My Group!!

I just started a group on Flickr for people to use up their scraps. These pieces I'm talking about are actually less than two inches square. I know that you have them! You know those really small pieces that you either toss or stash in plastic bins or cardboard boxes somewhere? Join me as I create blocks weekly with these tiny pieces! Here is the link.

I hope to see you there!!

Scrap Fun!!

Today I was doing some more quilting and as you can see, I managed to add two more blocks to my string quilt. I think it is turning out good and I am having a lot of fun seeing that I have made several blocks of string quilting but no whole quilt tops or finished quilts. Recently I have been working on a lot of quilts that in past years, I have actually put away and forgotten. It is fun to sort through some old projects and start working on them again! It's kind of like rediscovering old friends!

Also, with some of the scrap fabrics that I received in the mail, I added some hexagons to my quilt. For those of you that have asked, I am not piecing this by machine, I am using a method known as English Paper Piecing and you have to do it all by hand.

And as for my hand quilting, I have been working on and off on it today, doing a few stitches here and a few there... eventually it will be finished! Have a good and quilty day!

~Jordan~

Goodies!!

Sorry that I don't have any pictures but I can't find my camera. :-( Today two packages came in the mail... they were both filled to the brim with scraps! One was an envelope and the other was a shoebox. I was definitely pleasantly surprised! I am so excited to get started using them and I want to really bad! I just about died when I saw those packages in the mail! If anyone else wants to send me some "squishies" or any other type of goodie, leave a comment with your e-mail and I will get back to you.

As soon as possible I want to get ahold of my friend Elizabeth (she's 12 as well) and I'm going to teach her to quilt! Her family has a sewing machine but doesn't know how to use it... then we are going to start a book publishing, quilt making, pattern selling, fabric line creating business!!! I'm so excited!

Thanks again for those packages ladies! I am looking forward to them!

Quilt Tops

So today I finished sewing together the quilt top. I think that it would be fine without a border don't you? As long as the binding can calm the scrappiness of the whole thing, I personally think it will be alright.

So I have been using these little squares and assembling them into four-patches as Leaders and Enders. I am pinning them together with safety pins in sets of five so I actually have twenty. And that was just from assembling this one top.

I actually designed this sampler quilt a while back and am now just thinking about how to finish it. I need to decide what color to use as cornerstones as well as what to use as borders. I also need to decide how many borders and then need to get those fabrics.

I thought all of you would also like to see my stash over a period of time so I decided to start with my denim jean scraps! I keep them in a shoebox and then whenever we throw a pair of jeans out, I keep a piece for my box. I am actually trying to save up enough to create a jean quilt.

Also, a few people asked how I was marking my baptist fans for quilting so I decided to show you a picture!! My dad created this for me and it works pretty well! It is just a piece of cardboard cut into the right shape. But if you don't wan't to make a template or even buy one here is an article on how to freehand Baptist Fans.

Also, I would like to thank all of you out there who decided to send me scraps. I really am looking forward to receiving them and if anyone else would like to send me some goodies, I welcome you to post your e-mail in the comments and I will get back to you. One last thing, if you would like to check out my website, here is the link to Jordan's Jewelry. I hope you come and visit me soon!

Work in Progress

Hi! Today I have been working on assembling a lot of those odd blocks of mine into a top. Some of them are paper pieced but most are just pieced as normal. Also, some of them are string pieced. Some of the designs I created myself, and those are the ones I am most proud of. The star string pieced block is Bonnie Hunter's Spiderweb quilt. I wanted to create a whole quilt out of those blocks but I ran out of the green plaid and a friend had given it to me... no way to track down more of it. So I ended up with about two blocks nagging at me. Most of the blocks, though, are ones that I just was testing a pattern and I decided not to make a whole quilt of them but I just couldn't toss them out. This is actually just laid out on my floor, though, not actually sewn so it's not really finished. I know all of you out there reading this have plenty of UFOs (UnFinished Objects) so I encourage you to assemble them into a top and get them out of your way!

Here you see the pieces that I am about to assemble into a nine patch. I am just working on random things right about now and these pics are from about a week ago...

And here is the finished nine patch! I really like the way this turned out and am probably going to do something with it... not quite sure what yet though!

Another thing I need to do next time I go to the store is get some piecing thread... I don't have any! I am most likely going to resort to drastic measures... hand piecing with the thread out of my sewing kit! lol! Also, if any of you have any ideas on how I could sell quilts to make some extra money, that would be most helpful. I want to be able to sell quilts so that I can buy more fabric! I don't really have all that much... well, I guess I'll post some more tomorrow. See ya!

Crazy Quilting and Table Runners

Hi! I'm back for now and I'm here with another tutorial. But first, let me thank all of you for your amazing comments. If you are one of the people who posted who wanted to send me scraps, the scraps only have to be around 2 inches square, but only that because I am doing English Paper Piecing. But that tutorial is for another day. Today I am going to be talking about creating crazy quilt squares.

First you need to gather some supplies. With crazy quilts you can use the tiniest of scraps. Here are mine:

You will also need a sewing machine and some foundation squares. I am making rather small squares (3.5") but the normal size is around 12" square.








The first step is to take 2 tiny scraps with just one side that is about the same length and place them right sides together on the base square.


Now you stitch them with a quarter inch seam allowance and press them open.




Now continue to add scraps until the entire base is covered. Then you trim it and press it flat.


And here is the beautiful finished block:


We'll work on the embroidery and embellishing another day! There's one last project I want to show you before I leave... it's a table runner that I created for a challenge.

I think the colors turned out gorgeous... what do you think?

String Blocks

Even though this is only my fourth post, I am posting a tutorial! Today's post is actually going to be about making a string block and then I will show you my progress on my string quilt. I think that you will have fun following the tutorial and I will have fun creating it! Please excuse my blurry pics... I will replace them later on if you can't follow easily! Here we go!

The first thing you are going to need are strings. Strings can be anything long and thin and as wide as only 1/2". Here is a picture of my strings.


You will also need some paper backings of any size you like, (I used 4"), a sewing machine, a rotary cutter and mat, an iron and ironing board and scissors.

The first step is to lay down a base strip across the paper on the diagonal right side up and another on top of it right side down like this:



Then seam through the paper and the fabric layers like this:


Then finger press it open so that it looks like this:


Continue adding strings until you get to a corner and then instead of a strip use a chunk of fabric as shown here:


Here is a general idea of what your block should look like before trimming:


And here it is after trimming with your rotary cutter:


The next step is to pick the paper off the back of the block:


I like to have at least 4 block quarters before actually pulling out the paper so that I can make a whole block but you can do whatever you want to.

Now to iron it:


And here is the finished block quarter! You made it this far so let's continue...


Now we need to arrange 4 of these block quarters into a finished block, and then sew them together! Here are the pictures:





And last but not least, here is how my progress on my actual quilt is going!




I'm really enjoying making this quilt and I can only hope you do too!

Dear Jane Quilt-Block 1!!!

I've been oohing and ahhing over Dear Jane Quilts for a while now and finally decided to take the plunge... here is block number 1!!!



The polka dot material is the fabric from my stash that I said was my favorite. The white is also from my stash. It was fun to do but does use quite a few tiny pieces. It finishes at about 4 1/2"
and I think that it looks like some type of pinwheel. Sometimes it's just nice to grab some fabric from your stash and just sew a block. The reason I like Dear Jane so much is because it is like a sampler and if I have to make the same block with the same fabrics over and over again I think that I would be bored out of my skull! This block I would like to make a full sized quilt out of it but they would all have to have different main fabrics or I would still get bored. That's why I like scrap quilts so much, as you will soon find out!