Frosty Jolly Wall Hanging

August means time for Holiday quilting! Two weeks ago I completed the "What did you call me?" Witch Appliqué Wall Hanging. This weekend I decided to take a go at Frosty Jolly a pattern by Happy Hollow Designs. I actually picked it up last year during a Black Bag Saturday, along with the about 15 fat quarters it requires, but being pregnant and tired I just never got around to completing it. 

My quilting happens when C naps, so today's project time was from noon to 2pm. I did get a jump start at 6am while playing in C's room, he played with some toys while I read the pattern and noted the count of how many of each color of squares would be needed. 

For this pattern the squares are 1 7/8th inch each, and there are about 300 squares! Don't worry it's an easy assembly line process for cutting and for sewing. Fusible grid paper makes this project manageable and beautiful! 

To start the project I began cutting out all of my squares. I am very lucky to have just recently purchased a fiskar 6" x 24" slide cutter. This ruler and cutter combined is able to cut through up to eight sheets of fabric at a time.

Since I needed to make  1 7/8 inch squares I took my fat quarters and cut them in piles by color. Each fat quarter I cut two rows from the 21 inch long side. This enabled me to get a bout 10 perfect 1 7/8 inch squares from each row. 

After getting all my squares cut out, I took time to change piece my half square triangles which are the only other shapes and the pattern. There were three orange/ white, seven black/white, 20 purple/green. 

After these were chain pieced I cut the half off that was not needed, then took them to the ironing board to be pressed. As I have learned From the great Jenny down of Missouri star quilt company, I pressed all my pieces to the dark. This ensures any white pieces will not have the dark fabric coming through on the back of the seam. 

Once my half square triangles were complete I begin the process of setting up my fusible grid paper to build the project on. 

The instructions call for the fusible grid to be done in two pieces, one being the snowman's hat, the other being the snowman's face and earmuffs. I decided to start on the face and earmuffs first since it is the larger piece.

For the layout of the face and earmuffs I chose to begin by marking up my fusible grid paper. The version I have by Pellon has gold grid lines which to me is a bit hard to see. So I took my pink Frixion highlighter which disappears when heated and I sketched out the center grid and the earmuffs and locations of the HST's.

 With these in place I moved forward in laying out the squares. First all my half square triangles.

Next, all of the purple earmuffs!

 

You may be wondering, "Katie, why are you not placing the right next to each other, there are little gaps." Have no fear, it's supposed to be that way! Remember I cut squares 1 7/8th inches? Well that 1/7th of an inch missing is the gap you see and once we sew the fusible grid those gaps will disappear. Here's a sneak preview:

Now that I've given you a preview of the magic I'm going to show you how I got there.

With all the pieces laid out, it is time to iron them to the fusible grid paper!

First step is laying down the appliqué pressing Matt, I put the packaging on the ironing board as well to show you which one I have. I have link to it in the beginning of the blog if you're interested in getting one for yourself.

The next step is ironing on top of your pressing Mat to secure the squares to the fusible grid paper. I am lucky enough to have an Oliso iTouch iron, so when I place my iron on my ironing board if my hand is not on it it has little feet that pop up so that nothing can get scorched.

As you can see some of the squares are not fitting on the ironing board, so after I secure the top rows I move the fusible grid paper up on the ironing board so that I can secure the bottom rows. Diffusible grid paper works sort of like batting does the grid squares usually can help keep the fabric on the paper even if you haven't been able to iron it down yet.

The look above is all of the pieces fuse down to the grid. 

 The next step requires The excess feasible grid to be cut away. You can see below that I cut off every extra piece of feasible grid including the sides of the corners.

Now that this step is done it's time to sew! The directions said just sewing horizontally on the gridlines first, switching back-and-forth which side you start with. That's too much thinking for me to switch back-and-forth, so I always do the horizontal first but always start on the same end of the grid paper. 

Here is what the first line sewn looks like. Nothing too fancy, a quarter-inch stitch right next to the grid line.

When you open up the line you can see that there is no longer a gap between the two rows that have the same line. 

It is important to check in between each row in case one of your squares did not fuse properly and is not so all the way into the seam line. If that happens you will need to use a seem ripper and re-sew that small section.   If that happens to you, don't worry it happens to the best of us. I have great example pictures to show below.

Whoops! 

Since this square didn't get sewn into the same line, as you will see in the picture below I removed the stitches with my seem ripper and then place the square back in the right spot and sewed the gap shut. Which fixed the issue.

