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Belated Valentine

This is a belated Valentine. Somehow my New Year’s resolution to write several posts a week has not come to fruition. What happens is that I get so involved in projects that the hyperfocus excludes all else.

When my second grader grandson was here on Thursday, Feb 13, making Valentine’s and asked what to write on his Valentine cards, I told him to write “Happy Valentine’s Day” or “Be My Valentine.” He asked me what that means. My response was that it’s like saying “Merry Christmas” at Christmas time. That was not the best explanation but the first thing that came to mind. Children ask the most unexpected questions, and I often wonder how they process and perceive what we say.

And it’s been incredibly busy here. A couple of the projects I can’t tell you about yet, but there are two others that are interesting in that one in my opinion is a complete fail and the other is beginning to shape up into something pretty.

First for the complete fail. I was looking for fabric to go with the pink and purchased the green fabric as I thought it would be perfect and it’s such a cute print. I made one block and thought it looked pretty good so decided to make the rest of the blocks. As I worked, it was very apparent to me that I didn’t like the green but was determined to finish what I had cut. So here’s the block and the quilt top. They definitely are not on my list of winners. The top has to be quilted and I will do that soon and then see if there are any takers among the 10 grandchildren.

The one good thing about this quilt is the blocks I chose to go together. I love the look of the stars framed by the chain. Now the challenge is to make it in colors I love.

I’ll tell you about the second project tomorrow. It’s a much happier story.

 

  
 

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Baby Quilt with Spring Medley Applique Machine Embroidery Tutorial

This is a quilt tutorial that I wrote for AccuQuilt for their blog. It was a lot of fun, but is very simple to do. The Spring Medley applique is cute, but this can also be made with a lot of the other different applique dies.  I used the 10″ Qube, but it will also work with the 9″ and the 12″ blocks too.

 
 

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Crazy Quilt Star Throw Quilt

I just finished this Crazy Quilt Star Throw Quilt made with the AccuQuilt GO Crazy Quilt die. I love the Crazy Quilt dies (both Studio and GO!). They are just incredible. There are so many different layouts that one can create with it–and the blocks stitch up faster than almost any other block. I used Square in a Square (aka Economy Block) blocks alternating with Crazy Quilt blocks.  Read the full tutorial on the AccuQuilt blog.

Crazy Quilt Star
Crazy Quilt Star
 
 

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Vortex Mosaic Throw Quilt Tutorial

The new 10″ Qube die set from AccuQuilt is a great size because multiples of 10 are so easy to make. And there’s no math to think about. Obviously 1/4 of 10 is 2.5 which is not an even number—but with the Qube set, there’s no math involved except the finished size of the quilt. This is a tutorial I wrote for the AccuQuilt blog. And this is a picture of the quilt. I really loved making this. The blocks are simple even though it looks much more complex than it is.

 
 

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Triangle in a Square Dance Quilt Tutorial

The 10″ Qube Mix & Match along with the 10″ Qube Companion Angles made this quilt incredibly fast and easy. And I love, love, love the Watermelon Collection (by Daniela Stout) Fat Quarters from Timeless Treasures. This quilt is made with rectangles and triangles—both of which go together with great ease. The full tutorial can be found on the AccuQuilt blog. Imagine how this quilt would look in a different colorway—think Christmas OR Spring!

  
 

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Four Blocks and a Border Tutorial

One of the really cool things about the 10″ Mix & Match Qube set from AccuQuilt is the easy layout using 10″ blocks. The center of this quilt is four blocks–YES–only four. And with a strip border and some five inch blocks (half of a 10″ block) you suddenly have a wonderful 40″ x 40″ quilt. This tutorial will take you through the steps. You will find it here on the AccuQuilt Blog.

  
 

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A Touch of Tuscany

This is one of my most loved patterns ever. The fabrics are a rich and luscious batik and the blocks are so very simple to make. They are simply four patch blocks and Trapezoid blocks cut with the AccuQuilt GO! Angles Companion Qube. Using fat quarters or a “Six Pack” created a very scrappy quilt that I love. Here is the blog post that was published on AccuQuilt.

 
 

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Embroidered Bow Tie Christmas Quilt

Finished this Christmas Quilt last week and wrote a tutorial for the AccuQuilt blog. This was a really fun quilt to make. I love working on the Holiday Elements machine embroidery. Head on over to the AccuQuilt blog and read all about it.

 
 

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Fall Update

Where did summer go? We’re well into the new school year and as busy as ever. The dahlias are blooming with their last hurrah for the warm weather. The hurricane season has brought incredible humidity here in North Carolina but we’ve been fortunate in this part of the state not to have had a lot of rain and wind. This photo of a bouquet that my husband brought in last week was taken a few days later, so the blooms are beginning to lose their initial glory, but they’re still beautiful.

And what about quilting you may ask–as that’s the primary subject of this blog. Well, there have been weeks when quilting has been happening and other weeks when it hasn’t. For the past year or more, I was writing a monthly blog for AccuQuilt. I needed a vacation from writing, but now I am on target to start again in the near future.

Another passion of mine and the “Slap Happy Quilters” group with whom I stitch on a regular basis is making comfort quilts. Hopefully our quilts bring comfort to all the cancer patients at the Alamance Regional Cancer Center. So here are a couple of recent completions. They’re still flimsies as I haven’t had time to quilt recently–I’ll tell you why after these pics.

This is a quilt pattern that we call “Shirley’s Quilt” because it is in memory of one of our quilters who is no longer with us. It always brings back special memories to me when I make this pattern. It is made of bricks cut 3-1/2 x 6-1/2″ and squares cut 3-1/2″. I used Shapes 8 and 5 from the AccuQuilt GO! 12″ Mix and Match Blocks Qube to cut these pieces and the 3-1/2″ strip die to cut the horizontal sashing and border and the 2-1/2″ strip die to cut the vertical border.

And here is another quilt I made using leftover bricks from Shirley’s quilt, but cutting them down to 2-1/2″ x 4-1/2″ bricks. It’s also one of my favorite patterns. I used Shape 8 from the AccuQuilt GO! Mix & Match Blocks 8″ Qube for this one. This one still needs a border and to be quilted.

This is the block for this quilt. What I love most is that it can be made with any size brick and looks wonderful as a scrappy quilt. Every other block in this quilt turns 90 degrees, so the only seams to match are the corners of the blocks. That makes stitching blocks together into a top so easy.

And this is the reason I never get anything done–but they’re so, so cute!

 

  
 

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Log Cabins and Signature Block Ribbons

This is a blog post that I wrote for AccuQuilt in July. The quilt uses the log cabin die as well as the signature block from the Qube Companion set and machine embroidery from the Holiday Medley embroidery designs. This looks like a difficult quilt, but it’s actually easy to make. The instructions include diagrams for quick and easy piecing of the log cabin blocks.