Two 6" blocks = 240 pieces

I'd been doing a lot of knitting and came across problems that were bothering me in two projects. I decided to put them aside (temporarily), switch gears, and do some FPP (Foundation Paper Piecing). That's always a fun process for me.

About a month ago, Carol Doak designed a new block for the members of her CarolDoakQuiltingGroup yahoogroup. It's called the Holiday Star and it has a total of 112 pieces. I love blocks with lots of pieces! Carol provided the pattern for a 12" block. I made it smaller, 6", printing out the pattern using Mona's EQ7 drawing of the pattern.

I made two blocks and for one of them I changed the pattern a little to add in extra pieces in order to sort of float the star inside a dark background. The orange/yellow one will be going into a large collection of blocks I have in the same color scheme (for making into a quilt one day, of course!) The rainbow colored one, I haven't decided what to do with it yet. It will get pinned to the piles of other orphan blocks on my design wall.

Here are my fabric choices: 

Then I printed out the line drawing provided by Carol and colored in with my pencils. Yes, I still do it that way instead of in EQ7!

Here it is sewn in eighths:

And, in quarters:

And, finished blocks!

 
Thearica has a blog that I've been following for several years and she recently decided to change the direction a little and thought it would be nice to change the blog name, too. It's called Stitch and Quilt and she is now sponsoring a giveaway with four chances to win bundles of fabric! You have thru December 17 to enter.

Enjoy! 

Debbie

Miniature made during a busy, busy summer!

This summer has been very busy for us, with more to come. I'm so behind in blog reading and emails. Despite that, I managed to get a relaxing quilt related project going. It took me a whole month to make the top of this miniature.

Carol Doak, the queen of foundation paper piecing and the Carol Doak Quilting Yahoogroup, posted a free challenge pattern in early July. The Royal Miniature Star Challenge. All members of the group can download the pattern (and loads of other patterns) for free. The current cover photo for the group is of Carol's design for her pattern. The deadline for the challenge is August 15, but you'll still be able to download the pattern for quite some time after that.

It's been way too long since I made anything quilty. (I've got a few knitting projects to share one of these days.) It was time. 

One of the member's of our group, Mona, draws the patterns in EQ7 and shares it with the list. There is someone who draws it for Quilt Pro, too, but I have EQ7. I've never taken the time to really learn how to use EQ7. I used it to print out blocks of the pattern, in the original form and in two stretched sizes. (I couldn't just make the original design of the pattern!) Then I proceeded the old fashioned way. I cut up the blocks, arranged them, and glued them to paper. 

Then I scanned that and in Photoshop I whited out the extra lines.

 Then I colored it in.

I did make a very annoying mistake. I started the piecing using the patterns I printed on the printer paper instead of using the Carol Doak foundation paper. I was too lazy to start over again and I paid for it at the end in the HOURS it took me to take out the papers from the back. I don't think I will ever do that again!

Here is the finished approximately 9 1/2" square top.

The top was sitting on a black surface for this photo. I'm hoping that white batting and some quilting will camouflage the dark shadows. 

Enjoy!

Debbie

Progress!

The Shetland Pi Shawl is finally blocked! As a reminder, the pattern came from a mystery shawl knit-a-long provided by Wendy Johnson of Wendy Knits. You can find it on her free patterns page.

This week I started a new lace shawl from more yarn in the stash. Also from Wendy Knits. It's another mystery shawl, the Summer Mystery Shawlette, and the last part was posted yesterday. I just started Part 2. 

Today marks the 5th anniversary of the Carol Doak Quilting Group yahoogroup. Carol designed another fantastic anniversary block for this year. I felt like I needed to do some piecework, so yesterday I whipped up a six inch version of the block. You can get the pattern by joining Carol's yahoogroup. 

In fact, you can get tons of free patterns that Carol designs exclusively for the members. It's free to join. She also gives challenges, with prizes, for using and posting photos of the blocks and BOMs (Block of the Month) that she designs for us.

Have a great weekend!

