otherwise you will have a not so fun puzzle on your hands...believe me.

Happy Twisting!

My Computer Terminals

Have you seen the Type fabric from Windham Fabrics?

 

I just love the quirkiness of this fabric line and as soon as I saw it I knew I needed to make something for my office. To me this fabric screamed computers so here's my Computer Terminal Wall Hanging. I have a PDF file available for free, just email me for it.

Now I'm off to work on my next project.

Bow Tie Ric Rac

My first finished quilt of 2013! Bow Tie Ric Rac!
I made this early last year with the fabric line Spin by Windham Fabrics, but had not quilted it until now. One reason was that I didn't know how I wanted to quilt it. I wanted to do something more than stitch in the ditch, but didn't want to long arm it.

I decided to hand quilt it, or at least use my version of hand quilting. I love using perle cotton #8 in my projects and decided to outline the 'ric rac'.

 

 

It feels so good to already have 1 quilt finished this year!

If you would like a PDF version of this pattern email me and I'll send it to you.

A New Year for your machine too

Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season was wonderful. Now that I am putting away the decorations and finally finding time to do lots of quilting I decided to wish my machine a Happy New Year too. I cleaned, oiled and changed her needle and now she is purring so nicely. It hadn't been too long since I cleaned her but it's still a good idea.

So today I want to remind y'all to give your baby a good cleaning to make your new year of quilting more enjoyable to both of you. Here's a pic of my first baby, a Bernina 210.

I don't have a pic of her big sis, but here's what she looks like. She is a Bernina 630 QE and I absolutely love her!

So why not wish your machine(s) a Happy New Year with me!

A Quilt For My Sister

I started working on this quilt top a long time ago and when it was finished I knew this one had to be for my sister Barbara.

I used Central Park fabric and broken dishes blocks. When I was making them I had no idea what I was going to do with them blocks, then things just started coming together...has that ever happened to you?

I call this Broken Broken Dishes.

I was able to surprise her with this quilt when I went to Florida in October. The best part of making quilts is the look on someones face when you give them a quilt, don't you agree?

Till next time,

Some New Finishes

Hi everyone! I am just now getting the quilting bug again and have a special quilt that i made for my Mom to show you. This pattern is called Modern Ease from Amy Ellis' book Modern Basics. Amy has a great blog called Amy's Creative Side, so be sure to check it out. I used Bella Butterfly fabric by Moda. I call the quilt Modern Mom.

Quilt on Mom's couch

 

 

Here's the tag on the back.

 

This is one of my favorite quilt , maybe because it was for my Mom or maybe it's that I am in love with this pattern. I have made 2 others quilts with this pattern and have 1 more planned.

Stay tuned for more quilt finishes.

EQ7 Winner

How I wish I could give each and everyone of you a prize, your comments were great!

As of this moment 'Apricots' is winning by 11%. Here's the link again so you can check out the results.





Yesterday I played some more with EQ7. I registered for the FREE online BOTM class on Craftsy by Amy Gibson. One of her February blocks is made with HST's and you know how they are my favorite thing to use in quilting, I knew I just had to make a chunky chevron quilt using the block she showed us.  I wanted to see how it would look in the color and size I wanted to make so I plugged it into my EQ7. Here's my finished result. The colors are much brighter, I'm going to use the Crazy Daisy fabric I ordered from FQS a while ago. There's so much that you can do with the program.

And just for fun I did this same design in the Quilt Design Wizard pretty easily too. The QDW is a great first step to use.

Now for the winner of the EQ7 program...

Here are your random numbers:

53 

Timestamp: 2012-03-27 16:57:40 UTC

Congrats to Leah! you are number 53 and the winner of the EQ7 program! Leah has a quilting blog called Leah @ L3 Designs and does some great work.

Come back tomorrow for the continuation of my blog anniversary celebration with a goodie from Fat Quarter Shop. To get you ready for your entry tomorrow check out the FQS's It's Sew Emma patterns. Come back tomorrow to see how you can get in on the fun!

Thanks again to EQ for taking part in my blog anniversary celebration!

Where have I been?

I hate when bloggers apologize for being absent on their blog and yet I find that I have been absent too long. All I can say is that life got in the way.

For those of  you that have emailed me, I appreciate you looking out for me :) I am fine now and will start blogging again this week starting tomorrow with some Fat Quarter Shop fun and the announcement of the winner of the EQ7 package.

Till tomorrow

Disappearing 9 Patch and EQ

If you are looking for the EQ7 giveaway click here!

On my last post I showed you some Disappearing 9 Patch quilts I made. Then I remembered this wonderful charm pack of California Girl by Fig Tree that I got and knew that I had to use those wonderful charms for a Disappearing 9 Patch project. Plus I have the cutest mini charm pack of California Girl to use for this also. I don't have enough for a big quilt, but I am playing around with some other blocks to add to this project from other Fig Tree lines.

What would a project be without some kind of tutorial from me? And given that the series for the week is EQ7 I got some more play time with my computer as well.

