It's time to announce the winner of the Peace Pattern giveaway! I chose the name and sent it to Rene' to make sure there weren't any duplicates (with all the different giveaways going on). Now, I can announce it.
Drumroll, please!
Mr. Random said to pick Commenter #24, who was:
Cindy Smith! Congratulations! And how fun! Cindy and I just did a swap not too long ago! You can read about our swap here and here. Fun, fun!
If you didn't win and you want to get a copy of the pattern, you can get one in either of these two places:
It is such a fun pattern. So many possibilities. Hope you enjoyed the blog hop! I had so much fun seeing all the different variations on a theme with this project. Many thanks to Rene' for allowing me to test her pattern and give away a copy. I had a ton of fun with this!
I have a very intense week at work this week (and for the next couple of weeks). The blog posts may be spotty!
Hi Everyone! It's my turn today on Rene's (of Rene' Creates) blog hop for her new Peace quilt pattern. The photo above is the cover photo for Rene's quilt. Rene' does such a great job of taking her quilts on field trips for the purpose of photo shoots. Amazing photos.
I first met Rene' (in the foreground in the photo above) at my Gruber's retreat. I think Rene' is so neat. She has the coolest style--great design sense, great color sense, great personality. I love the quilt top she's working on in the photo above, and I'm totally going to plagiarize it (with her permission). She is so kind and generous, she even sent me some fabric I need to plagiarize her. I just really, really like Rene'. I am so happy to have her as a friend. And, she's about the cutest thing ever.
As I said in my previous post about this blog hop, the Peace pattern has a baby size, throw size, and a full-size pattern. Sweet Pea is totally into peace signs, so I thought I'd make this for her. When I showed her the pattern to ask her what she wanted, she looked at the pattern, smiled, and said, "Really?! For me?!" It was awfully cute. The two smaller versions use solid squares in the peace sign. The largest version uses pinwheels for the peace sign. I was hoping she'd pick one of the small ones, given my limited time to get this done. But no, she really adored the pinwheel version (pictured above in Rene's cover photo). Of course she did! You saw that one coming, didn't you?! She loved the pinwheels (just like her mom does!). I asked her what else she wanted for her quilt. She said she loved the white background. She also told me she'd love purple in her quilt. Hmmmm.....
The pinwheels in this quilt can all be made with charm squares (5" squares). (Actually, all the sizes are pre-cut friendly!) So, I went through my charm packs (yay! using something I already have!!!) to see which ones I had enough of. There were a few choices. I presented them to Sweet Pea, and she chose these, which I've had in my stash FOR. EVAH. I was really surprised she chose 1930's fabrics, but I guess the dogs hooked her. I was trying to figure out how I would incorporate purple, because I didn't think it would go with these charms. But, then I found this lavender in the 1930's section at The Attic Window, and it looked really nice with the fabrics. I was surprised at that. I paired it with Kona Snow.....Perfect!
One thing that bugs me about precuts is that they are not always cut accurately. And it's hard to know where to line up your stitches on the pinked edges. Rene' uses a fun method for making your half-square triangles, where you sew around the edge of the square and then cut in an X. I cut my purple 5" squares and used those edges to line everything up and ignored the pinked edges of the precut. You can see here how off some of those pinked edges are! Where the pinked edges were off, I just lined up to the nicely cut edge.
I owe a huge debt of thanks to my good friend Caroll for helping me finish this quilt. I have a confession...I goofed on what the deadline was and didn't start until 2 weeks before I needed to have it finished. EEEK! I had a Saturday Sew Day with Caroll up in Grand Rapids, and she sewed all the squares for me. I cut them and sewed them into pinwheels. I managed to get all the pinwheels done in a day and a half as a result of Caroll's help. Caroll, I love ya. Thank you soooo much!
I love patterns like this, where the resulting blocks are a little too big, so you can trim to perfection. It is such a huge help for a great finished product. A tip for you if you make this...use a nice ruler with a 45-degree line on it to help you trim. You can get those points lined up in the corners nicely.
Sweet Pea loved the resulting pinwheels. I gave her the pattern and asked her to lay it out for me. (Notice her shirt has a peace sign on it!) She loved doing this and got everything organized just so. Now, if an 8-year-old can do this, so can you! :-) That goes to show you how well Rene' put together the instructions!
And here, my friends, is the finished quilt top. Sweet Pea is totally thrilled about this. I really like it, too. Who'd-a-thunk the 1930's fabrics would look so good in a peace sign?! (There were some black and white and red charms in the pack, too, but I pulled them out and didn't include them in this project. That was Buffie's suggestion, and it was a good suggestion. Thank you, Buffie! Love my Saturday Scrappers at The Attic Window!)
