a fun little mini swap

It's time again to have some fun. Would you like to make a new patchwork friend? Would you also like to get your creative juices flowing? Well, here is a fun, little, mini swap where you can make scented sachet for someone and receive one in return. No need to worry about high expenses for international shipping either, because all of the sachets will be sent unfilled. You decide what you want to fill it with and do so yourself. How fun is that?

GUIDELINES:
You are allowed to use any pattern you like. You may use any technique you like keeping in mind your assigned partner. It should be something she/he may like.Your finished sachet may include a ribbon for hanging or not. It should be a size that can fit into an ordinary letter envelope. Please send unfilled. Some countries will quarantine for biological (lavender, roses, etc.) hazards. We don't want that to happen, do we? This will also limit the expense everyone has to pay. It should not cost more than a dollars, euros, etc. Remember, you should complete the sachet in less than one hour; it should not be elaborate to time consuming but fun to make!

Please fill out the information below. I will contact you on/before Oct. 21 with your partner information.

You will have until the end of November to complete your sachet. Please send whenever you are finished but before the deadline. Please contact me to let me know you have sent.

Everyone will be assigned a partner. This is an open swap and not secret. You are allowed to contact your partner, and they are allowed to contact you. However, please keep their information (mailing address) confidential.

No mosaics are needed for this swap. You will be sew according to your partner's interests, social media feeds, and direction along the way. We really want you to guide your partner on the right path. If you have trouble making contact your partner, please get in touch with me.

You may post pictures on Instagram of your progress using the hashtag #yourchoicescentedsachetswap. Contact me if you have any problems: [email protected]

DATES AND DEADLINES:
Registration: 17 - 20 Oct. 2016
Partner assigned: 21. Oct. 2016
Shipping: before Nov. 30, 2016

Please send your unfilled sachet with a note card. You may send other items, but please don't over do it.

Are you ready for a little swapping fun? Then go ahead and register.

Click on the link below:

Registration is closed. You will receive a partner shortly.

Have fun!!

sew pixel play pincushion tutorial

Hi Everyone!

If you don't already know me, my name is Karen. I studied International Business with an unofficial minor in German. After working a few years in Germany as a productions planner/controller/analyst, I tied the knot and opted for the simpler life as a mom. I now live in southern Germany with my bi-national family close to Ulm which is between Stuttgart and Munich (or closer yet, Augsburg). I do not have the opportunity to talk too much to other Americans, since I am totally integrated into the society and don't live in a major city where other Americans live. So, I use my blog, website and Instagram account to keep my English active. I discovered my passion for "patchwork" over a decade ago and have been trying to learn every technique known in the quilting world since then; I love learning! Some of you might know me as a mini quilter, but I truly love all techniques, as well as traditional and modern quilting.

I have been posting lots of pictures lately on Instagram of a technique that I have been using on pincushions, mug rugs, and pillows that I call "sew pixel play." A lot of your have been asking how I do it. This is actually a very old technique. I am very happy to be bringing it back again, because it brings up so many new possibilities.

First, let me tell you how I learned about it... I had always seen gridded fusible fleece in the stores for sale and wondered about it. I remembered seeing a video or demonstration about adhering squares to the fleece and sewing in rows with one long seam. I couldn't really understand why someone would use this technique, because I thought this was just too time-consuming for "normal" chain piecing rows together. So this technique logically didn't fit into my repertoire. At this time, I was also participating in the Doll Quilt Monthly swap and wanted to learn more about miniature quilts. Then I found this fantastic book by Paula Doyle called Mini Mosaic Quilts. It re-explored this technique and used it for making small, miniature quilts. Since then, I have been incorporating it into my patchwork when I can break down a design into pixels or squares. For sewing on a small scale, this technique is quick and extremely accurate. Some of you may know this technique as "Quick Piece Tiny Squares" or "Using a Quilter's Grid." Since I do it usually on a small scale to get my seams perfect; I call this technique "Sew Pixel Play."

Now onto the step-by-step tutorial for making a pincushion using this technique.

You will need the following materials in addition to your basic sewing notions:

• Lightweight scraps

• Gridded fusible fleece

• or graph paper + glue stick 

• or waxed paper + ruler + pencil

• Small grain for filling the pincushion + funnel

For the pincushion, I used the one-inch fusible grid. I prefer to use waxed paper and draw lines on the rough side with a regular pencil and ruler. Although this is more time consuming, it is more accurate when you crease your lines. You may also use regular paper and a glue stick. Draw your own grid at one-inch intervals or print out from EQ7. Make sure you are accurate when you crease along the lines. Use a good light source.

Cut 7/8 inch squares

• 5 white
• 5 magenta
• 5 dark green
• 4 light green
• 4 red
• 4 pink
• 4 purple-blue
• 5 single misc. colors

Cut one backing fabric 3 1/2 inches.

Cut fleece or prepare your paper to get a 6 x 6 grid. No need to worry about added seam allowance; it is already included in the one-inch squares.

Lay out your squares onto your fleece making sure you have the fusible side up! You will not be able to see the lines very well. If you are using waxed paper, your lines will be on the backside. If you are using paper/glue stick, your lines will be also be on the backside as well; you need these lines for folding and sewing later.

