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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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
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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!

Related links:

• How to Destash on Instagram
• Fastest Way to Finish a WIP: Sell the Fabric!
  
• Learning How to Destash
  
• 10 Ways to Quilt on a Budget
  

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!)

Related links:

• Set to Spin PDF pattern
• Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt PDF pattern
• From Bolt to Beauty on Etsy

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:

• Sandhill Sling (Anna Graham)
  
• Patchwork Sky (Camille Roskelley)
  
• Leaded Glass (Tracey Jacobson)
  
• Random Hearts (Make Things. Grow)
  
• Pineberry (Pen + Paper Patterns)

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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The pageant rules are simple:

• 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.

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Triangle Pouches, Not a Sandhill Sling / Beauties Pageant 241

If you’ve been keeping up with my posts the past few months, you may recognize the sweet zippered makes in this post. Yes, I sewed some more of Sew Lux’s Triangle Pouches! Using scraps from a Songbook jelly roll (Fancy That Design House for Moda) and a Holiday Essentials Christmas mini-charm pack (Stacy Iest Hsu for Moda), I made two more pouches. (You can read my original post about the Triangle Pouch here.)

Although there are three Triangle Pouches pictured in today’s post, I’ve actually made a total of four—the last of which was sewn with Melody Miller’s Stay Gold collection. It proved to be my favorite thus far, so I’m sad I didn’t think to snap a pic before I wrapped it up with a little plate from the Fish Museum and Circus as my contribution to a guildwide Yankee swap.

Now, you may be thinking that all signs point to the fact that this post is about Triangle Pouches. In fact, it is a post that’s not about a Sandhill Sling finish. : /

I bought a kit to make the popular Noodlehead sling from Stitch Supply Co. back in January 2022. Then, because I had yet to embark on making it despite owning a kit, I signed up for a Sandhill Sling class through my guild this past September.

And here we are, almost four months later, with no finished Sandhill Sling. 

I can summarize the problem in one word: gussets. The exterior bag is completed, with the lining waiting to be inserted, and the outer gusset is off by 3/8 inch. That 3/8 inch has me completely paralyzed. Do I just forge ahead and live with what might seem to some makers like a minor oversight? (In a quilt project, 3/8 inch would almost always have me ripping out lines of stitching.) Or do I unpick the exterior gusset and hope that a second try will improve the situation, when it may actually end up making things worse?

Well, I tell you what I do ... I write a post about Triangle Pouches!

Needless to say, I will be spending the last days of 2023 trying to muster the courage to unpick that gusset. I wish you the best—with sewing, quilting, and beyond—as we wrap up this year and step into the next. : )

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The pageant rules are simple:

• 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