Luck 'o' the Irish

 Shamrocks anyone?

How does free sound? Free is always good right? Might not be a pot of gold, but it's still wondrous.  Ok maybe not that wondrous.

Here's a little shamrock I whipped up as my gift to you.  Available at Craftsy.

Now go forth and sew for St Patty's day.  I recommend the green beer.  Perhaps not at the same time.

This is a 10" block, but it could probably be enlarged or reduced to suit your needs.

Happy Everything Green Day!

Bicyclette Pattern

So you know how sometimes you have a million projects to do, and lots of deadlines that you should be working on, but instead you work on a completely different project? Well, that's where I'm at.

So here you go.  I've been working on this new Bicycle Foundation quilt block pattern instead of what I should be working on. But who could resist this cute bicycle? It was just begging to be turned into a quilt block pattern.  Don't you agree?

I think next I need to turn it into a new pillow for my sewing room.
I wish I owned a bike as cute as this.

 
This is a 12" block pattern.  Would make a great pillow, tote bag, whatever else you can think of. Pattern is available through Craftsy or on the right side-bar.

Happy Sewing!

Sewing for baby - part 2

Continuing on yesterday's theme, here is another baby quilt I put together for Kari Bruck Photography.

I really wanted to use this sherbet palette - and this was the perfect excuse to use up more stash.

The design follows a friendship braid but is modified with the addition of 1" white sashing strips.  There is a great Moda bakeshop tutorial for the basic braid design here.

Here's a brief outline of how I put these blocks together.

 I cut 1 2.5" block to start and added a 1x2.5" strip of white sashing.

The rest of my patterened strips were 2.5" x 7"

and 1 x 7" for the sashing

Go ahead and chain piece all the 1" sashing strips to your 7" patterned strips to make the job go faster but only sew the sashing to one side of the block.

You'll only need a few 2.5" squares since they go only at the start of your blocks. I used 5 for this baby sized quilt.

Next sew the 7" patterned fabric piece to the 2.5" sashed square as shown.  White short sashing to unsashed long edge.

Then add the next right-angled piece as shown here - note that this time you are sewing the sashed edge to the previous pieces.

Keep going in this manner until the strip is the length you want it. Remember to keep alternating the unsashed edge and then the sashed edge when you sew.

When the strips are the length you want them to be, add a few more to allow for trimming and then stop and trim. Since this is a baby quilt, my 'blocks' were around 36" long when trimmed.

I added 1" sashing strips between my block sections and after sewing them together I trimmed everything up so it was nice and even. And there you have it! Fun and super easy to do.

 

Off to make another top... Happy Sewing!