Would you like to learn how to paper piece? I can't think of a better way to learn than by making a block for charity. In my book that's a win-win.
If you have 20 minutes, I'll teach you every step of the process. Just check out the video.
While you're at it, download the pattern if you haven't yet.
Happy quilting!
Like many of you, I've been moved to action as a result of the recent tragedy in Orlando. Quilters quilt. It's how we show love and support. The Orlando MQG is organizing a quilt drive. To donate your blocks or quilts, see their informational post here.
I came up with an easy foundation paper pieced block that reflects my own interpretation of a heart. If it's your thing, too, please download the free pattern and make and share, share and make!
If you're familiar with paper piecing, you shouldn't have any issues. The downloadable PDF is part pattern and part photo tutorial with the actual paper piecing templates included on the last page.
Here are a few of the visions I had for this block, but my all means: let your creativity soar!
Offset grid for a whole quilt:
Monochromatic blocks:
(Wouldn't ombre fabrics work well?!)
Shades of warm colors...
Let's be a blessing to the countless number of people affected by this tragedy.
Let me know if I can be of any help!
I'm a gal who enjoys using the materials I have and don't get "fancy" very often.
Because of this irritating characteristic, I tend to make things hard on myself. I'm also kiiiiiiind of stubborn. I once went something like 9 years without changing my rotary cutter blade whilst having a set of 5 replacement blades in a drawer. Yeah... not even kidding or exaggerating.
I consider having a working rotary blade "fancy". (Not really.)
Do you still want to take advice from me? HA! Ruuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnn!
For those of you still reading, I wanted to tell you about my recent experimentation with using tracing paper for foundation piecing paper.
Let me back up just a tad: I have most often used regular copy or printer paper for foundation piecing. There are pros and cons to doing this. One pro is that it's readily available and I typically have it at home. Another pro is that when tearing away, it usually rips off in fairly big chunks. On the con side of things, when tearing away, the thickness can cause stress on my stitches even when using a shortened stitch length. Another con is that it's less flexible. In my current project, I'm y-seaming the paper foundations after sewing the pieced sections. Regular copy paper is more rigid and thicker to pin through.
At a retreat at my friend Mandy's house, she was generous enough to let me use the paper she had on hand for foundation paper piecing. It was from a kids drawing pad that she picked up at Hobby Lobby (in the kids art supply section), 100 pages for $1.99. Here's a picture:
Because the sheets were slightly larger than a standard letter size, I trimmed them down first to 8.5" x 11" before feeding them through her printer. It was so easy to do. The paper was thin and ended up being lovely to sew upon.
About six months later, when I finally got around to going to my nearest Hobby Lobby (I hate to shop), I found they didn't have the same notepads. They did have tracing paper in the kids section that I bought instead. I don't really know how it compares in weight to the newsprint that is used in the "scribble and rubbing pad" shown above. I'd guess it's perhaps a little thinner.
If you'll notice (I didn't at the time), this isn't as good of a deal financially speaking, only getting about 13 pages to the dollar. I used the standard 40% off Hobby Lobby coupon for a higher priced item and therefore didn't get a discount on this tracing paper. One product I may try in the future is this newsprint on Amazon Prime. It has pretty great reviews for foundation paper piecing. Delivery included is a big plus for this store-avoider. At the time of this posting, the price of the newsprint would yield over 30 pages to the dollar AND I wouldn't have to cut it down to size.
Back to the tracing paper: When I got it home and tried printing a block on it, it performed miserably in my printer. Like, none of the pages I attempted would go through without getting mangled beyond belief.
I did a little bit of legwork so that I could still use this tracing paper. I ironed it to the waxy side of freezer paper to give it more body, cut it down to 8.5" x 11" size, put it in my printer tray (one at a time) and it printed beautifully! I could use the freezer sheets more than once, re-pressing them to new sheets of tracing paper and putting them in my printer tray.
Only later did I discover that my laser printer (not an inkjet printer, BTW) has a manual tray for feeding sheets one at a time. This is different than putting a single sheet into the paper tray (which is what I had been doing). I tried the manual tray with much hope, but alas, I did not get a single sheet to print without wrinkling it beyond use.
But I didn't give up! On a whim, I placed a regular piece of paper behind a single tracing paper and fed them through the manual feed at the same time. Remarkably, it worked! I'll be totally honest that in my experience thus far, I've had about 75% success with this method. Occasionally, it doesn't work. I found that with my printer—which is a Brother DCP-7065DN—I had to use a new, "unused" sheet of printer paper as the "backer" each time. After it went through once, the paper developed a slight bend to it (or maybe it's static electricity?) that prevented a successful second pass through the printer with a new tracing paper.
So all in all, is this method SUPER-temperamental? Yes. Perfect? Heck no. Worth a shot in order to not waste this dadgum tracing paper? I think so! Plus, it's pretty exciting while you're waiting to find out if it'll work! :) The suspense = PRO!
I'm so glad to have wrapped up my most recent pattern for the Star Sighting quilt. I've now made this quilt a total of four times and each result is very different.
