In case you missed my earlier announcement ...
I have some large quilty deadlines looming on the horizon. The smart (grown-up? sane?) thing to do is step back from this space for a bit. So I’m going to take off the rest of March and all of April. I expect to be back in early May, right in time to celebrate 10 years of blogging, with new posts and finishes for you. Until then, happy sewing!
A show of hands, please: Who among you loves a good pieced back?
Me, too! Sometimes you will find me using a wideback (remember these ladybugs?), but it’s a rare occurrence, because for me, a pieced back is an opportunity to use up some fabric—fat quarters or yardage—that might otherwise linger in my stash.
My tried-and-true approach to piecing a backing is this: I take a cut of fabric that is the length required by the project, I cut it lengthwise, and then I fill in that space with enough fabric to create the width required. Here’s an example, on the back of my Rain or Shine quilt (you can see additional pictures illustrating this technique here) ...
There are times, however, when I’ve mixed things up a bit with good results.
Take the back side of my Norway quilt as an example. I didn’t like this block enough to place it on the front, but set here on the back, it becomes something special ...
An unused panel became the focal point of my Square Deal quilt back, with equally great results ...
I wish I could say my pieced backs are always a success. This is not the case. In fact, I seem to create problems for myself when I try to do anything fancier or more fiddly.
Take, for example, the back of my Lotus Blossom quilt. The quilt front featured fabrics that suited the recipients’ taste but not my own. I knew if I didn’t use them on the back, I wouldn’t use them at all. A few math mistakes created problems for me, and I ended up with a backing that is not my style ...
I found myself in a comparable situation recently, shown in the picture at the top of the post. (I have yet to reveal the top of this particular project.) My goal, as usual, was to use up as much fabric as I could. In this case, however, some of that fabric was 2.5-inch squares. The process was more fiddly than I had hoped, and the result is OK but not awesome. To me, the way the pieced swath cuts off at the edges of the quilt looks like a mistake. There is something to be said for big chunks of fabric on a back, I think.
The moral of my pieced-back story is this: The simpler the plan for a pieced backing, the better. I spend less time thinking and sewing a pieced back—and like the results more!—when I keep the approach straightforward.
Friends, I have some large quilty deadlines looming on the horizon. The smart (grown-up? sane?) thing to do is step back from this space for a bit. So I’m going to take off the rest of March and all of April. I expect to be back in early May, right in time to celebrate 10 years of blogging, with new posts and finishes for you. Until then, happy sewing!
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| Irish Twist in Strawberry Lemonade by Sherri and Chelsi |
I have had Saint Patrick’s Day on my mind lately. In part, that is because March 17 is on the horizon and I live outside of Boston, where the holiday is a big thing. I’ve also started a second listen to the Last Seen podcast, which documents the theft of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
If you’re unfamiliar with that story, in the wee hours of March 18, 1990, and in the wake of Saint Patrick’s Day festivities, two men posing as Boston Police made their way into the museum, tied up the night guards, and stole 13 irreplaceable—and still unrecovered—works of art. It’s a fascinating story, in part because the burglary was so brazen and so easily accomplished. (You can read more about the theft here.)
And the third reason I’ve been thinking about all things Irish lately is that I’ve been wanting to make another Irish Twist quilt. This design, following in the long Irish chain tradition, spotlights the space in between the chains to make a uniquely modern quilt.
I’ve had an Irish Twist project in Aneela Hoey’s Sherbet Pips collection cut and ready to be sewn for months now, but there are so many awesome collections out this spring. I couldn’t help but mock up Irish Twist in a few of Moda’s latest lines.
I think my favorite is the version in Strawberry Lemonade (by Sherri and Chelsi), at the top of the post. Those colors and prints are so spring-y; they have me wishing away these last few weeks of winter. Old Glory (by Lella Boutique), directly below, is the most "me" of the collections. I love red and blue together, but I think I’d put those prints to work in something with a Fourth of July feel.
The third mockup surprises me the most. I tend to be rather blue-averse (when asked for my color preference the last time I bought a car, I asked for the color not-blue!). But Water, a collaborative collection from Ruby Star Society, goes all in with blue, and I like it!