Fix with a warm iron. And yes, my ironing board cover looks this crappy. I go through a new one about every two months, because I am so hard on it!

Fold over the first column inward right sides together (RST). Make sure your "fold line" from the gridded fleece or paper is exactly in the middle when folding over. This is to ensure you sew an accurate line.

Take it over to your sewing machine. Reduce your stitch length. I reduced mine from 2.5 to 1.5 stitch length. This is to keep the seam together when press the seam open to reduce bulk.

Feed your sewing machine. Sew an exact scant 1/4 of an inch.

When you are finished with the first vertical column, flip your piece over front to back. Fold your next column inward matching up the line again which becomes a guide for sewing. Sew the next seam.

Flip front to back. Fold next column inward using your line on fleece as a folding line. Sew.

Continue sewing, flipping and creasing until all columns are finished. If you forget to flip your piece, don't worry, it will just  bow to one side. ; )

This is what you get when all columns are finished.

Cut your seams open by cutting the back of the seam allowance as shown. Repeat for all columns.

Finger press and then set all seam allowances OPEN with a hot iron with the steam off. Sorry about that ironing board again. It really looks used up!

Now lets work on those rows.

Fold your first row inward RST, making sure you see the "fold line."

Sew using your fold line as a guide. Pull your piece slightly taut as you sew.

I find it easier to keep the rows straight by lining up the outer edges and pinning in place a couple of times. Flip and repeat sewing as you did in the columns.

This is what it looks like when you finish all rows.

Now it's time to cut open the seams for the rows.

Press all of the seams open. Press the hell out of the front so it lays flat. Leave all paper and fleece inside. Do not attempt to tear it out. It won't hurt the pincushion but only stabilize it more. Square up and trim to 3 1/2 inches or whatever you get. (Mine measured 3 1/4 inches in the end.)

Trim backing fabric to the same size.

Lay Front on the backing fabric, RST. Sew around pincushion leaving an opening for flipping. Backstitch at start and stopping points.

Trim the corners and flip right side out. Use a pair of scissors to get the points sharp.

Thread a hand stitching needle with thread matching the backing fabric. Start to stitch the opening closed using a blindstitch. Stitch half of the opening closed. Carefully fill the pincushion using the funnel and cornmeal or other grain; shake some grain into the pincushion shaking it down and pushing into the corners with the small funnel. (I used polenta or cornmeal.) Continue sewing the opening shut and adding more grain until the pin cushion is nice and plump.

It is now finished! The possibilities of this technique are endless I look forward to seeing what you make with it. Please share with us all using the hashtag #sewpixelplay.

I hope you enjoyed this Sew Pixel Play Tutorial.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. You can always email me directly. Thanks for stopping by!

autumn pillow and mini tutorial

Good morning everyone. Well, another few weeks have gone by and still no new posts from me. I am such a bad, bad girl. ;-) I've been busy like all of us; just using the extra time I have to sew instead of blogging. Since we are in the middle of fall, I thought I would share my beautiful, autumn pillow that I made for my sweet Pillow Swap Four Seasons partner, Betti from Bettis Stitches on Instagram.

What do I want to say about this pillow?.... It was really fun to make!

If you know me, you know I like a good challenge! And this time, I wanted to sew something really small. I took the traditional maple leaf pattern from EQ7 and designed my own pillow using the fabric line Tucker Prairie from Moda. This was my original design from EQ7 with a triple border. You can see from the final pillow, I removed the second patchwork border; I thought it was a bit too much in the end and was a little too loud or "unruhig."

My fabric pull came together rather quickly. I wanted blues, oranges, yellow-greens and purples. This may not be your "traditional" fall color palette, but I wanted the colors to jump out and be vibrant. I wanted to ground the entire idea by using low volumes for the background. I didn't purchase any new fabrics for the front of the pillow and most came from designers such as Tula Pink, Brigitte Heitland for Zen Chic, Carolyn Friedlander, and Sarah Watts if you want to recreate this. The outer border fabric was still undecided at this point.

I first made the four bigger leaves in the center which finished up at 4 1/2". Each of my corner blocks were cut to 2" and finish up to 1 1/2". (You could construct the entire block from a nine-patch using 1 1/2" blocks for each of the nine segments if you want to make this pillow.)

After I made my "big blocks" out of the way, I started with sewing my teeny tiny leaves. I actually found out that the leaves go together very easily when you know two principles - traditional foundation (paper) piecing and sewing on paper "sew-all-at-once" method.

Each leaf took about 15 minutes to make. I made about 30+ one-inch leaves for this project.

MINI TUTORIAL

First of all, cut out your template along the dotted lines, making sure to keep both adjacent sides of A and B together. Using a good light source, fold exactly between sections A and B; you will be sewing on line A6/A7 to B1/B2 later. (Templates are discontinued. You can also make your own.)

Sew Section A exactly as your normally would on paper using a smaller stitch than usual. I use 1,5 stitches instead of 2,5 when sewing on paper. Make sure none of the fabric extends over the folded line. If it does, cut it away by folding the paper in half and cutting off what extends over the fold. You may reference a previous tutorial here.