One of the great things about EQ7 is the ability to bring in your own fabric swatches that you need. It's great to have that ability to really see what the block or quilt will look like. I imported the California Girl fabric swatches and had tons of fun with it.

Here's a quick tutorial on how to make a Disappearing 9 Patch quilt. Note - I am thinking of putting all my tutorials on a separate blog to make the tutorials easier to find, what do you think of that idea?

Stay tuned for my finished Cali Girl quilt :) and a giveaway of a California Girl charm pack!

If you are looking for the EQ7 Giveaway click here!

Yesterday I went to the monthly meeting of Quilt Sitters at The Berry Patch. It's held the 2nd Saturday of each month from 1:00 - 3:00. My friend Gail leads it, she shows us different blocks and ways to use them in quilts. There's always lots of eye candy from Gail and others. Yesterday it was rainy and dreary and was the beginning of Spring break here so lots of people were missing, but I'm sure everyone will be back next month.

Yesterday we saw how to make a disappearing 9 patch quilt and lots of different ways to use the blocks. The first quilt I ever made was from a pattern called "Tossed Nine Patch" from Eleanor Burns. It took me a while to realize that it was really a disappearing 9 patch made with the same center block. Here's a pic of it and another quilt that I made with the pattern after that. You will notice that all the corner squares are green in the wall hanging. I have this hanging in my living room to show me where I started from. The seams don't all match (very few do) and I had no idea what 'stitch in the ditch' meant so I quilted a quarter inch away from the ditch. On the quilt below I used a white for the corner squares.

Here's another Disappearing 9 Patch quilt I made last year. My son Bryan stole this and rumor has it he can be seen cuddled under it a lot. I made this one scrappy and is the quilt I use for my background on this blog.

Every year Quilt Sitters picks a project to work on. Last year was a Border Round Robin that looked like lots of fun, I started too late to get in on the fun, but loved seeing every ones work. This year we are making Quilts of Valor. At last count they were over 300 quilts behind their goal. Gail showed us a wonderful patriotic quilt that was actually started on September 11, 2001. The group she was with had planned to start a patriotic quilt that day. Here's a pic of her quilt.

Isn't it great? Here's my friend Julie with the block she made from last months block pattern. She made one for the Quilt of Valor and one for a Baby Quilt we are making for Project Linus.

Then came the eye candy. Here's some of the quilts our members made.

So that's what I did yesterday. What did you do?

Blog Anniversary Give Away #1

Announcing the first of several great giveaways for the month!


As many of you have guessed the first giveaway is your very own EQ7! I know everyone wants to get their hands on this gem of a program and here's how you can get in the drawing.

You must be a follower of Craizee Corners to enter, but you don't get an entry for that (I can check very easily), it's just a pre-requisite.

For your entry go to the Fabric of the Month page on the EQ7 site and vote for your favorite palette, then come back here and tell me which one you voted for. Simple as that...no jumping thru hoops with a bunch of ways to enter.

And while you are there why not check out the other fun things EQ offers to go along with the program.

This giveaway will end on March 13th at 11:59 PM. I will call Tyler the next morning and ask him to pick a number randomly for the winner, it only seems fitting that he be Mr. Random for this giveaway since it is his quilt, Floating Squares, that I showcased earlier. 

Thanks to the Electric Quilt Company for celebrating my blog anniversary with me! Be sure to check out my blog post on the Quilting Design Wizard
So get to voting and good luck!

My EQ7 Adventure

Yesterday Sally shared some things she came up with when playing around with EQ7 and today it's my turn.

One of the things I love the most about EQ7 is the ability to take the same block or blocks and manipulate them different ways to decide on what you like best.

When I was designing the Floating Squares Quilt for my son I knew I wanted to use bowties and 4 patches. I wanted it to be an easy pattern to make. But that was the only thing I knew. So I started out with every other block a 4 patch and every other block a bowtie. Then I added a little color based on what colors I know he likes. It was as simple as coloring in the blocks. There's this wonderful function in EQ7 that lets you color in all the blocks at the same time or every other block at the same time. So after a few key strokes here's what I had.

When I started out I had no idea this was how it would look but I knew I was onto something Tyler would like.

Another thing that is great about the software is that you can move your blocks in different directions very easily and you can change the blocks slightly. Here's a few ways I played with the design

Using connectors on all corners



Opposite colors

Different Colors

Girl colors



After seeing all these choices I knew which design I liked best and luckily Tyler agreed. The rest fell into place. I added 2 borders and had my design. I do my own quilt math since I usually make my blocks a little different, and this one was very easy.

I also knew that I wanted to make this in girl colors at some point (It's almost finished by the way).

Here's my finished quilt

Since Tyler goes to school in Baltimore I knew this had to be a warm quilt. I backed it with flannel and its very warm, he loves it. By the way it's not really crooked, I just didn't pin it on that side.

Stay tuned for my first giveaway announcement later today!