These three mockups were made possible by EQ8, and experimenting with them scratched a creative itch for me. What do you do when you want to play with fabric but don’t have the time in your quilty schedule to take on a new project?
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| Irish Twist in Old Glory by Lella Boutique |
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| Irish Twist in Water by Ruby Star Society |
I am a pretty disciplined person. I start what I finish. I make messes, but I also clean them up. I like completing projects and crossing things off my to-do lists. It’s just the way I’m hard wired. Every so often, however, I procrastinate.
A case from the archives: my Gypsy Wife quilt. I think anyone who’s tackled that pattern will attest to the sheer number of decisions a Gypsy Wife requires and the challenge of following the instructions. Yet, I started out 2022 with the goal of finishing my quilt before the end of the year, and I had it pieced, quilted, and bound in March 2022—nine months ahead of schedule!
All of this is to say that deadlines work for me. I don’t assign one to every project—that would make quilting feel more like a job than a joy to me—but when it’s hard getting something over the finish line, it’s time to look at the calendar and come up with a reasonable timeline.
Here are some truths that I’ve discovered in this journey from WIP to finish. Do any of them ring true for you?
When I pick up a long-procrastinated project, I am almost always further along than I remember. It’s a nice surprise and, I think, shows how once an item is relegated to the back burner, its challenges grow in my mind.
When I picked up my Gypsy Wife in January 2022, I was surprised with how far along I was with block construction. Did I still have a bunch to do? Sure, but I gave myself an entire year to wrap it up, and I was bragging about the finish in a blog post here just 12 weeks later.
I will never be a one-project-at-a-time gal. I like the variety that having multiple projects going at one time offers, and I enjoy the process of creating (not just finishing) as a result. There’s nothing wrong with putting down a project with the intent of picking it up again in the future, but if that practice becomes a cycle that doesn’t result in a finish, it become a time suck for me.
Case in point: my Sandhill Sling, which is pictured above and below (and originally blogged about here). I started sewing my sling back in September 2023. I was very, very far along in the process when I realized a detail on the front was every-so-slightly off (I’m literally talking about adjusting something an eighth of an inch, friends). Multiple times in the months that followed, I picked up the project, read the pattern, determined what fixing this minor detail would entail, watched a video about finishing the bag, and decided I didn’t have the (emotional?) bandwidth to finish the bag.
That cost me! I wonder how much time I wasted processing the pattern information, putting the project aside, and then repeating the process a month or two later.
In the end, I assigned a deadline for the sling: I was going to finish it in time to take it to QuiltCon 2024. With that in mind, I reassessed the eighth-inch mistake and decided to live with it. Then I proceeded to watch that video yet again, hand-basted the lining, and attached that lining to the exterior with my machine. After that, I realized that the bag was too small for my QuiltCon needs and left it at home. But hey, I finished my bag!
Do you know what I think I can accomplish after tackling a long-procrastinated sewing project. Anything! Bring on the Y-seams, the curves, the free-motion quilting ... I just finished a WIP! Do not underestimate the power in that (and how much a brain enjoys the accompanying jolt of dopamine)!
So what’s lurking in your closet or under your sewing machine table that needs to be finished?!
Preparation for QuiltCon is in full swing at From Bolt to Beauty world headquarters, and I’m getting really excited for the conference!
If you’re not familiar with this event or not a member of the Modern Quilt Guild (MQG), you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. A quilt show is a quilt show, right? To be honest, I have limited experience and haven’t had the opportunity to change that locally: MQX, a show in New Hampshire I used to attend, has shut down, as has the Vermont Quilt Festival.
From my experience, QuiltCon is a different beast altogether. I’ve seen shows where organizers have fit as many projects as possible on panels throughout the space. That is not QuiltCon. There, quilts are treated like works of art. The space is big and open and well lit. Truly, if it weren’t for the adjacent vendor booths and presentation stages, you would think you were in an art gallery.
And the teachers are the best known and most innovative in the field. This year’s offering includes everyone from Sarah Bond and Jen Carlton Bailly, to Jo Avery and Veruschka Zarate.
If you’re considering attending a future QuiltCon, go for it! Here are some things to consider ...
