Good Neighbors Pin Cushion Party plus a mini tutorial & giveaway!

It is a party! A pin cushion party! We're celebrating the release of Amanda Jean's sweet new fabric line from Connecting Threads called Good Neighbors. We've all made pin cushions to showcase the prints and there will be blogposts all month long.  You'll see at the end of this post an extensive list of bloggers supporting Amanda Jean - everyone is so excited for her and her first fabric line.  Although it was a really busy time, Amanda Jean and I did manage to meet each other at Spring Market and exchange a couple of hugs. I hope we will get to meet again one day and have more time to hang out and talk quilting!  I think that her contemplative, sincere style (and devotion to scraps) really come through in her fabric design.  Just look at these great colours and uncomplicated patterns:

I especially love Leaves Array (bottom left) and cross stitch (fourth row, the red/blue/grey lattice prints on the right side).  The stripes on the bottom row are ideal binding fabrics!

Good Neighbors is the perfect line of blending fabrics with all of the great colours and sweet little prints. I wanted to use as many of them as possible, so I added some tiny pinwheels to the Big Mouthed Threadcatcher pattern out of my book. I've been making these threadcatchers for so many years, in fact I know I've made well over 200. It's fun to change things up by adding some special piecing the thread bag.

I remembered to use quick piecing and cutting technique that I'd learned somewhere along the way of my quilting career...I just can't remember where! Perhaps a magazine, or a long-ago workshop?  Here's how it works:  you start with two squares and end up with eight 1/2 square triangles! For my thread bag,  start with two 5" charm squares RST, draw both diagonal lines, corner to corner. Sew 1/4" on either side of the lines. Make 4 cuts: cut on the drawn lines and the horizontal and vertical middle. Presto: eight 1/2 squares!!  I trimmed mine to 2" before piecing them into pinwheels/broken dishes blocks.

 

Connecting Threads would like to send a Canadian or US resident a charm pack of the Good Neighbors collection.  Just leave one comment here (your email must be linked OR written into your comment in order to win) and I will choose a random winner in a week's time. Good luck! {ETA: Comments are now closed, thank you for stopping by!}

9/1/2015 Amanda Jean – Crazy Mom Quilts
9/2/2015 Anna – Noodlehead 
9/3/2015 Mary – Mary on Lake Pulaski
9/4/2015 Svetlana – Sotak Handmade
9/5/2015 Debbie – Esch House Quilts
9/6/2015 Holly – Bijou Lovely
9/7/2015 Carla – Grace and Favour
9/8/2015 Faith – Fresh Lemons Quilts
9/9/2015 Vanessa –  V and Co.
9/10/2015 Anna –  Thimbleanna
9/11/2015 Krista –  Poppy Print Creates (you're here!)
9/12/2015 Erin –  Why Not Sew
9/13/2015 Lee –  May Chappell
9/14/2015 Alex –  Tea Ginny Designs
9/15/2015 Cheryl –  Nap Time Quilter
9/16/2015 Penny –  Sew Take a Hike
9/17/2015 Amy –  During Quilt Time
9/18/2015 Debbie –  A Quilter’s Table
9/19/2015 Anne –  Spring Leaf Studios
9/20/2015 Melissa Corry –  Happy Quilting
9/21/2015 Amber –  One Shabby Chick
9/22/2015 Nettie –  A Quilt is Nice
9/23/2015 Adrianne – Little Bluebell
9/24/2015 Cindy –  Live a Colorful Life
9/25/2015 Amy –  Diary of a Quilter
9/26/2015 Chase –  Quarter Inch Mark
9/27/2015 Rene –  Rene Creates
9/28/2015 Erin –  House on Hill Road
9/29/2015 Nicole –  Modern Handcraft
9/30/2015 Teri –  Connecting Threads

Bloggers Quilt Festival - the ROYGBIV Selvage Edition

International Quilt Market is in full swing in Houston this weekend, so that can only mean one thing: I'm not there! Hehe, while that is true, what it really means is that it is time for the Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted, as always, by Amy's Creative Side.

Last spring I discovered (on Instagram) that my friend Diane was using her selvage collection to make string blocks. She asked if anyone wanted to participate in a selvage block-along. I probably had a ton of other sewing to do, but I also had a selvage drawer full to bursting and it seemed like a good idea to just get busy and make something substantial with all of those pretty selvages.

I know myself. I know that true 'random' doesn't work for me. I will always try to group colours or patterns, or match prints even if I'm not trying. So I decided to forego the random string idea right from the start and instead organized all of my selvages into piles of colour.  They almost completely covered my little sewing room floor!  Then I designed an easy 10 1/2" Selvage Colourblock (tutorial here) that would keep my inner organizer happy.