Keeping it real, and true confession time....I was sewing pretty fast to get this done on time, and not all my points are perfect on the edges (they look really good in the centers). But, you know, I did not worry about it much, because this is going to be a well-used cuddle quilt for in front of the TV. It will get washed, stuff spilled on it, etc. Sweet Pea won't care or notice how neat my points are. So, I just didn't worry about it. :-)
I took Sweet Pea shopping to pick out a backing. Because it will be something to cuddle with in front of the TV, I suggested minky-like fabric. She picked out some pink minky fabric. I just have to piece the back and drop it off with the quilter. I am NOT going to attempt quilting with minky. I'll show it to you again when it's quilted.
Rene's pattern is very well written and clear. Everything fits together perfect. Very gratifying! The quilt goes together fast....Obviously! You guys know how long it usually takes me to complete a quilt top...Like a year or two! haha! And I got this one together in two weeks--and it's the full-sized one. So, there you go!
The Peace sign is so popular these days, especially with young girls.
RENE' HAS GRACIOUSLY AGREED TO GIVE A COPY OF HER PATTERN TO ONE OF MY READERS! YIPPEE! IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ENTERED INTO THE GIVEAWAY, PLEASE JUST LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS POST BY FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, AND MAKE SURE THERE IS A WAY FOR ME TO GET HOLD OF YOU.
I will draw a name Friday night and pick the winner! There are lots of other chances to win a pattern, too. Check out all the other posts on this blog hop to see everyone else's versions and to get in on their giveaways. It is so fun to see all the different versions and interpretations. I-spy versions, solids, rainbows, Christmas, Kaffe.... Too fun!
Full Disclosure: This pattern was given to me, free of charge, by Rene' to try out. And, as I've mentioned, she is my friend. However, everything I've said above is my honest opinion. The pattern is just great. If I'd have had any problems, I would have told Rene', who would have fixed them. You'll notice how many people on the list above have tested this pattern. :-) Rene' is very thorough!
Recently I got to do some pattern testing for my friend Rene' of Rene' Creates blog, who has written her first pattern. It's for her Peace Quilt! It is so cute and wonderful! Her pattern is for three different sizes...baby, lap, or full sized (75"x75"). A bunch of us tested the pattern for her, and we're holding a blog hop to feature the quilts (or quilt tops, as the case may be in some cases) we made using her pattern.
And there are giveaways for the pattern at each blogger's website.
You'll want to stop by and check out the reviews and pattern. Here is the schedule:
As you can see, I'm up on Friday, January 25. So, come back then and I'll show you mine.
Here's a sneak peek for you. Yep, I sewed the whole thing on my featherweight! (Never mind the mess behind my sewing machine! LOL.)
I made the full-sized version, and I can't wait to show it to you. So, plesae do visit me on Friday and get your name in for a giveaway of the pattern. See you then! In the meantime, check out the other blog posts. It will be fun to see all the different color and fabric combinations!
If you can't wait and you want the pattern now, here are links where you can buy it:
You might remember a while back, I mentioned that my friend Terri was starting a new paper products business, selling paper products she designs herself. I won a prize from her, and I blogged about the beautiful butterfly cards she sent me.
You might notice the new button on the right-hand side of my blog. (All my buttons got moved to the right. Don't ask me. It's the only way I could get my blog content to lay out correctly for some reason. Typepad was doing funky things to my blog lately.) Terri is one if my new sponsors! :-) She and I are working on a giveaway and special post about her and her design business. Stay tuned for that.
In the meantime, head on over to Terri's blog and pick up your tags. Give her some love for her kindness while you're there, and feel free to check out her shop, too!
In order to make this, I first ordered the paper pieces for the English paper piecing. I got them from Paper Pieces. I could have cut them out myself. The pattern by I'm a Ginger Monkey provides printables for cutting these out, but I bought them, because they were a reasonable price and it made my life easier.
In addition, I also got the acrylic cutting templates (also from Paper Pieces) for cutting the fabric 3/8" bigger than the papers. Again, I could have just cut them myself, but the clear acrylic templates made it so much easier to fussy cut my motifs. I felt kind of bad, because after I bought these, I did see that Katy-I'm a Ginger Monkey, the pattern designer sells them in her Etsy shop. I would have liked to support her for providing the free pattern. But I blew it. Sorry Katy!