Thankfully I only had to deal with this twice during the process of doing the snowmans face and earmuffs, below is a picture after the horizontal lines were completed.

The next step requires clipping between the vertical seam lines, for this I used my rag quilt clipping scissors. However a standard pair of sewing scissors can be used as well.

Clipping the vertical lines allows you to then fold the grid paper vertically to so the next set of seam lines.

Their directions for this pattern tell you how to get the already sewn seam lines to fold in the correct direction when you are pushing through your sewing machine. I have never been able to figure out how to get that to happen so I just charge forward and my back of my grid paper is a bit bulkier than it should be, but it has never cause me a problem and completing the project.

Seriously, the best part of this paper is that all of the squares match so perfectly. If you have ever tried to so to half square triangles together and get them to match perfectly you know it is not an easy feat. As you can see between the picture above this, and below this diffusible grid paper makes the nose for the snowman come together beautifully.

After all the vertical lines are so here is what the snowman looked like.

The next step was to move on into creating the snowman's hat. So I already had the squares cut out all I needed to do was prepped the fusible grid paper,  lay out my squares, and get to sewing.

This part is still a work in progress but I will continue to update in a new post to show how the two pieces come together, in addition to adding the back in and batting to complete the project.

Scrabble Jack

At Black Bag Saturday (Aug. 2013) I picked up this awesome pattern by Happy Hollows Design for a pumpkin wall hanging, the pumpkins teeth read "Happy Fall Y'all". 

This project brought a new element into my quilting because it used fusible grid paper. And let me start off by saying how awesome this stuff is!! It makes your piecing look so precise when really you don't have to do much. 

For the pattern your working with 1 7/8th inch squares. Over 200 of them! So the start of this quilt for me was a huge cutting session. I had about 12 fat quarters in orange hues, 4 in black, 3 in brown, and one in green. After I cut what seemed like a billion squares I laid out my fusible grid and got to work.  

The great thing about the grid is you can lay everything out and play with placement to make sure where you like items before you commit to sewing or even fusing the items in place. For me once I laid everything out I actually did my first ironing on my dining room table (don't tell the husband please!). I did put batting under the grid to protect the table. This allowed me to move the whole piece to the ironing board for a true press. 

 

When pressing you're adhering 1 7/8th inch squares to 2 inch fusible grid so there is some exposed glue. Because of this the ladies at my new favorite quilting store introduced me to an appliqué pressing sheet. You place it over the quilt squares and iron right on top so it gets the glue, not your iron. 

Once all your squares are fused you fold the grid paper row by row and sew across horizontally. Then once all the horizontal rows are complete you move on to vertical rows. However there is a step in the middle. You need to go through and snip at the seam allowance between squares to help the grid paper fold and sew vertically. Once this is done you can move on to the vertical row sewing. 

Once your pieces are sewn to the fusible grid you cut out your shape and lay your backing on top, RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER-- I emphasis this because I did it wrong sides together and spent an hour seam ripping later. Once your pumpkin and backing are right sides together your batting is place over the backing. Then you sew your 1/4 inch seam around the outside of your pumpkin, leaving an area for turning it inside out at the bottom. 

Once sewn you cut off the excess backing and batting and clip the corners. Then turn inside out. Once inside out you will use a point turner to refine the corners and then finally see the bottom opening closed. 

The original pattern has a set of decorations that can be purchased including the scrabble teeth, raffia, and button eyes. It ran about $20 but I still bought it. Because I had so much fabric left I actually made a second Scrabble Jack and for it I found similar items to the buttons and raffia at Hobby Lobby and used them.

The end result was fantastic and those I know who quilt were impressed with my piecing accuracy! I let them in on the fusible grid secret and they loved it. I truly look forward to getting to hang these year after year now.

Bill's Black Bag Saturday August 2013

I was recently introduced to 35th Ave. Sew and Vac. Which is an incredible quilting store and vacuum/sewing machine repair shop here in the Phoenix area.  They have three locations across to Maricopa County. Well on their Facebook page I discovered an event they hold monthly called Bill's Black Bag Saturday.

On Black Bag Saturday, customers purchase a reusable bag (one time and then use it for the year) which gives them access to a set of exclusive Coupons to be used that day and a free select notion chosen by the store.  The free notion this month was a Dritz magnetic pin wand! 

The coupons vary monthly but you can always expect a 40% off one notion, anda 40% off one cut of fabric. They also have additional dollar off coupon you can win by playing games.There are always demonstrations going on too! 