Four of these squares pieced together give you a lovely diamond of solid colour in the middle, surrounded by related selvages in a 20" block!  I chose my longest selvages for the very first strings next to the solid triangles so that they'd have a nice frame around them to start.  And then I went CRAZY RANDOM....within the same colour grouping, of course.

These blocks came together really, really fast. I had an absolute ball making them and I so enjoyed using the selvages that I'd been diligently saving for four years.  When this quilt top was complete, B said "Cool!......Wait, is that all from your own fabric?!".  I think you know my answer.  The only colour that I had to raid my stash to cut more selvage off was purple.

I used yard-dyed Essex for my black & white block centre and I love how it looks!  I wasn't sure how to fit black into the rainbow, so I ended up putting it smack in the middle of the quilt.

Once all of my 10 1/2" blocks were made I got kind of excited and pulled all of the newsprint foundations off. In retrospect, this wasn't such a great idea. All of those selvage edges cut at 45 degrees are the worst kind of stretchy! Now I was in a pickle. I had to figure out a way to stabilize the blocks and piece them together while keeping the quilt square. In the end, a skinny white sashing was my solution and I used the BigHugeLabs mosaic tool to help confirm my decision.

In the final layout, the 1" sashing borders every 10" block

I was seriously loving this quilt (and there was still quite a bit of selvage on my floor), so I decided to keep going and add a border to enlarge it.  The border is colour-blocked, too! I pieced selvage strings into 4 1/2" wide strips of newsprint and planned the border colours to coincide with the outside blocks of the quilt top. The quilt ended up about 75" square. It's quilted with a wool batting (a first for me - I like the puffiness!). I stitched the ditch around each block to stabilize, then stippled with matching coloured thread over the selvages.  The border is quilted with a figure 8 pattern. This quilting may have required a rather extravagant custom Aurifil thread box purchase.  As you might expect by now, the binding was also pieced to match the colour-blocking.

 

I'm so happy that I saved my selvages so that I have this beautiful memory quilt of all my favourite fabrics. Once this quilt was done, I cleaned up my remaining selvage strings, stuffed them in a big plastic bag and gave them to a friend. I won't be making another selvage quilt and it isn't because this wasn't a ton of fun, it's just that I don't feel like saving and storing selvages anymore. I'm on to the next thing!  

Here's Selvage Colour Block hanging at my traditional guild's show last June. The entire summer and fall got away from me and I still have not succeeded in a proper outdoor photoshoot for this quilt!

Thanks for getting through this super long quilt story. If you've still got any tea left in your cup, go and check out the other festival entries here!

Infinity

The adorable Mai was in town recently for work, so a bunch of us MQG peeps got together for a fun potluck dinner. It's so much fun to visit with IG friends when they come to town!  Mai had previously been a personal sherpa flying gifts between Oahu and Vancouver for me, so I wanted to make her a little thank you present.

It was a last minute plan that came together thanks to the great free tutorial at Pink Chalk Fabrics.  I have a small stash of AMH voiles on hand, so I was able to sew up this infinity scarf in no time!

I mentioned on IG that the scarf is draped on one of my precious wooden hangers, handmade by my great-grandad Sparks. He lived in a little cottage beside my paternal grandparent's home in a small town outside Montreal  (Saraguay) that has since been incorporated into the city. He had a sunporch with a workbench at the back of the cottage where he planed wood and bent metal and glued up coat hangers. I don't know if he sold them, or just made them for family, but I am lucky enough to have a few.  Sadly, the family home and cottage are long gone now, replaced with a housing development years ago.  I have a few memories of the swing that hung between the house and the cottage, and my great-granddad's big hairy dog Buster that would sleep against the picket fence gate. Mostly I remember the smell of the sunporch, which was sawdust and toast....but I digress.

Back to the infinity scarf.  The pattern is super easy and there are only a few inches of hand-sewing required. I highly recommend it for a quick gift!

Selvage Colour Block Tutorial

I'm very pleased to say that Project Big Project is now complete for the time being and I am back at the sewing machine!! Thanks for hanging in there, I know Poppyprint has been rather quiet for a few months.

Although my UFO list is as long as my right arm (which is slightly longer than my left), I have jumped back into sewing with a brand new project. If you're an Instagram follower, you know that I've been working my way through the selvage drawer. It's about time, because I could hardly cram another strip of fabric into that drawer!  I've made a few small selvage projects over the years, which you can see here, here, here and here.  Recently my friend Diane posted her selvage string blocks on IG (where she is ylmommyx4) with the hashtag #selvageblockalong and I was immediately inspired to get busy.