Debbie

Borders On

 
Yesterday I got the borders onto my little sample FPP mini quilt. There won't be any sewing going on for the next two weeks or so. I've got some paperwork to do and preparations for Passover to work on. Family is here and more will be coming. But, I still want to try to get that Shetland Pi Shawl blocked. If I do, I'll post a photo. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to tell you about a family event that we're having today and post a few photos.

Enjoy!


Debbie

Made the deadline, barely

 
So, I got enough of the top done to be able to send it in. It's just the middle without the borders. What you see is 8" square, without the seams. Today I'm going to try to get the borders done. I hadn't done any miniature paper piecing for quite a while, so this was fun.

 

Before trimming

 

 

After trimming

Sewn together, without borders

This is a free pattern that you can get on Carol Doak's site in the Free Patterns section. If you join Carol's yahoogroup of over 7,000 (!) members, you can get even more free patterns that Carol designs especially for those subscribed to the list.

Enjoy!

Debbie

Today's Progress

I went to the hardware store today (it's right across the street from us) and was given a suggestion of a heavy duty packing tape. I bought it and tested it and it seems to work on the styrofoam. Now the problem is that I won't have the time or space to do the blocking of the shawl until sometime next week. :(


I did, however, get all the pieces cut for the class sample that I'm making. Let's hope nothing happens on the way to Sunday to keep me from getting it done! I only want to finish the top, not the quilting, so the students can see it with the paper on the back.

Till tomorrow,

Debbie

Progress reports

So, the styrofoam that I'd been waiting for in the last post is here. I need to figure out how to attach the pieces to each other. Tape doesn't stick to it.


In the meantime, I managed to finish Lesson One (only three more to go) of the EQ7 class that ended a few weeks ago. These are the blocks that I drew and colored in.

I've been following the blog of Judy, the Virtual Quilter, for a while. Everyday she posts a new design of hers made in EQ7. It's a very interesting blog and fun to keep up with. Do you know of any other similar blogs or sites that share EQ designs, besides those related to the EQ site and the EQ blog?
 
Now I have to make a sample for a class that I'm hoping to teach at the workshop retreat here in the summer. I need to send in a photo of the sample by this coming Sunday! This is as far as I got:

The colors I chose for this project have no connection to the block drawings above. I just like the combination.

Enjoy!

Debbie

Meeting Carol Doak

One of the highlights of my trip in November was getting to meet Carol Doak, the Queen of Foundation Paper Piecing! She was teaching at a guild in New Jersey on the last weekend that I was there. It was about a 50 minute drive from my parent's home, so who could resist! I've been helping Carol to moderate her Yahoogroup over the past several years and we've been corresponding, so it was exciting to finally have the opportunity to meet in person. We spent some time at her hotel before going to the guild. I brought some of my mini foundation pieced quilts for show and tell and Carol show and telled images from her iPad! Carol is such a lovely and sweet person and I very much enjoyed getting to know her.

Carol's lecture at the guild was fantastic. She is lots of fun and funny, too! We all enjoyed her Powerpoint presentation about her quilting life and her trunk show of many quilts, especially all those wonderful minis.

 One of the nicest things was that Carol gifted me with a small quilt top. It's the actual top that was made for and shown on The Quilt Show episode that featured Carol teaching her brand of foundation paper piecing. How cool is that!

If you love quilting and are a foundation paper piecer or just want to learn FPP, you must join Carol's Yahoogroup. She gives us loads of free patterns and it's one of the best groups around with a wonderful group of members.


Enjoy!

Debbie

YTRR, continued - Advice needed

Earlier this week the rules for the fourth round of the YTRR in the Carol Doak yahoogroup were revealed. I spent two days printing, cutting, pasting, coloring, photographing and doing it all over again and again. I came up with two versions, but still can't decide. 

Below you will find Version 1 and Version 2. I am leaning towards Version 2. Version 1 might be a drop too busy for this round. This round should be a little quieter than the previous ones. Also, I don't know if you can notice, but I tried to design round four with a way to make it easy to work into round five. Hopefully, it will fit with the rules for round five. If not, I will make my own rules!


