Tutorials for making 8 flying geese at a time.

Making 8 Flying Geese at a time.  I want to try making these.  This morning before I got out of bed I was checking my e-mail and favorite blogs and I came across this blog: Sew'n Wild Oaks Quilting Blog and checked out Lynn's virtual classroom.  She has a tutorial on making 8 wild geese units at a time.  It looked easy so I do want to try this.  She uses them as a border in making a Christmas Pillow that I also would love to try.  Only I want to make the center block sold and do some applique on it.  It would look great as a mini quilt also.  So check out her blog for some great Ideas and tutorials.  I am going to try this today. 

From Quilting Ideas Magazines

I also came across a picture on flickr of a basket of  paper pieced mini log cabin blocks posted by mission homestead. I just started making a few following a pattern I found in one of my older magazines, (You know the ones I love to look thru while laying in bed before falling asleep.)   Quilting Ideas - Log Cabin Pins by Designer Pam Ehrhardt of Lasting Piece.  Now for me to make a basket full of these little Log Cabin Blocks would look awesome sitting next to my sewing machine all ready to make up into wonderful things.  Join me in my Studio as I show the steps I took making this project.



Pins I have made using Pam's Pattern.

"A Star is Born" mini Quilt






A Star is Born mini quilt








I used a small stich on my machine for paper piecing. 







The center was paper pieced by hand
& the outer star was machine pieced



Today I finished the top on my mini quilt and then quilted it.  I do like the way it turned out, a little busy but ok. I was not sure I would get this far today, only need to apply the binding then I am done. I hand pieced the center star then used my sewing machine to piece the outer larger star.  I almost forgot to decrease my stitch length as I did the stitching for the larger star.  I did have fun going thru my stash and deciding what I would use for the inner and outer borders.   The ones I choose were at the bottom of my stash - Since bothe borders are very busy I decided to just quilt in the ditch for the center stars and small border then I used my machine stitch to quilt a squigly line on the larger border using clear thread.   this did give the quilt some dimension but did not add to the busyness of the fabriic itself.   

Update on The Mini-Quilt

Using templates to do the center square

Hand sewing my cut fabrics together

Pressing with the "Hera" marker

A close up

the finished ctr square

I have decided to Hand Sew my Mini Quilt so I could sit in my comfy easy chair, watch "Gold Rush" and a few other favorite shows and work on my piecing.  1st I looked thru my scrap bag for fabric scraps I wanted to use & prepared the scraps by using "Mary Ellen's" Best Press clear starch alternative to give them some stiffness. (I always use a square of muslin under them to catch the spray & protect my Ironing board).  After pressing the fabrics  I measured paper piecing templates given in my pattern & made templates out of "Dritz" No-melt Mylar template plastic. I cut my pieces and began hand stitching the center together. I pressed open the seams using my "Hera" marker , a handy tool I discovered to help give me a sharp "finger" pressing without having to go back and forth to use my iron.

 

 

 Products I used to help me with this project.

Finish Up Friday came to soon!

Wow this week went fast.  last week I was able to finish some of my projects but did not get them on my site in time and this week went so fast.  It started out a little slow, I think I was bummed out because my back is still painful even tho I got a Steroid Injection on the 26th, I was hoping for some relief in order to give my R shoulder a little more healing time before needing Surgery on my back.  (it's been 9 1/2 weeks now since surgery and my arm is getting so much stronger.  Then Tuesday I had an appointment with the Pulmonologist and got some news I did not want to hear...A new diagnosis of Arthritic Lung due to my Rhuemetoid Arthritis.  Oh! well at least she will be following me on this and that's a good thing but it did leave me bummed out a bit.

 I have not been able to be sitting at my sewing machine much this week so I started a small Mini Quilt project that I can do with paper piecing by hand sitting in my more comfortable living room chair. (see my previous post).  I will be posting updates in regard to my new project so keep an eye out. 

Project - a small quilt.

 

 

Last summer a friend gave me a whole box of old quilting magazines she had gathered from her mother's home.  I was thrilled to recieve these magazines.  I would take a handful from the box and place them at my bedside where I could read thru them at bedtime and during the night when I awoke.  I love to read thru old quilting magazines, the patterns are so lovley and they are so inspiring.  I came across one magazine called "Small Quilts" -spring/summer 2004 edition and came across one pattern that I just fell in love with.  "A Star is Born", was originally an orphan block quilted by reader Deborah Hersko from Spokane Wa..  She had sent in her paper pieced block to a recent orphan block challange.  Sr Editor Jean Ann Wright took the block and added lovley borders to the block which resulted in this sweet 12" mini quilt.  I took a look at the pattern and thought of the bag of scraps my friend Elaine had given to me...(I love to collect scraps from my friends.)  There were some pretty christmasy scraps in there I could use.  I copied the templates and choose the fabrics.  This was the my 1st time working with such small pieces.  I liked the results but I found that the pieces did not lay flat so I used some spray starch and gave it a light press with a dry Iron. This did result in a nice flat piece as shown in the 1st picture above. 

 

I found using the small templates and the fabric rather difficult so I decided to Spray starch my fabrics before cutting them with a dry Iron.  I am also thinking of making a template using this piece of mylar I had to see if I could be more presise in my piecing.  I will let you how well this works for me