52 Week UFO Challenge - Project #3b Quilt-as-you-go tablerunner

Using up the Wilderness Lodge leftovers

After trimming up the Wilderness Lodge animal squares I was left with all of these triangular pieces and OF COURSE I couldn't just throw them away!

I've decided to use these triangular pieces to make a table runner and instead of piecing them together, I'm going to use the "sew and flip" method of quilt-as-you-go.

First step is to cut the background and batting and use my 505 Spray to baste them together. Next, I drew out a grid so that my pieces will stay straight as I keep adding them on.

The first piece is placed wrong side down, lined up on the batting and then pinned.

The next piece is placed on top of the first piece right side down and pinned in place. then I stitched along the edge through all four layers.

The first two pieces are sewn to the batting and backing.

The top piece is then flipped so that right side is up and pressed. I then decided to add skinny strips of black fabric in between the pairs of triangles. Then I kept adding the pairs of triangles and black skinny strips until I used up all of the triangles.

Next, I used a sharpie marker to draw a straight line along both long sides of the table runner and then placed one of my inner border strips along this line right side down and pinned.

One of the inner border strips pinned in place.

 After both long inner border strips were sewn down, I flipped them right side up and pressed, then added the short inner border strips to the remaining two sides. I added the outer borders in the same manner. Once the borders were on, the table runner was all quilted and ready to binding. Here is it - all finished!!

The finished table runner.

New Beginnings Block of the Month - January

Beautiful Batiks

The January block has been added to Craftsy!!

I've decided to make my Block of the Month blocks in an assortment of batiks! I've picked a selection of fat quarters in lights (whites and off-whites), darks (navy blues), mediums (turquoise blues) and accent colour (orange and salmon).

I love making flying geese with the method that we show in the pattern, but I hate throwing away the triangles that are trimmed from the blocks. So, when I draw the diagonal line on the back of my fabric squares, I also draw a second line 1/2" from the first.

 When I sew the square to the rectangle, I sew along both of these lines.

Then, I trim between the two sewn lines and press the seam towards the darker colour.

 The little squares that are made from the cut away section are just 1 3/4" square - they will finish at just 1 1/4". With only this block I made a total of 16 of these little squares. I've put them into a zip-lock bag and will keep adding to it all year long. Who knows what I'll be able to make at the end of the year!!

 The finished flying geese ready to assemble into the finished block.

Here it is - the January block!! I just love it and can't wait to see what Nellie's block looks like!!

A new year - a new project!

Nellie and I have challenged each other to work on our (many, many) unfinished projects or UFO's, but it's always nice to start something new too. So, we decided to do a block of the month the year and we've called it "New Beginnings".

Each month we will add a new downloadable pattern to our Craftsy site. I am doing my blocks in batiks and Nellie is going to do hers in country colours. At the end of the year we will offer two different patterns for finishing the blocks into a bed quilt.

We'd love to have lots of people working on our BOM with us, so we are going to have a contest. For every block picture that people share with us on Craftsy, their name will be put into a draw for a complete quilt kit of one of our Northcott quilt patterns. The deadline for block pictures is December 31, 2016.

The first installment of the Block of the Month is a free download and gives the generally directions for the program.

New Beginings General Instructions

52 Week UFO Challenge - Project #3 Finishing up the Wilderness Lodge wall hanging

The borders are on - now we quilt!!

Northcott sent us bolts of fabric to make all of the projects from our book - since I have lots of the black with tan maple leaves I'm going to use it for the backing on my Wilderness Lodge wall hanging.

Backing fabrics

The quilt is loaded on the Gammill and I'm ready to start quilting. 

The outer border is quilted with leaves and swirls. 

The black inner border got my favourite alternating loop design.

Around each of the animal blocks I did a meandering stitch.

I repeated the alternating loop design around the animal squares.

In the animal squares I decided to use two of my rulers to do a curved outline and to stitch an "X" through the centre.

Her is the finished wall hanging - it even has binding on it! Project #3 is all done!!

52 Week UFO Challenge - Project #3 Wilderness Lodge wall hanging

Celebrate Canada - our new book!!

A couple weeks before Christmas, Nellie and I spent the afternoon cutting fabrics to make the samples for our new book "Celebrate Canada".

One of the projects that I cut out was the Wilderness Lodge wall hanging. Wow - having the fabrics pre-cut is so awesome! All I had to do was to sit down and start sewing!

Everything is all cut and ready to go.

The first step is to sew the frames on to each of the nine animal squares. Five get light inner frames and four get dark inner frames.

The first step is to sew the frames on each of the animal squares.

The blocks are all done!

After all of the blocks are made they have to be trimmed so that they are all on an angle using a 12 1/2" square.

If you have a 12 1/2" square it's easy to trim the blocks.

These triangular pieces must be useful for something. I'm going to set them aside and keep them for later.

Next all of the blocks are sewn together alternating the dark and light blocks.

The centre is all done - now all I have to do is add borders.