Please let me know, in the comments section, what you think about version 1 and version 2, and why. I will not have time to do any cutting or sewing until Sunday, anyway.

Version 1

Version 2 

Two of my favorite bloggers are giving away great stuff. 


First there's Karen of Sew Many Ways who's giving away a bunch of her Tool Time Tuesday supplies to celebrate one year of TTT. You have until March 21 to enter. You really should go through her blog to read some of her ideas. She's also added two beautiful Moda Fat Quarters and a couple of patterns.


Then there's one of my favorite podcasters, Jackie of Jackie's Quilting Chronicles and Canton Village Quiltworks who recently interviewed Karen Griska of The Selvage Blog, another one of my favorite bloggers from a while back. Jackie is helping Karen to give away TWO autographed copies of her wonderful book, Quilts from the Selvage Edge. You have until March 22 to enter.


I'm slowly working on a selvage quilt, but am really low on selvages. (Hint, hint!)

Enjoy your weekend,

Debbie

Yours Truly Round Robin

What is a Yours Truly Round Robin (YTRR)? A round robin is usually a project where one makes a quilt block or other piece of needlework or craft and then sends it to the next person in a group of like minded participants. Each participant adds on one round and sends it on to the next one. The number of rounds usually corresponds with the number of people in the group. When the last round is done, the piece is returned to the original owner. The individual rounds follow a set of rules decided by either the members of the group or the organizer of the whole project.

A YTRR is a round robin where you do all the rounds yourself, thus no need to mail it around. Carol Doak came up with her first YTRR challenge (this is the second) after some members of her Yahoogroup got burned while participating in a 'real' round robin. Carol provides the rules for each round every 3-4 weeks and everyone shares photos of their progress in individual albums dedicated to each round. You do need to be a member of the Carol Doak Quilting Group at yahoogroups in order to participate.

All rounds must include a Carol Doak block design. This includes the free patterns on her website, the MANY free patterns designed especially for the members of the yahoogroup, and the MANY books that Carol has published. Here are the rules for the individual rounds, so far.

Round 1, center block: "Make a center using any number of paper-pieced blocks (my designs) in any size in any number of colors." 

For my center block I used the New Year's 2010 block, designed by Carol just for the members of the yahoogroup.

Round 2, border 1: "Should contain only two colors and must include at least one Carol Doak design. You can use different fabrics containing different shades of the two colors, but only two colors should be used in this round. One color fabrics can be solids or tone-on-tones. Or you can use a print fabric that contains only your two colors or shades of your two colors."

For this border, I used the South Carolina block from the 50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars book, in regular and mirror image.When I turned the center block on point, I decided that the next round should result in a finish of six inches, otherwise I knew I would get into trouble in subsequent rounds! This resulted in printing out the S.C. block unit foundations in a weird measurement, in order to get it to fit.

Round 3, border 2: "should contain one or more paper-pieced rectangular blocks. Now this round can contain other paper-pieced blocks, however at least one rectangular block should be included. You can put two square blocks together to create a rectangular unit."

For this border I used Unit 19 from the Simply Sensational Nine Patch book, also in regular and mirror image. It is one inch wide. So, the little triangles are approximately 1/4".

In future updates on this project, I will not be posting the rules to the subsequent rounds. You will need to join the Carol Doak Quilting Group to get them!

Here's the piece, so far. Don't forget to enlarge for the detail. It now measures 8" (eight inches) square.

Here's my worksheet. I do not use a quilting program to design my quilts. I printed out the foundations on regular paper, cut out the units, then pasted them to a larger paper. For larger quilts I used graph paper to design a scaled down version, but for minis I design it in the actual size. I color in with markers or pencils, the old fashioned way. You can see that I changed my mind about the colors in round three.

Terri of Sew Fantastic is giving away a Giant pack of beautiful Kona Fat Quarters in the 25 most popular colors. Such a treasure of solid colored fabrics! You have until March 14 to enter.

Enjoy!

Debbie