This month there was even a table where you could make your own mummy out of batting, muslin, and flexible wire! With the mummy they held a Facebook contest and had people submit pictures all month of what there mummy helped them with! You'll see my mummy featured in some of the photos in my next post about Scrabble Jack. 

I should note this was my first true trip to a quilting store. I had no idea what to expect and boy was I blown away!! The selection was awesome, the people were great, and there was so much to see.

It was really hard to decide what to buy because truly I would have bought everything I touched if I had the budget!

In the end I picked one pattern, called Scrabble Jack by Happy Hollow designs. Then I needed to pick the fabric that the pattern called for. It called for almost 20 fat quarters. I had never really picked more than one or two fabrics that matched each other, so picking 20 fat quarters of different colors that match each other was something that I was a little nervous about.

 I should preface here that when I shop for clothes I only go to stores that put their collections on maniquines, so I can buy the entire outfit and make sure it matches based on what the maniquine was wearing. 

The best part I found about this quilting store was the willingness of the staff to help me in matching and picking out fabrics. With this pattern you use a fusible grid fabric to  ensure that all your patchwork matches up perfectly (since you have over 200 two inch squares to sew), without the help of the staff I wouldn't have thought to get the grid paper or known how to use it. 

Below is a picture of my total haul from the event. I won't lie I was probably there for at least 4 hours! Cannot wait to share how Scrabble Jack turns out. 

Quilting 101

I figured not everyone on Facebook would want a daily update on my adventures in learning how to quilt, so I decided to create a blog. 

After receiving a gorgeous and beautifully crafted quilt for our wedding last year, from the very talented Michelle L. I thought about how great it would be to learn to quilt and be able to make super useful items for my friends and family members. When that thought crossed my mind I knew I couldn't commit to learning how to quilt just yet because I was still finishing up my MBA. Well, this past September I completed my last class, and as it so happens by the time I decided to take a quilting 101 class it occurred on the same day I finally received my diploma in the mail!

For my introduction into quilting I knew a book wouldn't be enough so I signed up for a class at Joann Fabrics, they offer different levels of quilting classes through-out each month. For the class I had to bring three fabric Fat Quarter, and a whole mess of tools- which thanks to coupons ended up costing just about $65.00. When I arrived at the class I was the only student, my instructor was Sherry a wonderful woman who has been quilting for about 15 years and loves to teach. 

Fat Quarters from Joann's-- Dark, Medium and Light

During the class she took me to the fabric section to show me ho to choose fabrics, and which ones are best for quilting or why a fabric would not be ideal for quilting. She also shared with me a lot of personal insight as to what types of tools she feels a beginner needs vs just might want to have. We talked sewing machines because I didn't own one and hadn't used one probably since sixth grade home-ec class. After getting me familiarized with the sewing machine we went into cutting strips of fabric with our rotary blades to specific widths so that we could sew them together and create a panel of fabric with three rows. After these panels were created, we cut 3 1/2" strips them and then combined the strips using the sewing machine to create a 9-square block. 

Fabric Panels

Nine Square or Checkerboard Block

Once I had the sewing machine figured out (the hardest part for me was keeping the 1/4 inch seam allowance, which ensures everything is matched correctly) Sherry showed me how to take a two squares of opposite fabric and combine them and cut them in half to create two new squares composed of 1/2 of each fabric. These are technically called half square triangles (HST). The challenge for me with the HST is getting the fabric cuts to be perfect, I found that it can be done but it takes practice! 

My two sets of HST's combined in a Ribbon Block

The cool thing about HST's is that you draw lines on the back of the fabric (actually know as the Wrong Side (WS) of the fabric in quilting) and you stitch right on those lines. I was way better at this than keeping the 1/4 inch seam allowance. Sherry recognized that right away and showed me a quilt that was hanging in the classroom, she had created it using paper piecing-- something I'd saw mentioned on quilting boards but not read about yet. She shared that with paper piecing you are actually drawing out your lines and sewing your fabric to a thin piece of material or paper and building your block that way, with this you get to stitch right on the lines. Since we had about a half hour left she showed me how to do some, it was really fun and I think I would enjoy it so I will likely be going back to take another class with her to learn more about how to do it. 

In the end after I had finished the class I decided that I was going to go all in, and take up quilting (at least for a year and see where that takes me). In order to make the commitment to learning to quilt I knew I would need to get a sewing machine. Luckily, I already had my research done and knew that I would purchase a Brotherfrom Costco if in fact I decided to start quilting.