Four tips for making the Modern Heart block even easier!

I wrote the Modern Heart block pattern and photo tutorial after making it approximately 4 times. :) There's nothing wrong with that or with the instructions. But as with anything, the more times I made the block, the more efficient I became.

I'd love to share these four tips with you to increase your efficiency AND your enjoyment factor!

1. If possible, use the same sewing machine presser foot for paper piecing and block seaming.

Normally when I paper piece, I keep my papers in until the quilt is all sewn together. I usually don't need my 1/4" foot at all because I just sew on the solid outer lines of each template when seaming. With this block, I think it's much easier to remove the papers before seaming the block parts together. When you remove the papers as you go, you also remove those solid sewing lines and it becomes important to be able to sew an unmarked 1/4" seam (as with traditional patchwork). 

When I began making this block, I used a special open toe foot so that I could clearly see the printed template lines of the foundation paper. When I was done with the foundation piecing parts, I switched the foot to my 1/4" foot to seam the parts together, therefore completing the block. 

Eventually, after switching the feet back and forth several times, I tried foundation piecing with my 1/4" foot and guess what happened?? It was perfectly functional and more than fine. I had a clear line of vision and everything came up roses. :)

If your 1/4" foot will simply not work for foundation piecing, another idea would be to do all of the foundation piecing for ALL the blocks and then seam them all together at the end, only changing your foot once. A little "batch processing" action won't hurt. Unless you really like the satisfaction of seeing each block to completion before moving on to the next one... like I do.

2. Trim each template down to the seam allowances (dashed lines) first.

All sides of template are trimmed including the 1/4" seam allowance.

If you're having difficulty with your fabrics not covering the entire section after stitching and pressing, you might benefit from trimming around the templates first. It'll give you a better idea of position from the wrong side of the papers if you have the perimeter well defined.

Keep in mind you will still have to trim the fabrics after the sewing is completed, so pre-trimming is an extra step. However, if this simple step prevents you from having to having to touch your seam-ripper, the extra step is worth it.

Another point worth noting is that when doing any trimming around a paper piecing template, I always trim by aligning the 1/4" mark of a rotary ruler with the solid line around the outer perimeter of the template piece. I do not align the ruler edge with the dashed line as there can be inaccuracies with the placement of the dashed lines in some cases and patterns.

3. Trim the fabric covering section A1 before aligning the section A2 fabric. (The same concept applies to Part B, as well.)

Another option to begin Part A or Part B is to trim the first fabric before adding the second fabric. I'll show you with pictures:

In the photo above, I've placed my A1 fabric right side up on the back side of the template paper and secured it with one straight pin.  You could also use fabric glue. I would use one securing method or the other when doing the trimming first. Placing the pin toward the bottom of the fabric and paper will allow it to stay more "out of the way" during the next step.

In this photo, you'll see that I'm following the trimming steps shown in the pattern—only—instead of trimming after a seam has been sewn, I'm trimming the first fabric before any sewing is done. This way, the angle will be in perfect alignment for the A2 fabric to be added. Actually, if you choose to follow this pre-trimming method, you really wouldn't need to cut the A1 fabric at a 45° angle at all. You could pin or glue the full 4" x 7" rectangle to the paper and trim the extra away at the exact angle in one shot.

4. Cut your fabric pieces bigger than given in the pattern directions.

People: we all have different levels of skill and experience! If you are consistently having trouble getting fabrics to cover their given sections, it might make a world of difference to cut your initial fabric shapes bigger than the dimensions given in the pattern.  For example, cut your A5 fabric at 5" x 7".  Sure, you'll have a little more waste, but if it helps you sew right the first time, that extra fabric is well worth it! We want this experience to be enjoyable! I'd much rather trim more away and have a little bit more waste than have to rip tiny stitches out of paper and try again. Can I get an AMEN?? :)

What about you? Do you have any other paper piecing tips to add? Please post your tip in the comments! The more I paper piece, the more I realize there is room for flexibility and adjustments, so don't be afraid to do what you need to do to have a great experience!

Layout option for Modern Heart lap quilt

My Modern Heart quilt is done and I wanted to share the details with you! It finishes at 50" x 60" which makes such a great size for a lap quilt.

I made the Modern Heart block (click the link for your free pattern) a total of 28 times for this size. Here's the breakdown: 4 blocks each of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. I also made 4 rainbow blocks (using every given color). This block is perfect for raiding your scraps and using low volume fabrics!

I pieced the blocks together in 5 columns total.  There are 6 blocks sewn top to bottom in columns 1, 3 and 5. The 2nd and 4th columns begin and end with 5.5" x 10.5" background rectangles to offset them and 5 heart blocks in between. See the diagram below for the block placement of my finished quilt.

Since I had partial strips of my background fabrics leftover, I seamed them together to make the 4 - 5.5" x 10.5" rectangles used to offset the even columns.

Once all of the columns were sewn, I pieced them together to form the quilt top.

I quilted lines horizontally across the quilt top about 1/2" apart and bound with a fantastic black & white striped fabric.

I'm so happy with how this quilt turned out and hope you will give it a try!

FYI: There is a full video tutorial for this block if you've never paper pieced and want to tackle this versatile method! Visit my tutorial page for more information.

Modern Heart video tutorial

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!

Modern Heart Block

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. 

UPDATE: I now have a video tutorial posted here on my site and on YouTube showing each step of how to make this block, even if you're new to paper piecing.

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! 

Modern Heart Block

Using tracing paper in foundation paper piecing

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!

Quilting ideas for the Star Sighting quilt

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!

Example #1

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.

Example #2

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.

Example #3

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!

Example #4

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:

Woodgrain: I roll to the bottom of a quilt first to start the pattern and then work my way up from there. 🌳 By the way, my whiteboard is one of the best tools in my sewing room! 🏆 I use it to practice designs before quilting them and write down top/backing dimensions and other invoicing notes. And if I need extra motivation, I draw circles for the number of passes a quilt will take to finish and then mark the circles as I go. 😬 🚫🚫🚫⭕️⭕️

A video posted by Jessie Zeigler (@threadedquilting) on Apr 8, 2015 at 9:36am PDT

**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.