Blog Hop and Accuquilt Giveaway this Week

We’re having a blog hop this week featuring the Accuquilt GO die cutting system and Electric Quilt design software.  Please follow our posts and the instructions you will find on the SewCalGal post today for a chance to win an Accuquilt GO cutter and/or some dies. You will also see the winning quilt from the Accuquilt/EQ7 contest. Visit these blogs each day and have fun!

Monday – overview and inspiration: SewCalGal

Tuesday – using EQ with Accuquilt: Marjorie

Wednesday – blog about entry to the challenge: Kim

Thursday – insights from the contest winner: Judy

Friday – contest rules and entries: SewCalGal

A visit to Stash Manicure and Annie who makes awesome fabric postcards

Blog visiting is addictive isn’t it? I was visiting SewCalGal the other day, and she talked about guest blogging on Stash Manicure. I decided to drop in on SewCalGal via Madame Samm over at Stash Manicure. While I was there I found another post that was really fun by Annie: Stash Manicure: Meet Annie, a postcard ARTiste( she says she’s not..U B the judge lol). She makes these awesome fabric postcards. I love these postcards. They have bound edges and wonderful designs. I’ve seen a lot of fabric postcards, but haven’t been inspired to make them until I saw these.  Now, I have this great link and am going to get back to this one day soon.

Not much quilting going on here this week. I went to a Slap Happy Quilters’ retreat last weekend and am a little burned out on quilting. But I will get back to it today. The retreat was wonderful–I used my Accuquilt to cut a lot of kits for other quilters to make comfort quilts for the Alamance Regional Cancer Center patients. It also gave me an opportunity to re-examine my priorities in charity quilting. Sometimes I try to do everything – make the patterns, cut, make and quilt the quilts and then I’m really spread too thin. I made the decision to focus on making the patterns and my friend, Sherry who is a fantastic quiltmaker, will help by testing the patterns and adding her touch to the instructions. In this way, perhaps even more quilts will be made and my efforts will actually be more efficient. Thank you Sherry for helping me think this through 🙂

Linda Poole’s “Your Heart’s Desire” in American Quilter! | EQ Blog

This is the end of January, and Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. Although this table runner was shown back in December, it is gorgeous and is worth a peek. I even think I could use my Accuquilt Dies to make something similar. And if you don’t have time for applique, what about doing the scrollwork with stencils and Shiva Paintstiks. I hope this inspires– Enjoy!

Linda Poole’s “Your Heart’s Desire” in American Quilter! | EQ Blog.

Every Quilt has a Story

I have been hesitant to write about this quilt’s story because I have such deep feelings, but will share it. I don’t know if you remember that last fall I made a t-shirt quilt for a friend from his Peachtree Road Race t-shirts. He had 30 shirts (had run the race 35 times), and I could only use 20 of them. He and his wife loved the quilt, and I told him he would have to run 10 more races so I could make him a matching quilt. Unfortunately, the only matching quilt I will be making is from the last 10 shirts, and it will be for his wife. He went out running 11 days ago and died of an apparent heart attack. We attended the memorial service yesterday. The quilt, his running shoes, orange knit hat, and photos of him were on the altar. I’ve never been so glad or so sad about a quilt in my life.

He was a sub on my husband’s softball team and for the last several years we have sat together in the bleachers Spring and Fall seasons every Tuesday and Thursday night visiting and cheering the team. Softball games will never be the same.

Peachtree Road Race T-shirt quilt

Accuquilt GO Bias Binding Video

This sure took awhile, but I think it’s worth it. This makes bias binding using the GO cutter. One still has to sew the strips together as we do with straight binding, but this is bias. I haven’t tried it with strip cutters other than the 2 1/2 inch, but am sure it will work on any of them.

This works best for an 18 inch x width of fabric piece of fabric. It would seem that if you used a narrower width of fabric strip that you would cover less of the die, but in fact, the part folded over the die becomes wider and there is more waste. Thus 16-20 inches is the size that works best. If you use a width of fabric strip that is wider than 18-20 inches, you will have more than 6 layers somewhere on the die.

If you really do need less bias binding, you could try a fabric square (25 inches or less) pressed in the middle with the bias fold lined up with the blade and then folded to fit the die.

Enjoy!

Bias Binding and the Accuquilt GO-progress

A lot of people have asked about bias binding. Ebony has a great video tutorial on cutting bias binding on the Studio cutter. But there are 10 layers of fabric when it’s all folded for the Studio cutter and that won’t work for the GO. I have some written instructions for folding the fabric to fit the GO strip dies. But my instructions require some stitching and there are some very short pieces that become part of the strips. The old fashioned way to do it is shown by Shelley Rodgers who has a great chart for how much bias you will get as well as how to make the bias.

