Quilting

Seven Swoon Blocks • 20 Comments

sarah • February 5, 2019

In Spring of 2015 I cut the pieces for my first Swoon blocks. By February 2016 I had three finished blocks. Then they fell completely to the back burner.

When I joined Miss Love's Finishing School for the Winter 2019 QuIP session I decided to mostly pick projects that were really old WIPs and would be fun to work on. And mostly that they are projects for me. Finishing School runs for eight weeks and I chose to put my Swoon quilt in two of those slots, planning to finish two 24" blocks each week. Well, naturally the week 1 and 2 randomly selected projects were Swoon and Swoon. So, over the past two weeks I have finished four Swoon blocks! Here are all my blocks.

It is exciting to make progress on an old project. This leaves me just two more blocks plus sashing to finish my quilt top.

What old WIP do you miss working on? What's holding you back?

NCQC All-Star Review • 2 Comments

sarah • January 31, 2019

Earlier this month I was honored to be one of nine teachers presenting at the Northern California Quilt Council All-Star Review. This is the same organization that hosted the Northern California Meet the Teachers event I presented at last year.

All-Star Review fell the day after I taught in Tehachapi. It was a whirlwind week to go from teaching in the mountains of Southern California to multiple presentations the next day in Northern California. A fun, exciting whirlwind!

I had such a great time at All-Star Review. Each of nine teachers had a presentation space with room for attendees to sit for a demonstration. I shared my Planned Improv: All About Angles technique for seven 13-minute presentations. In case you've never given the same presentation many times in a row, about four presentations in I no longer knew what I'd said or what I hadn't said. It was reminiscent of Back to School night when I was teaching middle school and had to give my teacher spiel six times in a row.

Naturally I started a new project for the demonstration. I chose this beautiful bundle of Meadow from Cherrywood Fabric, plus yardage of Cherrywood Indigo.

The presentation was a chance for guild representatives to get a glimpse of my workshop and get to know my personality and presentation style. There was even time for a little Q&A during the presentation. Here's a peak at one of the units I put together during my demo. I look forward to pulling this project back out and working on it.

I'm currently traveling throughout California (and happy to travel beyond) to lecture and teach 6-hour technique-based workshops on Planned Improv. You can read more about what I have to offer on my Teaching page.

The finished variations of my All About Angles technique that you can see in the photos above are:

Wonder Full #1 and #2

Pantone Ultra Violet All About Angles

All About Angles and Animals

All About Angles, Island Batik Style

A great big thank you to Mel Beach for taking photos of me during my presentations and to NCQC for organizing this well run event.

Turnabout Patchwork Blog Hop • 66 Comments

sarah • January 30, 2019

Welcome to my stop on the Turnabout Patchwork Book Tour Blog Hop! I made up the quick and easy Sun Dunes pattern from the Quarter Snowball Block section of the book.

I liked the look of solids that Teresa used in the illustration of Sun Dunes in the book and ordered Kona Ash for my background. In the end, I opted to use the remnants from Woven Waves: Kona Lime, Grass Green, Glacier, Ruby, and Watermelon.

This quilt went together very quickly. It has so much potential for different looks with solids, prints, a variety of background colors... the possibilities are endless! And it wasn't super fussy about points lining up. If constructed in rows, you'd only need to focus on the points of the triangles matching. I opted to leave off the border, so my quilt top finished at 36 1/2" x 45 1/2". I love that the negative space in the background gives is a modern look and leaves a lot of room for interesting quilting.

Overall, Turnabout Patchwork is a beginner friendly book with a variety of interesting twists on common quilt blocks. Each of six chapters shows step-by-step photos of how to make the block and an initial pattern featuring the block, followed by two or three illustrated patterns using some variation of block layout or fabric placement within the block. Numerous quilts are modern in design with expansive negative space. Turnabout Patchwork is available on Amazon.

GIVEAWAY GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED. For your chance to win an eBook copy of Turnabout Patchwork enter with Rafflecopter below by leaving a comment on this blog post and tell me how you would change up the Sun Dunes pattern if you were going to make it and/or by being a newsletter subscriber. Not a newsletter subscriber yet? Subscribe here, click to confirm your subscription in the email that comes to you. At the end of the giveaway I will email the randomly selected winner and they will have 48 hours to reply to claim their prize or I will select a new winner. The eBook will be emailed to the winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Turnabout Patchwork author Teresa Mairal Barreu can be found at her blog Sewn Up.

Enjoy the continuation of the blog hop by following along at the following blogs: