What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Voila! It's been a long time since a quilt possessed me like this one. I really enjoyed working on it and I'm a little sad to see it end. But there's the quilting still left to do and that's a few months away I think.

I have been wanting to make a quilt with a gradient background for a long time and this was a perfect opportunity. One thing I love about hand dyed fabric is how the dye moves on the fabric. That's why you see some dark spots in the light areas. I ...

You know I had that little pile of dog ears from trimming my Dancing Stars quilt pieces. Well, I love making postcards with my quilting trash so that's what I did with these. 

I like making this style of card enough that I wanted to share a tutorial with you on how I do them.

I start with a base of stiff interfacing. I use Stiffy from LongCreek Mills  because it's so inexpensive but Timtex also works great. I cut the base about 20" x 18" and that will give me about 15 cards. I fuse a layer ...

If you liked Norece's quilt and want to make one for yourself, we now know where the pattern came from! Mary (Mary's Quilting Notes) created the tutorial and posted all about it here. I'm so glad she commented on Norece's post so we could know where to get the pattern.

In other news I've added 2 more rows to Dancing Stars! Only 3 rows to go and this top will be done. My February 28 deadline is looking doable.

I don't have anything new or intersting to report today so I thought I'd share my progress on Dancing Stars since I am still obsessing over it. I am going to do my best to finish this by the end of February.

I am working on it 2 sets of stars at a time (that equates to 4 horizontal rows of stars) and it's officially half done! You can really see the gradient start to play in it now. With all of the starching and pre-cutting, the blocks go together quickly. The fabric is so stiff that ...

All of that prep work has really paid off! My Dancing Stars quilt is coming right along.

I haven't had any long stints at the sewing machine available but I have been able to make several 15 minute sessions very productive. You may remember that I divided the quilt into 11 sections. This represents sections 8 - 11 and you can start to see the gradient appear. The next sections is really going to show it. My quilt is being made from this kit. I am on a mission to finish this by the end of February.....well, the piecing ...

If you are relatively new to this blog you may not have realized that I have a lot of free projects and tutorials on the blog. They are all listed on the Free Projects page on the header bar above. One of the projects is a quilt pattern for a quilt that my friend, Anne, and I developed. It's called The Gift Quilt and we designed it for those times when we need something quick and easy for a gift. It's a great graduation gift, sofa quilt or cuddle quilt and it's perfect for a set of ...

Yesterday I shared the planning for my Dancing Stars quilt and showed how I cut the large hand dyed backing fabric into smaller sections in preparation for the cutting. I got the fabric cut down to manageable strips.

Before I continued I had to make a final decision about how I want to construct the blocks. I generally love foundation paper piecing but didn't really want to do that for these blocks because each block uses 4 separate foundations that then have to be sewn together. As much as I enjoy tedium, I think that even that would get ...

If you bought one of the Dancing Stars kits I want to share with you how I am planning my quilt. I've dyed the DS kits with wide backing fabric because I could get wider areas for each shade of the gradient. While that isn't as important for the pieced blocks, it will make a big difference on the side triangles.

For a refresher, here's the layout for the kit.

The quilt I am making for myself is a little different but you will get the idea. I needed a larger quilt to fit the bed that ...

Amy's Dancing Stars Quilt-Along project is designed to be foundation pieced. Before I jump in I thought I might like to piece it traditionally. An Etsy seller has even created acrylic templates for it. I know that if I do piece it traditionally that I will have to starch all of my fabric. These pieces have LOTS of bias edges.

I needed a sample block to test it out.

If I do decide to piece it traditionally I will likely just use paper templates taped to the back of my rotary ruler. I start by cutting strips (2" in ...