Bottom line, I’m not happy with any of those ways, so spent some time yesterday cutting bias binding and trying to find a simple, easy way to fold and cut bias on the GO. I am sorry to report I don’t have the absolute answer yet, but happy to report that I made progress. The yards and yards of bias that I made with my experiments yesterday will go on scrappy comfort/charity quilts, and I’m sure that I will make more bias today.

Why bias, you ask? Well, with bias binding you can do rounded corners very easily and it saves a lot of time and looks great. When I use straight binding, I always do mitered corners. I want that miter stitched in very perfectly and it takes a lot of time to do that. Thus the decision that there must be another way for binding comfort and everyday quilts. I got this idea at Christmas when I saw one of the first Christmas quilts I made for one of my daughter’s and it had rounded corners.

Accuquilt GO Reference Charts

I realized as I was writing a reference post for the Accuquilt Sew and Tell Discussion Forum that I could make it easier to find links to the Accuquilt GO Reference Charts. I do keep talking about these charts–they are sooooooooooo helpful. All I can say is, use them, you’ll like them! So, I’m going to create a separate category on my blog for them, but I will also put the links here for you.

How to use the Accuquilt GO Cutting Equivalents Chart with Electric Quilt

Accuquilt GO Cutting Equivalents Chart on the Accuquilt.com website

Accuquilt GO Fabric Reference Chart on the Accuquilt.com website (This chart will tell you how many pieces you can get from your fabric.)


Accuquilt Reference Charts for the GO

A lot of people have asked me about the accuquilt reference charts and say that they can’t find them on the Accuquilt website. Here is a photo of the Accuquilt web page today – and I have circled the link to find the reference charts. Once you click that link you will have to click on the link for the Cutting Equivalents chart. There is no point in my putting the reference charts on this website because they will be updated every time new dies are released.

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Ebony Love has created a list of Studio dies, but it is not a cutting equivalents chart.

Cutting Equivalents Chart and Naming Patches

Again today, I am talking about some of the basics of quilting and combining that with information about using the Accuquilt GO die cutting system and the Cutting Equivalents Chart.

It can be confusing as to whether one is talking about cut sizes or finished sizes when quilting. Using the Accuquilt GO die system is no different. To clear that up there is a great chart on the Accuquilt.com website called “Cutting Equivalents Chart”. You can use that chart to determine how to cut almost anything. If you know the finished or cut size of the patches in the quilt block you can determine which die to use to cut the pieces that you need. In addition, if you are making applique blocks or quilts, you can look at this chart and determine what size background you will need for the applique shapes. It gives you some idea, in terms of size and scale, as to which applique pieces you can mix and match to compose your block.

The other very nice thing about this Cutting Equivalents Chart is that it helps you shop for dies to be sure you are getting a die that “fits” your needs.

This chart includes the following shapes:

Circles
Diamonds
Flying Geese
Rectangles
Squares
Triangles
Other (parallellogram)

Classic Shapes
Alphabets
Animals
Baby
Flowers
Hearts
Leaves
Seasonal
Stars
Other

There are three kinds of triangles included in the triangle section. They are equilateral, half square, and quarter square/flying geese. The pictures below show you what a half square triangle is and the two versions of the quarter square triangle. Sometimes you will see it as four triangles in a square, other times you will see it as a single triangle in a rectangular patch.

I do not have a photo of an equilateral triangle, but that is easy to remember because the name tells is a perfect description of the triangle itself.  Remember, an equilateral triangle is a tessellation and does not fit in a square. Each angle of an equilateral triangle is 60 degrees.

Half Square Triangle
Quarter Square Triangle
Flying Geese Triangle

How many patches in a block?

Based on a discussion on the Accuquilt Yahoo Discussion Group recently, I am going to post the information that was included in the first set of Accuquilt EQ7 blocks that I showed. This is about quilting nomenclature and will be helpful to those who are just beginning to quilt. I learned about this when I first started quilting from the book: It’s Okay if you sit on my quilt by Mary Ellen Hopkins. This information has been valuable many times and in many ways.

One important aspect of this is that the block size needs to be easy to divide into a certain number of patches. Thus, it is very hard to cut the pieces just the right size for a five patch block that you want to be 12 inches when it is finished. Five patch blocks should come out to be five inches, 10 inches, 15 inches, etc. when they are finished. Likewise, three patch blocks should come out to be three inches, 6 inches, 9 inches, 12 inches, etc. when they are finished. There are smaller numbers that can be used, but it gets complicated. . .

Block Types:

There are a couple of ways that we talk about how many patches make up a block. For example, when looking at the block below, we call it a four patch block and visualize a block that is two patches by two patches.

Two Patch Block:

However, we also describe blocks that are four patches across and four patches down as four patch designs. Thus, based on that nomenclature, the block above may be called a two patch block and the block below will be called a four patch block.

Four Patch Block:

Likewise, we call blocks that are three or five or more patches across and down in the same fashion, as shown below:

Three Patch Block:

Five Patch Block:

Six Patch Block: