Hello fellow quilters! As if things weren’t crazy enough, the weather has me running around in circles. I took my dogs for a walk the other day, and it felt kind of cool out. By the time I got home though, I had my sweatshirt around my waist and had seriously asked myself if my underwear could pass for shorts at the turn for home. For the record, they cannot. My tulips though have been […]
April showers, bring May flowers, but I live in Wisconsin, so I’ll be blunt. I need flowers and I want them now! Spring is such a wonderful season, and although our winter wasn’t too bad, I’m happy to have a little more sun at the end of my day, a lighter jacket and what I hope will soon be tulips and daffodils poking out of my flower beds. This hope and day dreams of the […]
Though the history regarding the symbolism of X’s and O’s at the end of a letter or note is long and contested, we have all probably used this familiar, affectionate closing in a letter or card to a loved one or been the recipient of such a signature. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, there will be a lot of X’s and O’s everywhere. I’ve already seen it on a couple of mugs and […]
Pot holders…an essential tool for any cook, but sometimes not the loveliest thing in our kitchen. Sauces splatter, pies go over and sometimes more than the toast gets burned. With the holidays approaching, I thought it would be fun to make something practical to use for the next holiday feast, or a fun last minute hostess gift and then SWAP with another member of the guild. Your pot holders can be themed for the holidays, […]
Well the season is upon us…halloween candy, scare crows, pumpkin spice everything and we have even seen some crisp fall nights already! For this month’s block lotto I want you to carve up some creativity, and I’m going to limit the rules so we don’t squash your enthusiasm. October’s block lotto is going to be all about pumpkins! They can be scrappy, striped or single fabrics, but please plant them on neutral, low volume grounds […]
One of the great joys of quilting is pulling together a color palette for your next project, and we all have our favorites that maybe we fall back on too easily. One of the easiest ways to start to mix colors together is to use its compliment. For any color, the complimentary color is it’s opposite on the color wheel; red and green, yellow and violet, blue and orange are all complimentary color combinations. Sometimes […]
Whoooosh! There went July, and here we are ready for the August Block Lotto. This month we are continuing with another little scrappy, improv block. I took inspiration for this month block lotto from the Emerald Coast Modern Quilt Guild who did a similar block lotto a little more than a year ago. I am tweaking their version (they used 4-1/2″ x 4-1/2″ squares and only pink scraps) for our guild in the hopes that […]
Greetings! Dustin here, and I am launching my first block lotto for the month of July! This was inspired by a post on Facebook from member Cathy Birkholz. Please check out this video for some tips and ideas to make a traditional churn dash block, play with proportion and then another that gets a little wonky! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrkGyNuPbX0 PLEASE NOTE! We are not going to use the “required fabrics” as stated in the video, but we […]
Welcome to the blog post for the next block lotto – it was supposed to be for April but I forgot, and I almost forgot again for May. But here it is! We’re doing no-color blocks this time, meaning black and white with no color. Gray is OK, but not brown. Also, be inspired by a log cabin block, but do whatever you want with that. It can be square or rectangle, it can be […]
This month for block lotto we’re going a little more free-form. I want you to take all the brightly colored fabrics from your string stash that are 8.5″ or longer and sew them together into squares. You see a lot of string blocks sewn on the diagonal, but let’s do these on the square, and not wonky but nicely trimmed into straight strips. Combine skinny strips and chubby strips, lots or just a few, however […]