1. Sign up when registration opens, and stay at your computer. It isn’t easy to get coveted spots in popular workshops. To have the best shot at signing up for the classes you want, be on the QuiltCon website when it opens for registrations. I did, but I walked away from my computer. When I returned, I was 1,800th in line. Blerg!
2. Lectures are a great value. One-hour lectures are less than $20. I signed up for several in Raleigh. If something comes up and I decide to bail on one, a $20 loss is no big deal—I consider it a donation to the MQG.
3. Plot with your people. One of the best parts of the QuiltCon
experience for me is meeting and spending time with far-flung friends,
most of whom I know from social media. Going into QuiltCon 2024, I’ve
made dinner reservations and planned meet-ups to make the most of my
time to socialize in Raleigh.
4. Enjoy the planning. You might remember that I’m making snarky friendship bracelets to trade with other conference-goers. I’m also wrapping up a bag project to sport while walking the show floor, and I know friends who are working on garments and such to show off in Raleigh.
5. Prepare for a rough re-entry. It’s never easy to get back into the swing of everyday life after time away. QuiltCon is especially exhausting for me. I’m introverted, and all that socializing is exhausting. It takes me a few not-so-busy days at home to feel more like myself again.
If you are going to QuiltCon, look me up! I’d love to chat with you!
I am helping a friend sell 19 bolts of Tula Pink fabric. Everything is $10 per yard plus shipping. If you need more Tula in your stash, the easiest way to view the bolts is to check out my destash account on Instagram (@fbtbdestash), indicating the amount you want on the corresponding post(s). If you’re not on IG but need some of these beauties, drop me an email at frombolttobeauty [at] gmail [dot] com, and I’ll fill you in on the details. : )
Preparation for QuiltCon, the flagship event of the Modern Quilt Guild, is in full swing at From Bolt to Beauty world headquarters. I’ve attended three past QuiltCons—in Savannah, Nashville, and Atlanta—and in many ways I’m doing all the usual things to get ready for QuiltCon Raleigh, like making dinner reservations and reordering business cards. In a moment of weakness, however, I decided that there’s time in the weeks leading up to the show to fall down a new crafty rabbit hole: beaded friendship bracelets.
I’ve seen so many pretty and colorful bracelets appear in my Instagram feed and look forward to making new friends on the show floor as we swap bangles. The reality of making these trinkets, however, has not lived up to my expectations! Here are five issues I’ve encountered ...
2. I was putting my letters on backwards and didn’t realize the problem until I had made several. Check out the accompanying picture. The pile at the top are bracelets that contain mistakes! (Someone, please: Fire quality assurance! )
3. Stringing beads is more time intensive than I anticipated. Because quilts take forever to make, I thought I’d bang out, like, 20 bracelets each day in between my other to-do’s. This has not proved to be possible.
4. Also, I’m so scared the beads are going to come off that I haven’t trimmed the string tails yet. I do have some heavy-duty glue on hand, however, to secure the knots before I take scissors to the strings.
5. There has been a lot of swearing—way more than a quilt project elicits.
If you’re considering making beaded friendship bracelets for yourself, there are tons of Internet videos to guide you along. I’m using 0.8 mm elastic string and 4 mm glass beads.
The giveaway is closed. Congratulations to the winner, Melva!
You might remember from last week that I am newly 50. I’m continuing the birthday celebration with another giveaway. This week, enter to win a $25 gift certificate to Etsy.
I’m trying out Rafflecopter to accept entries for this contest. All you need to do is sign with your email (or Facebook credentials), and you have four ways to enter. Do one or all four of them—it’s up to you. (Note: If you’ve already signed up for my newsletter or follow me on Instagram, all you need to do is click those options to add those entries.)
This giveaway is open to anyone anywhere in the world through 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5) on Thursday, February 15, 2024. Good luck!
Someone is turning 50 this month, and that someone is me!
I can sum up my approach to this milestone in two words: radical acceptance. I’ve heard a couple you’re-getting-older jokes from friends and family, and I’m not fazed by entering my next decade. Sure, I could do without the midlife metabolism, the less-than-stellar hearing, the mass mailings from AARP, but 50 in itself seems like no big deal.
