Gee's Bend Housetop 4 Block Quilt She came. She saw. She took away two quilts. Why not? It's a quilt museum here! My daughters like the modern looking quilts. I designed 8 renditions of Gee's Bend quilts for Windham Fabrics (yes! with permission of the Gee's Bend ladies). They've served their purpose and I got paid for my work. She promised me she would actually hang these. I'm going to check up on her when I visit in January. Oh, yes I am! From my No Sneaky Peeky class This one, she says, will go in my two grandsons' bedroom. The first one will hang in her office. Now I'm going to look for replacements. Remember I said that my house mimics a quilt museum. Can't have a bare wall, now can we? Stay tuned for the first block in the Galaxy of Stars Block of the Month for 2015. It comes out January 1. And Happy New Year to all!

Cookie Cutter Trees quilt and candle mat Merry Christmas to all. I wish you a wonderful year of sewing, quilting, crafting and all things creative. More trees! Thank you for making my blog a happy place for my quilts. They send their love and hugs to you!

Supersize 'Em Quilts Martingale is offering my book as an eBook for $6.00! Yes, you can buy it and download it with every single page as it appears in the 110 page print version. It is in pdf format. You can see all of the quilts here: Supersize 'Em Quilts There are 6 quilts for paper piecing, so you can print the foundations right from your computer. There is so much in this book. Sale ends at midnight December 21, 2014. And the quilt on the cover? Would you like to see the inspiration for this? From the Metropolitan Home Magazine - January 1982!! I tore this page out of the Metropolitan Home Magazine years ago. I carried it with me from house to house. I was so inspired by those spikey points that I just called it The Spikey Thing (though it is called "Flower Pots and Stars", circa 1920. Here's your chance to get this pattern (minus the pots) along with 21 others for ONLY $6.00. Check it out, even if just to look at the quilts: Sup...

Antique Rose Block: 10" Today I feature a lovely, traditional applique block called Antique Rose, 10" x 10". It is very similar to one of the two blocks featured in my very favorite Christmas quilt shown below. I remember beginning this quilt thinking I would hand applique. Ha! After a few stitches, I tossed the whole thing in the trash, pulled out my fusibles and happily stitched it by machine. Loved every minute. Antique Rose and Wreath Quilt This is an antique block given to me by my then editor, Jean Ann Wright, at Quilt Magazine. It is a whopping 36" square (before borders). What do you think? I added the triple border with Nine Patch to finish it out. And, of course, I machine quilted it! Antique Rose Quilt What? You don't have time to sew before Christmas? Well, just save this for those crazy January days when you're housebound with snow. What? You don't get snow where you live? OK. Just save the pattern for when you have the time!...

Baltimore Album "Cheater Cloth" quilt Oh, I dream of having a real Baltimore Album quilt. I've even blogged about it last year at this time with my cheater panels (see post here ) This little quilt was made at least 10 years ago and I bought a small panel of pre-printed blocks, set them on point with that deep, rich red fabric, and added a triple strip border. Love this little quilt and it actually hangs in my kitchen year round. It was featured in one of Quilt Magazine's special issues and I know that made her happy! One of my Baltimore Album blocks Maybe I'll go looking for that UFO box and play around with them. I just love those rich colors, don't you?  I have a few more quilts in my Christmas Quilt vault. Hope to show you some more.

Holiday Splendor Lone Star Quilt I'm pulling out my trusty, faithful, colorful Christmas quilts and I remembered this one I made about 5 years ago and turned into a class: One Day Lone Star! The center Lone Star block is about 37" square. These fabrics are so sophisticated, aren't they? They are from Blank Quilting. I created a second quilt as a pattern for Blank using their Inspiration 4 Collection. It's the same center. Would you  like the pattern? Star of Promise Quilt It really is possible to finish the piecing of the Lone Star center in a 6 hour class when all your strips are pre-cut. Many of my students do! Click here for your free Star of Promise Quilt

Cupid's Arrows by Dawn P. from Atlanta I love seeing what my students finish, and Dawn took this class at the Quilting Live! Show in Atlanta in September. This is a Palm Block, also called Hosannah. I called the class "Cupid's Arrows" because it was part of a blog hop around Valentine's Day. This is paper pieced and is done in an off-center log cabin approach, so that there are no units to join - when you're done piecing, the block is finished. My Cupid's Arrows class sample If you look closely, she used a wonderful paw print in the block and also in the border. Don't you just love you she made the best use of the curvy fabric in the setting triangles? What to GO, Dawn! The block is 7" finished. It is from my latest book, Paper Piecing Perfect Points . Students learned not only how to paper piece, but also how to set blocks on point. You can see the quilt I made for the book by following the link above. I have many several quilts using ...

One more Christmas quilt from long ago I remembered this post from last December and thought I'd reshare it with you. These Tessellating Leaves work with ANY fabrics, any holiday and colors. The pdf pattern is still available. If you didn't see this last year, I am happy to offer it to you. It was published many years ago in a Quilt Magazine issue and I'm so glad I have that photo! I think this would look good in red and white. Or blue and white. I found this picture from about 10 years ago. I gifted it to someone and I sure hope they are enjoying it for the holidays (can't remember who I gave it to). I realized that I have the pattern in pdf format and you can piece the 4" blocks either in the traditional way by rotary cutting patches or try your hand at paper piecing. The pattern is written for using fat quarters. Don't you just love the way the shapes interlock. That's what "tessellating" means. Enjoy! Free Tessellating Leave...

