Paper piecing is great for beginner quilters

I taught my first quilt class last Saturday on paper piecing.

I love this quilting method because it allows you to get really sharp points without templates or insanely accurate quarter-inch seams. It's kind of like sewing by numbers and its really easy once you get the hang of it.

I was teaching the class because I'm in charge of designing a tree for the Festival of Trees. It's going to be filled with ornaments made from fabric. The hope is that if more people know how to make paper pieced Christmas ornaments, hopefully I won't have to make them all myself this November.

Here's the blocks my students came up with. They did a great job for beginners.

 

 

A busy July

Where has the month gone?

Since my last post I attended a Saturday workshop to make a tree skirt, got distracted while finishing it with making a design wall for my sewing room, broke my sewing machine, got a new onw and sewed up the top to the sunflower table runner above last night.

What have you all been?

An afternoon with Carol Doak

It's been a crazy month since my class with Carol Doak, and most of it was spent without Internet at home. I don't know what I would have done without my Blackberry.


Carol was a great teacher, she made paper piecing very easy although it's not fool-proof. I cut through the paper pattern a couple of times during class. The picture above is of me at the class, Carol took it. :)

We were lucky enough to see several of her paper pieced quilts, including one that has 300 paper pieced blocks in it.


Since the class I've made one of her paper pieced heart blocks to serve as my name tag at the Mississippi Valley Quilt Guild and I'm almost done piecing the top to the wall hanging we started during class.

Quilt withdrawal to be solved by Carol Doak

I haven't quilted in at least a week because my husband and I have been busy packing and moving into our first home.

I realized last night that quilting must have a calming effect on me and I should make time to do a little each night, because I've been super stressed over the past few days.

But my quilting dry spell will come to an end tomorrow when I learn how to paper piece at Carol Doak's Sunrise Quilt Mariner's Compass Star class through my quilt guild tomorrow. I figured if I was ever going to try the intimidating quilting method, I might as well learn from the queen of paper piecing.

The block we'll be making is from Doak's book, "Mariner's Compass Star." I'll be sure to let you all know how the class goes.

I'm celebrating my birthday with quilting

Tomorrow is my birthday. Most people have a party or a couple drinks, and while I will probably do the latter in the evening, I'm going to spend most of my day in a quilting class.

One of my local quilt shops is holding a free motion quilting class. I'm a quilt in the ditch or in diagonal lines kind of girl. Anything more complex and I have to do it by hand, which takes forever. So I'm really excited to learn this new technique.

My birthday pass time kind of reminds me of the character Vinnie, in "Cross Country Quilters," by Jennifer Chiaverini. She always spends the week of her birthday at quilt camp. The only difference is Vinnie is in her 80s, I'm turning 25.

A few of my 20-something quilting friends will also be at the class though, so at least it won't be like the other classes I've attended where I'm the only one younger than 40 in attendance.