Before

A funny thing happened to my plans.  You know that saying..... "Man makes plans and God laughs"?  Yeah.  That happened.

Remember when I talked about moving?  That was funny, wasn't it?

We did plan on moving.  We put the house up for sale.  There was a sign in the yard and people came at all hours to look.  Then we took the sign down.

While all this was going on we packed up lot of stuff and moved it into storage units.  We gave a whole bunch of stuff away and we threw truckloads away.  What we soon discovered is that we liked our house when it wasn't cluttered with my sewing stuff.  It's a nice house with a backyard for Gibby and it's close to everywhere we want to go.

What you may not know is that our house is a duplex.  We live in the upper level and our laundry room was downstairs.  There was also a Mother-in-Law apartment downstairs.  There have been many good tenants over the years, one bad one, and one TERRIFIC one.  Now the apartment was empty.  The thing I have wanted through all this was an un-cluttered house and a separate place for my fabric and sewing - and now we might just get it.

The apartment is being renovated into a sewing oasis for me.  Whee!!!!

All I have to show you today are the scary BEFORE pictures.  I hope to have some AFTER pictures soon.

 This will be the laundry room.  You know how you see pictures of those luxurious laundry rooms on Pinterest? This won't be one of them.

 This once was the living room of the apartment.  It will soon have a design wall, a comfy chair or loveseat, and a huge cutting table in front of that window.  This room, I hope, will be a bit prettier than the laundry room.

 The living room moves over into a L-shape kitchen.  Or what was once a kitchen.  I hope to have room for a computer desk, a printer, sewing machine, ironing table, and my vintage drafting table.

 The bedroom will be bookcase after bookcase of fabric storage and the closet will have shelves of quilts.

The original 1952 bathtub has been torn out and will be replaced with a tidy walk in shower.

The only beautiful thing I have to show you is this......

It's a gorgeous mini fridge that will hold my fizzy water and diet cokes.  It waits patiently in the garage to be installed into it's new home.

Later,

Laurie

Month 6 of Austin Bluebird Sampler

 I started Month 6 of the Austin Bluebird Sampler a little early.  Knowing my schedule coming up next month, I thought it wise to get it done this holiday weekend or not get it done at all.  What we have here is right side of month 6.  The Crossed Canoe block is actually 4 identical (2 positive and 2 negative in color) paper pieced blocks.  I wish I could tell you I used some nifty paper made especially for paper piecing.  I actually own some, but it is somewhere packed in a storage unit.  I just used what was in my printer. I figured I could fudge it with just these 4 small blocks.  It worked perfectly.  Someone on Instagram accused me of making these super-duper points with just regular machine piecing.  Nope.  Paper piecing it is.  This sampler has you do a little bit of everything.

There were 2 appliqué blocks in Month 6.  The large bluebird block and the melon, or orange peel block.

The melon slices are English Paper Pieced.  I have used this technique before in my Saint Germain quilt.

There are templates provided in Month 6.  I cut the larger template out of plastic and used it to cut out 2 light and 2 dark melons out of the blue and white fabric.  I used the smaller template provided and cut out 4 paper melons.  I glue basted the fabric to the paper.

 You can't see it, but I put glue all along the edge of the paper melon.

 Next, I just noodged the fabric up over the paper edge.  It isn't perfect on the back, but pretty spiffy on the front.

These are the easiest appliqués to stitch down as your edges are all turned for you.  I stitched all the way around the melon then cut a slit in the back side of the background fabric behind the melon and pulled out the paper.

The bluebird block is the exact block we copied from the original antique quilt.  Almost exactly.  I added the cherries. It's goofy, but charming, and it was our starting point of this quilt.  Thank you to the anonymous quilt maker who made it over 100 years ago.

Tomorrow I leave for a lecture/trunk show and 2 classes in Grand Rapids for the West Michigan Quilter's Guild.  I hope to see you there.

Everyone have a peaceful Memorial Day with your loved ones.

P.S.  I just heard from Karen and Paul in Australia that some new Star-A-Day patterns are shipping soon.  I just put them back up in the Etsy store and I will be able to ship to you when I get back from my road trip.

