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Friday, January 26, 2024

Simple, Sneaky Patchwork Method / Beauties Pageant 243

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.

My Experience 

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!

A Perfect Pattern for the Technique

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!)

My Advice

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.

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Friday, January 19, 2024

Fun with Selvages / Beauties Pageant 243

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! 


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Friday, January 5, 2024

New Year's List Writing / Beauties Pagent 242

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.

Stashing Goals

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!

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Pattern Design

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!)

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From Bolt to Beauty Blog

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!

Social Media

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.

WIPs

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.

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  • Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
  • Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
  • Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter



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