As part of radical acceptance, I plan on celebrating all month long. The way I see it, the activities for any old birthday should last at least a full week. Fifty merits a monthlong series of events ... multiple dinners out, several cakes, and plenty of presents.
EDIT: The giveaway is closed. Congratulations to the winner, Jill! : )
So this week, I’m giving away a $25 gift certificate to Sew Lux Fabrics, a shop I had the pleasure of discovering a few years ago and where I go online whenever I need a Moda fix. Chrissy and her mom stock fabrics from other manufacturers, but their Moda selection is especially fabulous.
You have two opportunities to enter to win this gift certificate:
(1) Upload your link to the Beauties Pageant below (just one link, please)
and/or (2) leave a comment on this post about what you’d like to see in a future giveaway (just one comment, please).
This giveaway is open to anyone anywhere in the world through 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5) on Thursday, February 8, 2024.
IMPORTANT:
The winner will be notified via email and has 48 hours to respond
before I pick a second name. If
you’re a no-reply blogger or comment anonymously, please include your
email address in your comment or send it to me at frombolttobeauty (at)
gmail (dot) com—otherwise, I have no way to contact you. And if you’re
not sure whether you’re a no-reply blogger, send
me your email address just in case.
Good luck!
I’ve noticed a resurgence of a simple and sneaky patchwork method on Instagram lately. Have you encountered it? It’s the hack where you iron squares to a piece of webbing and sew entire rows of patchwork together in one fell swoop. It’s a clever shortcut—one I cannot take credit for developing—and it produces a panel with perfect points in a fraction of the time.
I explored this technique years ago in my Cross My Heart quilt and the corresponding tutorial. If you’re looking for a quick and easy Valentine’s-themed project, I recommend checking out the write-ups. One heart requires 49 squares and some webbing. Add in a little fabric to frame out the patchwork and make a backing, and you can sew yourself a pillow in no time!
The pattern that caused social media to revisit this technique more recently was Embroidery Flowers, a free pixelated design from Tilda pictured at the top of the post. Instagram users in particular were excited about this design, and Pink Door Fabrics quickly sold out of kits for the quilt.*
Veruschka, of Pride and Joy Quilting, tackled the pattern and its more than 2,000 squares using the simple, sneaky piecing method. The big difference between her approach and mine, aside from the sheer enormity of her project, was the webbing she used: TenSisters EasyPiecing Grid Panels. Whereas I manually marked out my grids, she used a preprinted product that accommodated Embroidery Flowers’ 2-inch squares.
As Veruschka explained it on Instagram, she likely wouldn’t have been able to take on such a project without the shortcut method and the preprinted webbing. She designs complicated paper-piecing projects, and all the cut and organized fabrics for Embroidery Flowers were not something that could linger in her workspace. She needed to finish the top, clean up her space, and move on to her other work.
There’s no longer documentation of Veruschka’s process on Instagram—probably because she’s now teaching students how to design and sew their own original pixelated projects. Kaitlyn, of Knot and Thread Design, however, has posted a three-part series on how she assembled a panel with TenSisters’ panels. Check out her method on Instagram in these posts: part 1, part 2, part 3. (Spoiler alert! Kaitlyn added the step of using a glue stick to keep the squares in place while transferring a panel to the ironing board. Brilliant!)
If you think you’d like to implement the webbing shortcut in one of your projects, I recommend doing a test first—like, make a small piece of patchwork with the technique before committing to an entire quilt with it. I say this because I did not like the results I got on my throw-size Cross My Hearts quilt. The webbing changed the hand of the finished quilt, so much so that I decided to interface the solid squares in mine.
I have a kit for Embroidery Flowers, and when I get around to sewing it, I will machine-piece it without webbing. With all the seams necessary to sew thousands of squares together, Embroidery Flowers will be a heavy top even without a webbing layer.
This is not to say I won’t employ this technique again. If I had a patchwork pillow on my to-do list, that would be a different story. A pillow could benefit from the extra substance the webbing layer contributes to the final product.
Have you tried this patchwork cheat before? Let us know in the comments!