I hand pieced all the pieces together to form this. Again, this is smaller than the pattern design. But this configuration would give me about an 18" pillow. I removed the basting stitches and papers from all the fabric pieces that were sewn on all the sides. All the pieces on the outer edges, where there is a side that is not sewn to something, still have the papers behind them and the basting stitches in them. You can probably see them. My next step was to applique' this onto a piece of fabric that would serve as the top of the pillow. (The instructions in the tutorial stop here...they tell you to do this step, and then make a pillow with an envelope closure. So, I thought it might be helpful to see where I went from here.)
I began to audition the background fabrics I had, using the leftover fat
quarters from my fat quarter bundle that I hadn't cut into yet. Here
was the green. I liked it, but I didn't like it with the red trim I had
picked out.
I tried the red and pink. Nope. Didn't like that pink in there. I even tried the solid red Kona that I used for the triangles but didn't care for that either. Too much red in both.
Ahh, yes, this red and white. This is perfect. Sweet Pea agreed with me.
Now, it's time to applique this baby on to the background fabric. Rather than do it by hand, I decided to do it by machine. I starched the English paper pieced top lightly to hold those edges under when I removed the papers. I pinned the piece carefully to the background fabric. I set my machine to a zigzag stitch. I wanted it to be pretty small. So, I set my machine to a 1.0 stitch width and a 1.0 stitch length.
I put a spool of Aurifil's invisible thread on my machine and threaded it through the needle. I used a gray cotton thread in the bobbin.
A while back, I had seen that Aurifil had finaly come out with an invisible thread. I was so excited, because I've used invisible thread before, and I've had trouble with my machine not liking it. By this I mean, even if I set my top tension to zero, I still get bobbin thread poking up through every stitch on my appliques. It's unsightly, and I don't like it. I wrote to Alex Veronelli at Aurifil, asking if I could try his stuff, do a review of it, and do a giveaway. He said, "Sure!" and a couple of weeks ago, a package arrived on my doorstep from Italy. I was so excited. But life has been so busy, and I haven't had time to play with it. Now was my chance. I played!
Now, I don't know if this is the best or only way to do this, but here's how I did it, and it seemed to work okay for me. I lowered the needle into my fabric. I pulled out the basting threads on this first square.
I carefully reached under the square and pulled out the paper. I then got my fabric laid back down nicely, with the edge folded under. (This is where it was nice to have lightly starched the fabric, as it held the crease pretty well.)
I used my open toe foot so it was really easy to see where my needle was in relation to the fabric. With my machine set at 1.0 width and 1.0 length, the needle entered the fabric just to the left of the folded edge when the needle zigged....
...and it landed just next to the fold (only going through the background fabric) when it zagged. Some people refer to this as just "kissing" the edge of your applique' piece. I repeated this all the way around that big piece I had hand pieced. It was extremely relaxing!
I actually forgot to take the paper pieces out a few times. It was okay. They came out easily, as the needle didn't really pierce them much, given that it entered so close to the fold. Whew!
So, here is how it looked when I was done appliqueing the piece down. I am sooo happy with this Aruifil thread! Look at that! You can barely see the stitching. It's nearly invisible. And you don't see a lot of my gray thread pulling up from the back (even on the white fabric!), which is a problem I normally have. I didn't even have my top tension set a zero. I think I had it set at 2, my normal Aurifil cotton tension. I am so, so happy.
Here's another shot of another area. The stitches are even less visible here! Wow! I am sold on this invisible thread!
Here is the back. You can see all my little gray bobbin stitches on the back.
I was going to leave the entire piece of fabric on the back for stability, but then I thought, "Gee, that is a lot of good fabric back there that no one will ever see. I'm going to cut it out." So, I took my duck-billed applique' scissors and CAREFULLY trimmed away the extra backing fabric, leaving about 3/8" seam allowance from those zig zag stitches.
So, now I had this nice big scrap I can play with later. Totally worth cutting that away!
Next, I layered it with my top, batting, and a piece of white fabric, and I quilted it. I started sewing straight lines across the entire thing, like the Katy-I'm a Ginger Monkey did on her original pillow. I loved it on her pillow. But I didn't like it on this one. I had four lines sewn in, and I spent the next couple of hours ripping them out. I decided I would rather just quilt in the ditch around all the shapes. I didn't want to detract from the shapes and the fabric.
Here is a closer look at the quilting stitches.
The thread I used for the quilting was also Aurifil.
I won this thread collection a while back from Aurifil. I won
this collection of threads from Aurifil for submitting one of my
photos of my finished project for the monthly embroidery projects this
year. My project was randomly selected for the prize. I about died when I won it. What a prize! Thank you again, Alex and Aurifil! You've been awfully good to me!
I decided to use this gray thread for quilting. It's Aurifil's cotton Mako 28 weight, color number 2600.