If you google, or search Flickr for "selvage", "selvage strings" or "selvage quilts" you will find several different options. For a couple of years, I'd been thinking of sorting my selvages by colour and using them in a colour-blocked quilt somehow. I just like to be a little more organized in my scrappy efforts: sometimes completely random is too much like work for me!  

The blocks I'm making are 10 1/2" unfinished, so a complete colour block (above) will finish up at 20" square. I haven't decided if I'll use my blocks like this, so I'm not going to sew them together until I use up all my selvage strips and see where things sit at that point.  Ideally, I'd like a usable quilt about 80" square, but I don't think I have enough selvage to get there as that would require 16 huge blocks.

Here's a quickie tutorial for the blocks I'm making. 

Supplies for one 20 1/2" (unfinished) Selvage Colour Block

4 squares newsprint paper 10 1/2" x 10 1/2"

2 squares solid colour 5" x 5" cut once on the diagonal

a pile of selvage strips 10" to 40" long* matching your solid colour

disappearing fabric pen

*note that I generally cut my selvage with at least 1" of print above the white selvage strip. If the selvage is extra 'hairy' with a long fringe of threads, I carefully cut the fringe off without compromising the finished edge.

1. Fold the paper once diagonally and crease to mark the diagonal OR draw a pencil line corner to corner. This is a guide to help you keep your strips running at 45 degrees.  Mark a 1/4" seam allowance on the long side of one solid triangle. Pin the solid triangle to one corner of the paper foundation, with the marked diagonal lines parallel to each other.

2. Place the first selvage strip on the solid triangle, overlapping the finished selvage edge to the 1/4" marked line. Pin in place. I used my longest selvage (you need about 40") for the first strip on each of the 4 squares that will make up one colourblock. If I decide to piece my blocks like the one shown above, with a central solid diamond, having the same selvage print outline the solid will better define it and give it a more balanced appearance.

3. Using a reduced stitch length for security and also to make it easier to remove the paper foundation later (I reduce to 2.0 from a 'normal' 2.5), topstitch the selvage strip with an 1/8" seam allowance.

4. Repeat step 3, making sure each selvage strip is long enough to completely cover the paper and overlapping the previous strip by at least 1/4". I just eye-balled this and most of mine are probably overlapped by 3/8". Continue until the entire foundation is covered.

5. Press the completed foundation with a dry iron. Turn the piecing upside down and trim the square to 10 1/2" using the paper as a guide. Because all of the trimmed selvage edges of the square are on the bias, I plan to keep my paper foundations on until the squares will be sewn together.

MAKE 4

Just a couple of notes.....Seam allowances here are only 1/8" or so. The smaller stitch length will help keep these seams intact over time, but I will likely quilt this heavily for extra stability. Selvages have tiny permanent holes in them where the fabric was attached to the printing rollers.  There's a good chance that the batting will beard, or work it's way through these holes, over time.  I don't have any illusions of this becoming an heirloom quilt!  It's a fun project to use up interesting strips of fabric and to look at and remember favourite prints.  It's a quilter's Eye Spy! 

Here's the first blue one. There will be more as blue is my most abundant selvage pile!

If you make some blocks using this tutorial or any other selvage string ideas, please share on IG using #selvageblockalong !  You can also join and post photos in Diane's Selvage Block-Along Flickr group . 

No selvages in your stash? Start saving now. You won't believe how fast they accumulate! I typically don't cut off the selvage until I am going to use the fabric in a project, however if I want to see this quilt idea through to a finish, I may have to raid my stash for more strips. 

Hope you're having a lovely weekend. I look forward to hanging out with you here more often again!

Sew with Sew Sisters

The lovely gals at Sew Sisters, a Canadian online and bricks & mortar shop in Toronto, asked me to come up with a project using one of their Kona Solids Club FQ packs. Their Kona club of 4 solids is available in fat quarters or 1/2 yards for a killer price and awesome shipping rates. It's a great way to build your solids stash and receive a colourful surprise every month!

My project was inspired by my sister and nieces, who recently took over the Demi Pointe dance shop in Charlottetown, PEI. I designed this sweet Ballet Tote adapting a versatile, bias stem applique technique by machine.  I believe this method originates from a 1998 Rodale book called "Applique Made Easy" by Carol Costello Soltys.