Using both custom quilting and allover designs, I wanted to show you not only how different the quilt can look in different color ways, but also with different quilting styles. Let's take a look!
This was the first Star Sighting quilt I made, before the pattern even had its name. I do want to mention that this prototype is slightly different than the finished pattern in that the centers of the stars are different. I played around with having the coloring and orientation of the inside-star patches be directional, but in the end I didn't think there was a big enough visual impact for the amount of attention it required.
In the "checkerboard" sections, I quilted 1/4 inch inside each square, traveling continuously up and down the rows of squares vertically and then doing the same horizontally. For the star point areas, I used a ruler to help with the straight lines that echo and accentuate the shape of the triangular star points shown in purple.
One unique thing about this quilt pattern is how the white fabric (referred to in the pattern as the star contrast fabric) really sets off the star shapes, appearing to outline them. I played up these areas by adding texture-rich circles (sometimes called pebbling). In order to make the circles smaller and therefore allowing me to be more consistent with the shape, I first "outlined" the white, quilting approximately 1/4" inside both edges.
Perhaps my favorite quilting part of this first example is in the gray diamond shapes between the stars (referred to as the background in the quilt pattern). This is a quilting motif I developed based on many other techniques: spirals, concentric circles, pebbling, feathers, echoing. I would definitely consider this an advanced technique! Here's a link to a video where I draw this design out on a whiteboard. As a longarmer, it's very helpful to me not only to see how other quilters create the shapes but also how to travel around the design to fill areas.
Now, let's look at the second quilt I made using the Star Sighting pattern. Like the first, it's heavy on the custom quilting! It's worth mentioning that I changed the patchwork inside the blue and yellow stars for this quilt -- a change that stuck and made it to the written instructions.
Drilling down our view to the inside of the star, you'll notice that I used straight lines in the outer portion of this patchwork to draw the eye into the center of the star. I love to use contrast by juxtaposing straight lines next to the curvy ones, like with the feathers here.
If you'd like to see how I quilt the "four-patch feathers" shown above, here is a quick drawing video I recorded.
For the star points, I used diagonal lines to enhance the shape and encourage the eye to travel out when looking at the quilt. If using a longarm machine to do free motion quilting, I'd highly encourage using a ruler (and ruler base) to make the straight diagonal lines.
Again in this quilt, I used white as my star contrast fabric. The quilting motif used here is often called ribbon candy. I have a video of myself drawing a modified ribbon candy design - to get a result like the one shown in this quilt example, you would just stop after making the pass, not backtracking to add more detail (as shown in the video).
In the background areas (the gray fabrics), I quilted this spiraled feather quilting motif (video link).
And last but not least, the checkerboard quilting was extremely easy to accomplish given that the squares are the only guides you need. Karen at Redbird Quilt Co. has a really nice video for accomplishing this orange peel quilting motif.
And now I'd like to share some easy-peasy allover quilting and what it looks like on the Star Sighting quilt.
Straight line quilting can be *just the thing*! I love how it unifies the quilt top and gives a modern look. Straight line quilting is an extremely useful skill to hone as it can be used with great success and in varying density on almost any quilt. It's so domestic sewing machine friendly, just make sure you have a good walking foot. Megan of Canoe Ridge Creations has a fantastic tutorial on straight line quilting if you're interested in reading more.
These lines are approximately 1/4" apart and if you look closely, you'll notice that my line spacing is not perfect. You'll also notice that the overall look is not compromised in the slightest!
The most recent Star Sighting quilt that I completed uses another allover quilting technique, maybe a little more involved than straight line quilting, but also lends great texture and interest: woodgrain quilting. It's a favorite of mine!
I think woodgrain quilting is just so much fun to execute because it's very difficult to mess it up! I also recorded a video of myself drawing this design out on a whiteboard:
A video posted by Jessie Zeigler (@threadedquilting) on
**Confession relating to the video above: since recording it, I've gotten used to quilting from the top down. I think it's a little more work to quilt from the bottom up as far as rolling goes, but I also think it's easier to echo on top of quilting lines rather than below them. It's nice to have options and ultimately to have more tools in your quilter's tool box!
I hope these quilting-focused photos will help inspire you when deciding how to quilt your own Star Sighting quilt!
If you still need to get the pattern, it's available for purchase here.
It's finally done! I've been working on this quilt pattern for a long time now. Many skilled hands and brilliant quilting (and grammatical) minds came together to make this pattern possible. I'm so proud of the result!
For ALL of the nitty gritty details, see my listing for the PDF pattern.
Obsessed? Nah, I just prefer to think of myself as thorough. :)
I wanted to put this free PDF out here in case you wanted the cutting instructions for making your No Y Seam Feathered Star block in rainbow order. These instructions are the steps I followed in the video tutorial series, just in a printable one-page guide. A companion to the pattern, if you will.
Thank you to everyone who has been sharing your own NYSFS block with us in the Friends of Threaded Quilting Studio Facebook group and on Instagram. I've made this block so many times, and your pictures just KEEP inspiring me! Thank you for that!