* The kit for Embroidery Flowers is long sold out, but there’s a second pixelated
pattern from Tilda that Pink Door does have in stock as of this writing, called Flower Vase Embroidery Quilt.
Related links:
I decided to join in the fun with Hannah Parks (@halfsquarehannah) and her selvage letter sewalong happening on Instagram! The idea is a simple, quick sew: scour your stash for fun selvages, cut out the letters of your name, and make a patchwork name tag with them.
In general, I am not a selvage keeper. I’m all for making the most out of the fabric I buy, but I toss all my selvages, which made this task a little difficult. Still, I managed to find a few selvages with interesting fonts, mostly on fabrics from Ruby Star Society.
The biggest challenge was finding a cool M, and when I couldn’t, I homed in on the W from Ruby Star’s upcoming Water collection, satisfied that an upside-down W was the next-best thing.
I was especially psyched to find that H on a jelly roll selvage, but I think that in the context of the other letters it highlights the fact that my name contains a four-letter word: hell. (HA!)
If you’d like to make your own name from selvage bits, see Hannah’s feed for a quickie tutorial (the bottom line is to allow yourself a quarter-inch seam allowance on all sides of each letter). And check out the hashtag others are using to share their makes: #SelvedgeLetterSewAlong.
I haven’t decided what to do with my tiny patchwork name. I’m considering making a name tag for QuiltCon. Give a holler if you have a lanyard pattern to recommend!
I am a big believer in making lists. It doesn’t matter whether I write a list out by hand or type it into a digital document, the activity is worthwhile. It gives me the opportunity to process my short-term tasks and establish some long-term goals, but perhaps more important, it frees up space in my brain. Sometimes it seems as if just writing something down and committing to tackling it is half the battle.
My quilting-related lists usually focus on WIPs, but since the new year is upon us, I like the idea of writing out some general goals and making a few detailed lists to set the stage for my 2024 quilting journey.
I have a lot of fabric. I suspect you do, too. And if you’re like me, you start each January by resolving to buy less. Yup, that’s a goal for 2024: I don’t want to buy pretty fabric just to buy pretty fabric. (Have you seen the posts about recently restocked Starry from Ruby Star Society? I’ve resisted them all!)
In addition to using up a good portion of my stash this year, I also plan to destash fabric I don’t love anymore or don’t think I’ll use anytime soon. I posted a dozen lots of fabric on Instagram and FeelGood Fibers in December, selling several of them. I plan on posting more to FGF in January. It feels great to see space in my drawers of fabric!
Related links:
I released just two patterns in 2023: Set to Spin, which is an intermediate paper-piecing pattern, and the Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt, which is one of my $3 Almost Free for Charity PDF patterns.
Most of my designing and quilting time for the next few months is already spoken for, so I don’t expect to release any new patterns until the second half of the year. Still, I am looking forward to adding to my collection of offerings. I’m hoping for two, perhaps three, new patterns. (Hold me accountable to that, friends!)
Related links:
I am committed to writing Friday posts here on the From Bolt to Beauty blog and hosting the Beauties Pageant linky. I know that in general blogging has taken a backseat to social media, but this platform continues to be my preferred place to document projects, celebrate triumphs, and discuss the speed bumps along the way. Thank you for being here, for participating in the linky, and for making blogging regularly a worthwhile goal for me!
I’ve lost a lot of love for Instagram in the past nine months or so. Algorithm changes over the past year have caused even fewer people to see my static pictures and rendered my involvement on the platform halfhearted at best. Will I post in 2024? Sure, but I expect it to be sporadic. (Darn you, Instagram!)
I’m considering playing around with YouTube in both the long and short formats, but that’s another idea to pursue the second half of the year.
I took stock of my works in process, and I have just five of them! Sure, there are a few others that have been cut out, but these are the ones I’ve actually started sewing. (The pictures in this post are testament to that.) One way or another, I can bang these out in the next 12 months. Here is the rather short list, with links to blog posts that discuss them:
What is on your list for 2024? Your list doesn’t have to be anything fancy, and I wouldn’t approach it as a legalistic I-have-to-accomplish-these-things-in-the-next-12-months activity, just an opportunity to have a think and give your year of quilting some direction.