Ballet Tote

8" x 12" x 2"

Head on over here to learn how you can make one. Leave a comment on the tutorial post at Sew Sisters and you could win the same fat quarter pack I used to make this tote! If you do, I'd love to see it. Please share a picture in my Poppyprint Projects Flickr group or tag me @poppyprint on Instagram!

Heart Day is on it's way

I know many people have mixed feeling about V-Day coming up on February 14th.  If you're a lover or fighter, you can still send someone a sweet embroidered note with a cute fabric stamp (hold the hearts if that isn't your thing!).  The tutorial is a few years old, but still fun. The link is on my left sidebar if you want to try making some.

Me? I'm just in it for the chocolate.  

The Anti-Voodoo Block Piecing Tutorial

Have you ever experienced that mysterious voodoo that occurs between your design wall and your machine such that a perfect layout becomes totally mixed up and wacky once all your blocks have been carried to your machine and sewn together?  I don't know what happens, but time and time again, I swear I'm sewing the correct block to a row, or the right row to the bottom of the quilt but it'll end up bass ackwards or upside down or in some other crazy, unintended orientation.

Many years ago I took a Quadrille Twister class from former CQA (Canadian Quilters' Association) Teacher of the Year Dianne Stevenson. In that workshop, I learned what I believe is the BEST technique for sewing blocks or quilts of like-sized squares together.  Dianne learned the technique from someone else and was very happy to share it and now I'm passing it along to you.  There's a good chance someone else has done a tutorial on this already, but I've never seen one. Pluse, posted a very brief Instagram photo tute the other night and some of my friends asked for more details.

In my last post, I told you about the thousands of 2.5" squares that I cut from my unwanted, older, not-intended-for-any-other-projects fabric. I am very happily using all of these squares to build a Scrap Vomit quilt. At 49 patches per block, there is ample opportunity for the voodoo to creep in (not that it really matters with scraps).  Piecing this could be a tedious bore.

Enter: The Anti-Voodoo Block Piecing Tutorial.

I'm going to show you how to do this with little 2.5" squares, but it can also be done with an entire quilt of 10" blocks, or even a whole charm pack of 5" squares that you want to whip up into a baby quilt.

1. Arrange your squares on a design wall (or if small, beside your machine on your table).

2. Turn column 2 squares over to the left so that they are RST with their column 1 neighbour.

3. Now all column 1 squares are covered by their column 2 neighbours.

4. Pick up the first set and keeping it on top, gather the sets below it in order from top to bottom.

5. Now lay the sets beside your machine, ready to sew in order from top to bottom.

6. Sew the first set of squares together. At the end of the seam sew a few stitches 'in the air' before feeding the second set in (chain piecing). We are not cutting any threads until we reach the end of the sets!

7. At the end of the sets, remove from the machine. You've got a chain of 2-patches!

 

8. Now stack your 3rd column squares, keeping first square right side up on top, and the rest of the column in order from top to bottom.

9. Take them to your machine and piece them in order to their 2nd column neighbours. I like to sit them on my machine bed, to the right of the needle so they are easy to grab.

10. Now you've got a string of 3-patches that are starting to look like rows.

11. Continue until you've added all of the columns and you've got your entire block's worth of rows all joined together by their piecing strings. Take your rows to the ironing board and with the wrong side up, lay the top row on the board with the other rows hanging off the front of the board.

12. Press all seams in one direction, then pull the second row up onto the board and press all seams in the opposite direction. Continue until all rows have been pressed in alternate directions. I like to hold on to the last patch of the row to give a little tension as I'm pressing, making sure that each patch is fully pressed out from the seams.

13. Now you're ready to sew the rows together. Nestle the opposing seams together (I like to pin before the seams, just to hold the seam allowances down as they approach the presser foot). I pull my pins out just before sewing over them. Don't worry about those 3 or 4 stitches that you sewed in the air; there is no need to clip the thread, unless of course you want to.

14. Once all of your rows are sewn together, press the seams in the direction that makes sense for your project. In other words, so that the seams of neighbouring blocks will be opposite, allowing you to once again nestle seams and get nice, tight intersections between patches/blocks.

There you have it! Now I am sure some of you will have questions about pressing seams open and I really don't want to get into a huge debate (that's a dead horse that's been flogged many times before on various blogs!). I am a side presser. Always. Except when making wallhangings, or very complicated foundation pieced blocks, or blocks with a crazy number of intersecting seams that would leave a massive lump if you tried to cram them all over to one side.