You can see that the 28 wt thread is quite a bit heavier than the 50 wt I piece with. But I love this gray. It just blends so nicely with all the colors in my pillow top. I used it both in the bobbin and in the top. I probably should have used a lighter weight thread in the bobbin.
In this shot, the pillow top is appliqued and quilted.
Here is the back. You can see my quilting stitches better here.
My next step was to trim it to 19" by 19" to give me a 1/2" seam allowance all the way around. This is where it would have been better to have something a little bigger than a fat quarter. I just barely made it for this size. Luckily, my fat quarter was cut a little generous. On the sides, I actually had to cut off some of the shapes. That sort of makes you hold your breath--after you've done all that hand piecing!
I won't go into a ton of detail on how I turned this into a pillow cover at this point. What I will say is that I pulled out my DVD from the Pam Damour workshop I had attended a year or so ago, because I remembered she had lots of great tips on making a professional looking pillow. I just followed her instructions to the "T." They were really clear and easy to follow along. The DVD is about 30 min in length. If you are interested, you can get one here: http://www.pamdamour.com/products/training-dvds/
Here is a link I found on You Tube that sort of outlines some of the steps I followed. I didn't follow all these steps, because I didn't have mitered corners and welting on my pillow top. But you can see sort of how I inserted my zipper and how I cut the pillow:
The instructional DVD I own is more simple than this You Tube tutorial. It is also more detailed on some of the steps. So I prefer the DVD I have. I did curve my pillow edges--as shown in the video--so that this pillow top wouldn't have "dog ears," and I think it was pretty successful. The DVD I have has a slightly different zipper installation, but very similar to this You Tube video. All in all, it was pretty easy.
Here's a shot of my pillow, after I've sewn all my layers together. I haven't turned it right side out yet. You can see the back of my quilted piece. There are two sewing lines, because I first basted my red trim to the right side of the pillow top. Then, I put on the backing, right sides together with the front piece, and sewed them together with a 1/2" seam allowance. I clipped my corners. My machine has an overlock stitch on it, so I did overlock all the layers for a nice, clean finish. (Another suggestion from the DVD.)
And here's how the zipper edge is finished. Looks pretty nice, huh? I really like a clean, professional finish.
Here it is turned right side out, with the threads I used on it.
I took this picture to show you two things. First, I don't know why I agonized over the background fabric so much, you see so little of it! LOL. But, I do think one reason it looks good is it just blends right in so nicely. I am so happy with that choice. Second, this photo shows where the two pieces of trim meet at the bottom of the pillow. I just overlapped them and tucked the raw edges inside the seam allowance. I think it's a barely visible join.
A final look at the completed pillow. It's definitely a Christmas Carnival. Nothing subdued about this pillow. :-)
Now, how about a giveaway?! Would you like to get your hot little hands on some of this Aurifil invisible thread?
Alex sent me some spools to give away! I'm going to give away two spools of the invisible thread: one of the clear (which I used) and one that is smoke colored. I use smoke on darker fabrics, because it is less visible than the clear (which actually stands out a lot on dark fabrics...not just Aurifil....all clear invisible thread). If you would like to win this pair of spools, please leave a comment below.
I also have two sampler packs of threads....different weights, different colors, and one variegated...to give away. Leave a comment below, and I will randomly select two names and send you some thread. So, that's three total chances to win!
If you'd particularly like the invisible thread or the colored threads, let me know in your comment. If it works out when I draw names, I'll try to abide!
You are going to LOVE this thread if you've tried other invisible threads.
I will leave the giveaway open until Sunday, December 2. Sometime that evening, I will close the giveaway and draw a name! Good luck!
A huge THANK YOU to Alex Veronelli for allowing me to try this thread and to let me give some away. I am hugely appreciative and apologize profusely that I've hung onto them for so long! I'm sold on it and will only buy this brand from now on. My machine likes it! It really likes it! (Said like Sally Field!) I can't say that for any other invisible thread.
THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. THE WINNERS WERE COMMENTS NUMBERS 6, 20, AND 24. THANKS FOR PLAYING ALONG!
I still have some embroidery weight thread he gave me to try, too. I will blog that another time. I still need to play with it more! I'll have another thread giveaway with that post.
Hope you enjoyed this process post. I truly enjoyed making this pillow for Cindy. It was a ton of fun.
I'm so excited, because we are going to a Mannheim Steamroller concert tonight. I have wanted to see them for years!
Until next time,
NOTE: The threads I blogged about were provided to me by Alex Veronelli and Aurifil threads. You can take that into consideration when considering my evaluative comments. I would have loved these threads just as much had I purchased them, but I feel it's fair for you to know they were given to me.