After you have made your leaf, iron it well and trim the block along the seam allowance line. The block should measure 1 1/2 inches. Use the blocks however you wish.

I made a couple extra blocks and used one of them in a pin cushion for my swap partner. I added a one inch border on each side ending with 1/2 border all the way around. The pin cushion measures 2" in total. ;-)

END OF MINI TUTORIAL

After I made all of my mini leaves, I arranged them together for a matching border. Yes, it is matching. AND there is one leaf that is a little wonky!  Can you find it?

 

I didn't notice my wonky leaf until after I sewed the border on! I showed it to several people and no one noticed! I did take the time to change it, because I would have have been a eye sore for me in the end.

I finished the pillow top by sewing on a 3" finished border of black around the center and first border to make the entire center pop out. I chose a matching butterfly and black print from Westminster Fabrics. It has the same yellow as the leaf on the front. I know I took a picture of the pillow from the backside, but I must have deleted the photos. You can jump here to Betti's photo of the backside.

This was as selection of possible fabrics I did buy to finish up the pillow. I used the yellow butterfly for the back and the black checkered for the outer border. I didn't like the bottom fabric with this pillow. It had a strange hue to it.

After everything was made, we went on location for a little photo shoot. ;-) I took the pillow along with us to Tuscany where we spent our summer vacation this year. When we weren't having fun by the pool, I stole a few minutes to tote the pillow around and take some nice location photos. ;-)

Thank you for joining me for explanation of my autumn pillow for Betti! I really and truly had a lot of fun making this pillow. I learned that I love to sew small! I hope you discover you like to sew small too. It really is achievable as long as you know and use a few special techniques.

You can download an entire sheet of one-inch maples leaves to try yourself just how easy they are! If you don't want to pay for the sheet of templates, you can always make your own. ;-)

Hugs,
Karen

mini tutorial for paper pieced stars

Yesterday I was working on some four inch stars as a part of an extra to the pillow for my Pillow Swap Four Seasons (PS4S) Partner. In the original pillow, I used straight piecing, but learned I should have printed my kaleidoscopes on paper and sewn that way. But, as you can see, my motif wasn't really the kaleidoscope at all, but these cute little stars! I tried finding a name for them, but am not quite sure what they are called. Do you? What I love about them with PP is that they are PERFECT! Enlarge the pic to see what I mean. =)

I made my templates in EQ7 for a four inch star. It is great when they print out exactly centered four segments on a page! Because that is exactly what I wanted to do. (Here is just a snapshot of the template. Templates are discontinued, but you can also draw your own templates.)

I separated the first star from the second star and trimmed all the way around the seam allowance line. DO NOT SEPARATE THE FOUR SEGMENTS! Then I folded the star in half both horizontally and vertically in the center. The exact center is marked with a "cross" in the center by me.(None of my fabrics are allowed to go over this point.)

Then I made a plastic template of the colored star section. This helps with fussing cutting as well as ensuring that the fabric does not go over the seam allowance line. You will see what I mean later. Cut out the four colored stars (A-1) using the plastic template and cut (4) - 3.5" x 2.75" rectangles for the outer segments (A-2, A-3).

Now the the tricky part begins. Dab a little bit of glue on the backside of the paper template on each star segment (A-1). Glue those fabrics in place. Use a good light source to see the lines through the paper. Do you see how none of the fabrics touch the cross in the middle?

 

Now take one of your outer segments (A-2) and align to the colored fabric star face down on the backside of the paper template. I DID THIS WRONG IN MY FIRST DEMO!! PLEASE sew according to the second picture correctly. =) I just wanted to show you the first step, but it was on the wrong side.

 This is the right way on the backside of the paper template! =)

Flip over and pin at the beginning and ending of the sewing line. Sew 1/4" from the start and stop of those sewing lines using a small stitch - about 1.5 on a Pfaff. Be warned, if you don't pin, it could shift. I hate to pick out mini-stitches.

Flip fold over as you would in normal pp. Now, fold your paper template along the fold line where the fabric overlaps. Trim with your scissors making sure you don't cut the paper. Do you see that the paper template is now correct?? The printed lines should really be on the backside!!

Continue sewing the outer segments until all are finished. NOTE: There is no need to trim off the outer edges of the block until the entire block is finished.

Now the magic starts!! Fold the paper template in half and sew along the sewing line.

Cut along the seam allowance line or through the middle. Whichever is easiest for you.

 

 Unfold. Press seam open. Repeat for the other half of the template! Voila!!

Press seam open.

Trim along outer seam allowance. Press. Admire!

   

And if you want to get really creative, you can make a really cute mug rug! Just look at those perfect points! Everything lines up perfectly! Can life get any better than this? I don't think so! Take a break and sip a cup of coffee or tea. Look at your beautiful creation and enjoy the view outside. It is snowing here in Germany. I wish we had more snow, but you can't have everything, now can you?

And everyone who downloads a template, I would really like to see your creation!!! I want to see all of your beautiful designs! Thanks for dropping by!