P.P.S. Polly wants me to remind you that our American Summer Sale will start on the14th of June - Flag Day.  There will be lots of red, white, and blue things for you to get for your summer festivities.  

Laters,

Laurie

Back From Minneapolis

We're back. We're exhausted. We had a wonderful time.  We had our priorities in order.  Once we hung up the quilts - we started to charge our phones.

The theme seemed to be Buttons!  I believe every one's luggage clanked a bit when it went through security.  

The new thing that was unveiled was this new Moda pre-cut/beautiful thing.  It's called a Frivol™.  It's a 7" square pre-cut, a pattern, and some other wonderful things.  This is the Minick and Simpson Frivol™ and we will be offering them in our Etsy store in October.  The quilt in the background can be made with the Frivol™.  

I came home to mounds of mail and loads of laundry.  I also saw that we sold out of several items in our Etsy store.  I loaded up more of these.....

Coastal Lily

And these......

Austin Bluebird Sampler Patterns

We now have these back in stock.  I know a lot of you have been waiting a long time.

Mrs. Billings Coverlet Patterns

Karen at Somerset Patchwork, who produces these patterns, showed me this new one - it's called STAR-A-DAY

This pattern, which has the acrylic templates included.....

lets you make adorable, teeny LeMoyne stars.  These are great for hand piecers.  The idea with this pattern is that you make one 3" LeMoyne star block a day - for one year - and you can make this 345 star quilt which finishes to a stunning 81" square. 

Karen has talked me into making this.  I'll start sometime next month as I have a boatload of other work in front of me right now.  But a star a day?!?! I can do that.  So can you.   I believe my scrap box is calling for a project like this. You can find the pattern HERE in our etsy store.

I'll have more soon.  I'm also supposed to remind you of our upcoming event.  We are going to have a American Summer sale starting on June 14th - Flag Day.  This sale will run for 1 week and we will have books and patterns on sale, special items, and even very special auctions for one of a kind stuff.  

Laters,

Laurie

Month 5 of The Austin Bluebird Sampler

This is the Month 5 addition to the Austin Bluebird Sampler quilt I am making.  You know that this version is from my scrap bin and it is all blue fabric.

What tips do I have for you on this section? Well, I found my 3 1/2" square ruler very, very useful.  Everything but the 2 flying geese and that one large half-square triangle are made up of 3 1/2" square unfinished units.  That makes sense since I designed this quilt on multiples of 3's.  All the pieced blocks finish to 3", 6", 9", or 12".  I made all these 3" half-square triangles and quarter-square triangles a bit large.  The instructions have you cut 3 7/8" squares and cut in half diagonally.  I just oogded it up a bit and made them 4" squares (you will have plenty of fabric in your kits to do this).  I cut the 4" squares in half diagonally and made just like the instructions say.  I then took my handy dandy 3 1/2" square ruler and trimmed them all to be perfect.  That, people... is the only way I get perfect piecing.  Make a bit bigger and trim to size.

The quarter square triangle instructions have you cut a 4 1/4" square and cut twice diagonally.  I oogded it up to 4 3/8" square, cut twice diagonally and trimmed down.  Easy peasy.

This is months 1-5 laid out.  Month 1, 2, and 3 are sewn together in 1 big block.  Months 4 and 5 are still separate.  After Month 6 is done - then this will all be in one piece.  It will be the left side of the quilt.

Laters,

Laurie

Blog Takeover

 Hello, my name is Annie and I live in Florida.  I work all the time. Because of that I am often exhausted. Naps are my favorite hobby. 

My name is Gibby and I live in Michigan.  This is my favorite picture of myself.  Everyone says I looks handsome.  I do!

The main part of my job is to make sure this nice man stops every day and delivers and takes away boxes.  Lots and lots of boxes.  I have this nice man trained so that he even stops on days that there aren't any boxes. Here he is giving me a treat.  He's a genius.

I also never stop helping! Here I am supervising the packaging of something called a quilt pattern.  Do these people not know this huge ottoman is for me and my comfort?

Nothing goes to print without my okay.

These swishy things are pieces of fabric. The decisions never are easy, but I try.  If I had my choice, I would spend my day dancing.....

Laters,

Annie and Gibby