Let me put it this way: if you want to sleep under your quilt, throw it in the washer and dryer, drag it on picnics, built forts with it, take it to the beach, let your cat knead it into a suitable bed and snuggle underneath it on the couch, then why would you want to expose your piecing threads between each patch? I like my thread nicely protected under a seam allowance, thereby giving my quilt a fighting chance at longevity. Not to mention that every time you have two open seams meeting at right angles, there is a teeny, tiny hole in your quilt top!  I'm not saying pressing open is wrong. I just think pressing to the side is going to help my quilts last longer. 

Plus, those Old Ladies that Know Stuff told me to do it that way.

Put a Lid On!

At the moment I'm fueling up for a day retreat that starts in an hour. A delicious latte by my side, I thought I'd write a quick post and show you the custom iPad cover I made for my mom while my parents were visiting.

Using Penny and Kerry's sweet Latte to Go foundation/paper piecing pattern from Sew-Ichigo, I made the take out cup block a few weeks ago. I just love how perfect Berene's 'Say What?' text fabric is for the lid! You can find that fabric in her Spoonflower shop.  Berene cleverly spaced all of the fun sayings 1/2" apart so that they can be fussy cut and used for piecing into projects like this one without losing any of the text!

For the first time I tried a new "all-in-one" Velcro that has hooks and eyes all on one strip. Way less scratchy and it was much easier to sew on by machine.  The surrounding fabric is a lovely chambray that I'm also going to use in a new bag I'm assembling today.

Mom loves her lattes and she's pretty smitten with her new iPad cover, too.  I had to make it larger than most tutorials as she's got a protective case that takes her iPad up to a full 8" x 10". You can find tutorials on Faith's and Amber's blogs...I just sort of adapted ideas they both had to suit my pre-made block and the size I needed. The outer fabric is interfaced with a fusible pellon poly batting.

Liberty Scrap Challenge the Jewelry Edition and WINNERS!

No one wants to throw away even the smallest scrap of Liberty tana lawn, do they? Here are a few ideas for you and your large coin-sized scraps: Covered button jewelry!

You'll need fabric scraps (mine are courtesy of Jo at The Organic Stitch Co., where you can get a scrumptious scrap bag for about $15!), lightweight fusible interfacing, a few inexpensive findings and some strong all-purpose adhesive for these projects.

I purchase my findings (buttons & blanks, bookmark giant paperclips, rings and earring posts) at great prices here . I love the fact that you can buy in small quantities, as well as in bulk. They also sell adhesive, but I find their brand is very strong-smelling and the smell lasts for over two weeks until the glue is absolutely cured. Instead, I use Aleene's Platinum Bond 7800. Make sure you source an adhesive that's good for metal surfaces and help it along by roughing your surfaces with a bit of sandpaper first.

These are great summer, no sew items to make. Here's what you need to do:

1. back Liberty tana lawn scraps with fusible lightweight interfacing (this is so the metal of the button doesn't show through when the fabric is stretched over the blank).

2. cut fabric to size needed for your buttons. I used 1/2"  (size 20) for earrings and 1 1/8" (size 45) for rings and bookmarks. If you make a template out of cardboard, you can simply hold it with your fabric and trim around - no need to mark on the fabric.

3. follow pictures below to cover your button. With the tiny 1/2" blanks, I use the eraser of a pencil to push the fabric & button into the rubber holder and again to stuff the excess fabric into the back of the button before pushing the blank onto the back.

4. Rough up the blank on the back of your buttons. In a well-ventilated area, apply adhesive to the blank as well as the surface you want to stick it to. For the earrings and tiny buttons, I used a toothpick to apply the glue. Wait 5 minutes, then stick 'em together!

All of these items are fun for gift-giving, craft sales or just wearing around all summer.  When I posted my first Liberty Scrap Challenge tutorial for the Liberty Lemonade tablecloth, I offered my leftover charms to anyone willing to take on the Challenge.  The winner needs to use those charms (added fabric is okay!) and come up with a fun project and tutorial to share.  Random number generator has chosen comment #22, so it looks like our next challenger will be Kirsty@Bonjour!

This is very exciting because Kirsty makes beautiful projects and it looks like she's already got something in mind for the scraps. Check out her gorgeous blog for fabulous tutorials and stunning photos of her life in Provence, France.

Now I also promised a "little Liberty something" to a commentor who wasn't up for the scrap challenge, and the first such comment to come up randomly is #49. Yippee, it's Duff, who eats breakfast food in any order she wants!

She liked that I used the word 'schematic' in my tutorial post. I love that she signs all her comments with a heart. So there.  Michele, go ahead and pick out an item you like in the photo above and it's yours! (well, except for the navy rose ring which our visiting cousin already claimed....).