Better than a magazine, the Crochet 2015 desktop calendar My own calendar publisher, Andrews McMeel, is the TOP DOG in calendars! I didn't realize it until a few months ago when I did some sleuthing and discovered that they publish all sorts of calendars besides craft (quilting, crochet, knitting, etc). To a quilter, everything is a piece of fabric, I guess. From their web site: Andrews McMeel Publishing is the nation's top calendar publisher, annually producing calendars based on many top-selling properties such as Dilbert, Thomas Kinkade, and Mary Engelbreit, among other characters and titles, and selling more than 15 million calendars each year. Anyway, I just received a copy of the Crochet 2015 Calendar and I've pulled out numerous pages of my new favorites. (Yes. Now the calendar is a mess with sticky notes, disorganized pages; who says I have to keep them in order?) If you are a yarn junkie like me and are always looking for crochet inspiration, this c...

Quick sewing 8 dove ornaments with Audrey "Hi, mom. Can you help me? I need 8 dove ornaments for a Christmas exchange next week." Oh, sure. I'll put my magician hat on and wave my magic wand and voila! - 8 quick ornaments. Lucky for me I had a Santa sack of various crafts sitting in my hall closet (honest) that I had pulled out last week looking for something. In there is my trusty Dove Ornament pattern. And I even had a sample ornament to remind me of what they look like. I did the fusing. Audrey did the cutting out. I quick stitched the gold thread on the outside. I was shocked to see I still had some gold cording. We found that 10" lengths worked best. Here is a single ornament front and back: Holiday Dove: 4" x 5"  Use pretty fabric on the back, too. Holiday Dove, reverse You can get the FREE PATTERN at my Craftsy store . It's a one page pdf that also includes a simple heart shape. All you need are scraps of pretty fabric,...

Diadem Quilt from Supersize 'Em Quilts My second book is out of print for the hard copy version, but my publisher ( Martingale ) now has it available as an eBook and it's got a special price through November 23. You don't have to go out of the house, get dressed or get in the car to buy it. The beauty of digital! Go see the blog post and see the various ways you can use these supersized blocks. The Diadem Quilt uses a 14" block (see first picture). Rotary cut Lone Star blocks - 19" x 19" EACH! Now, those are really supersized blocks! I love teaching classes on this Lone Star, too. No set in seams, by the way. The 16" Album Block by Jean Ann Wright Go take a peek at every single one of the 22 projects in the book. And check out the fabulous price.

See what those crafty sheep were up to! Take a visit to the Benartex Fabrics blog - Sew in Love with Fabric - to see how to make these blocks very quick and very easy. And see what those clever Knitty Sheep were up to besides knitting! Fun fabrics . . .

  Tomorrow is Technique Tuesday over at the Sew in Love with Fabric blog by Benartex. Just thought I'd give you a teaser picture. These two sheep have been up to some mischief with my yarn and crochet hooks, so come on by tomorrow, Tuesday November 11 for a peek at some new fabric and a tutorial on how to make this easy quilt. Goes live at 9:30 am Eastern (USA).

I mailed this to my husband several years ago; still sits in his office My favorite quilt shop in Atlanta ( Intown Quilters ) sent their newsletter announcing upcoming classes and one of them is a fabric postcard swap. How fun! I taught a workshop several years ago on making these little gems and I want to share some of my creations here. I used a tiny yo-yo in the postcard at the top of the page. Bits and pieces of trim and rick rack add some pizzazz to a card. Notice that I use a decorative/blanket stitch along the edges. That's how I join it to a cardstock backing. Don't you just love this dancing groundhog? Tiny bits of trim and fuzzy yarn; wool felt packages And a few others . . . My daughter bought me a pair of green sneakers and I sent this to thank her!  I wore those Saucony Jazz Edge sneakers every day for years. Still have them and love putting them on with some jeans. Very fun. Then how about using a specialty edge rotary blade to tr...

Thrift shop find - just discovered it's wool! There is a local thrift shop that has a "yarn wall" with a variety of plastic bags filled with a vast assortment of yarn. I discovered this marvelous hank two summers ago. I should have known that it would be high-end yarn by the way it was presented. No paper wrapper with generic labels by the main stream yarn vendors (ie,  Lion Brand; Red Heart). I uncoiled it and wrapped it into a giant ball. The weather is turning cold here and it's time to pull out the crochet hooks and various yarn. I rediscovered this and decided to find out whether it's wool or just acrylic or polyester. Tested it by fire (match) and it turns to ash. If it had melted into a clump and smelled awful, then it would have been synthetic. That bundle above is 100% wool! Yarn samples I found a huge assortment of these yarn samples with some serious "bling" last year (yarn wall, of course). Pulled these out and am determined to us...

Do you remember this post? Let's review (because I actually got around to finishing it!) Create a ring of hexagons. Stitch them together as shown. Grandmother's Flower Garden Hexagon Ring: each hexagon finishes to 4-1/2"  I faced the 6 hexagons with medium weight interfacing Faced Hexagon Ring using interfacing Applique the focus hexagon (which is also interfaced) onto the center Don't you just love interfacing? It's AWESOME! Now it's ready to be appliqued to a 15-1/2" background square of white on white fabric: Center and machine applique with invisible mono-filament thread And then cut away the white background fabric from behind the Hexagon Block Clip away fabric to reduce bulk. This would make an interesting applique, huh? Everything clipped away and you can see the seaming and applique stitches I finally got around to quilting this. Used my HandiQuilter Sweet 16 and it was so much fun. My Ring of Hexagons Wh...