Tag Archives: paper piecing

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The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik and Aurifil.

It's been a busy month of sewing... but not so much in the writing department. I have lots that I need to get onto the blog to share with you. Today I'm sharing the three mug rugs I finished this morning. As I finished up the binding before school it struck me that it would make more sense to be putting the finishing touches on costumes, but those were already all in order. Happy Halloween to all who are celebrating.

Our Island Batik theme this month was paper piecing. I opted for three little mug rugs featuring Cricket, Gidget, and Pepper, the Butterfly Charm Blocks by Lillyella.

I opted to use my Paisley Dot Brights 10" squares from my July box for the butterflies. Choosing the color combinations was the hardest part. So many to choose from! I ended up choosing another Island Batik print as inspiration for the palette on each mug rug. I used it for the backing/binding as well as the rectangle to the left of each butterfly block.

This first mug rug features Cricket. This beautiful red print was leftover from my Valentine's Day mug rugs. I couldn't help thinking of the Red Hat Ladies as I worked on this one because of the purple and red paisley dot print.

The orange mug rug features Gidget, and used a sunflower print leftover from my Bold and Brave All About Angles quilt. I had the most fun quilting this one, following the petal on the sunflower print.

The third butterfly is Pepper. She's my favorite. This feature print was also from Morning Sunshine (same as the sunflowers).

On each mug rug I started the quilting by stitching in the ditch around the edge of the butterfly using Aurifil 50wt #2600 Dove, then I quilted the background (solid  of the butterfly in the same color. For the printed section to the left of each butterfly I picked a thread color that blended. From the top, I used Aurifil 50wt #2588 Light Magenta, #3920 Golden Glow (variegated), and #2510 Light Lilac. This same thread was used for the binding on each. For the first time I bound by wrapping the backing fabric around to the front. Here's a close up of what that looked like from the front.

I look forward to using these in the kitchen. I like using mug rugs for people to be able to keep track of which glass it theirs.

Thanks for visiting! I hope you enjoy seeing my mug rugs. These little butterfly blocks go together really quickly. I used them long ago on a mini quilt. I love seeing the variety of ways people have used them.

Check out the projects from some other ambassadors this month:

Alison

Geraldine

Jennifer

Karen

Pamela

I've linked up to the Q4 FAL Finishes Linkup.

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Here's the Q4 bee block report. I've chosen to only continue with The Bee Hive and do. Good Stitches moving forward, but I'll continue with the quarterly reports. I also share the blocks as I finish them on Instagram, if you aren't already following me there. :-)

October

Stash Bee: Lyssa asked us to make 16.5" x 12.5" bookshelf blocks for her. In her post she shared some of her interests which I had a great time incorporating into her block. She told us, "In addition to sewing, I love gardening, baking, hiking, skiing, biking, reading, playing board games, gnomes, the beach, collecting dishes, traveling, waterskiing, and hosting dinner parties."

The Bee Hive: We made the paper-pieced Star Plus block for Laura. Yellow and navy is a great classic combination and I'm sure the finished quilt will be stunning.

do. Good Stitches: In October we made these Mosaic blocks by Patchwork Square for Diane. I love the fun scrappy look of these charm friendly blocks.

 

November

Stash Bee: For our last block of the year Bev chose the Quatrefoil block (which is actually a Bee Hive tutorial). Her colors were aqua, pink, lime green, orange, yellow and red which gave us a lot to chose from. I immediately gravitated to the yellow and pink print in my stash which I had yet to use. Since that one was a little wild, I think it paired nicely with the lime green and aqua blenders I used in the other positions.

The Bee Hive: Our November block was purple, yellow and grey Spinwheel blocks for Amanda. I love the pop of yellow, and I'm always excited to be working with purple!

do. Good Stitches: Ailish challenged us with some improv piecing this month. The theme was symbols: "anything from plus signs, Xs, asterisks, pound signs etc." And we were asked to use bright fabrics in red, orange yellow or green with a black background. I knew immediately that I wanted to make an ampersand. I quickly got my first block done. Improv hashtags are fast! But it took me quite a while to complete my ampersand. Overall I'm quite happy with it. Though I'm not sure I'd try one again! I used eight fabrics for a total of 61 pieces to make the ampersand block. I used darting, y-seams and hand piecing (for two tricky seams). I lost count the number of times I had to rip out seams and the total time spent on the block (many episodes of Once Upon a Time, thank you Netflix).

 

December

The Bee Hive: In December, Tisha chose for us to make the Houndstooth block. She picked a variety of solid colors as our inspiration and wanted our choice to be paired with a black and white print. I chose to go with the turquoise color. These blocks went together super quicky. The striped sections are paper pieced and they are easy to chain piece since they are just rectangular strips of fabric to start with. (The tutorial gives instructions for cutting these strips before piecing, which I appreciated.) A great big thank you to Tisha for running our hive this year! Next month is our last month for the 2015 bee and finally my month to be queen, but I'll be continuing for 2016 with The Bee Hive.

 

The rest of my 2015 bee blocks can be found in these previous posts: January, February, March, Q2, Q3.

Thanks for visiting! I'd love to hear if you've joined a bee for the first time 2016.

I'm linking up to Let's Bee Social.

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How could I not opt in for round three of the ever popular Schnitzel and Boo Mini Swap (#schnitzelandboominiquiltswap) on Instagram!? I realize with the Rainbow Mini Swap (#rainbowminiswap) this means I had committed myself for four swaps before finishing or receiving the first one. I guess I dove right in. I've just passed by the opportunity for the Spring Fling Mini Swap and I think I'm already regretting it. Ah well, I'm sure there will be some other great opportunities soon. (You should probably just leave me a comment with details on any open swaps you know about.) ;-) In the time I composed this message, I've joined another swap, the Alison Glass Mini Quilt Swap (#alisonglassminiquiltswap). So excited! :-)

Okay, so Schnitzel and Boo... My partner likes the designers Tula pink, Anna Maria Horner, and Alison Glass and she loves color. I took this as an excuse to purchase my first Tula Pink fabrics, which I love as well!

I've personally been drooling over these adorable paper pieced envelope blocks all over Flickr and IG (#swakswap -- though the origins or details of the swap are a mystery to me except it started at least a year ago). Anyway, I finally made my first couple blocks at the beginning of December and decided this was the way to go for the swap. (I also decided that I need to make myself lots of envelope blocks!) The pattern comes from Patchwork Please by Ayumi Takahashi.

Here's the resulting 13.5" x 13.5" mini quilt that I sent to my partner. I made some stripes on my binding which I like but were kind of a pain... so not sure how soon I'll be piecing stripes on a binding again.

Here's a peek at the backing which shows my in-the-ditch quilting.

I even ended up with my first envelope block for me (unless I go and make something for someone else out of it!) since I didn't like how dark the purple was in the lower left position.

Linking up on Needle & Thread Thursday, Finish It Up Friday, TGIFF and Fabric Frenzy Friday.

This is one of my finishes from my Q1 Finish Along Goal List. Linking up to the Q1 Finishes party at On the Windy Side.