Carolyn Forster's Quilting-On-The-Go

I seem to have sewn for miles recently!

The first quilt top is the Scrappy Trip from Bonnie Hunter.

It is not put together in these shots, but is now (believe me!):

I did 36 blocks.

I mainly put a blue in as the diagonal.

Another scrap busting quilt is this, which I am calling 'Out of the Blue'. It was an attempt to use up some of my navy.

I used the Sizzix Die to cut the triangles. You can also make a cute star with this die, I will do that another day!

This made for easy and accurate piecing, and I cut the triangles from 5in charm squares and 5in strips of fabric.

This quilt may still be worked on as I think it should be bigger than it is at the moment, but I am in need of a rest!

I just love these one patch type quilts to eat into the stash!

Having been on a bit of a roll with my scrappy trip around from Bonnie's site, I started with a vengeance on some more fabrics that have been sitting around a while.

I was pleased to see that the Triangle Die  from Sizzix worked with 5in charm squares, so I started cutting a whole batch of those first. When they were all done, I started on the yardage and fat quarters. I cut the strips for the Big Shot 5in wide and fed them through until they were nothing but triangles!

This is what I have to show for it so far:

With the snowy weather around this weekend, looks like I should have lots of sewing time!

Hopefully I will get my scrappy trip together as all 36 blocks are sewn!

Incase you are not making this quilt, I strongly suggest you give it a go!

Tutorial from Bonnie HERE.

And this is what I stitched when we got back from skiing, whilst the first batch of laundry was on

I am doing a bit every so often now, but although it uses my scrap 2 1/2 in strips, it will take more than one quilt to make much of a dent! I have used Bonnie's patterns before and I should take another look for the great scrap busters that she offers!

Today the sun is out, well for now anyway, so I got out into the garden (through all the fallen leaves), right to the end where I could take some pictures.

We have here some shots of variations on the Woven Dreams quilt from 'Jelly Roll Quilts and Gifts'.

I love making this quilt design, it grows so fast, I now need to get quilting….. time to try out some ideas from Utility Quilting!

This first one is a setting variation of the strips. I used a similar palette to the Ripples quilt in the book.

You can see my shadow in the bottom right corner: what am I doing with my fingers when I photo things????!!!

This is the regular setting and the fabrics are an old line from Moda, called Curio by Basic Grey. It is one of my all time favourites! The woven strips are an Alexander Henry line.

And this last one is the original. 

Busy teaching week this week. Eternalmaker yesterday, The Quilt Room tomorrow and Just Between Friends on Saturday. Come and say 'Hi!' if you are passing by!

A while back I was asked to make a quilt from some simply lovely French fabrics, that are available to us over here in the UK.

Some cutting and sewing ensued:

Some laying out on the 'design floor'!

Some stitching and quilting:

And now if you would like to see the quilt in full, pop along to The Eternalmaker in Chichester, or visit them at Festival of Quilts  in August and have a free pattern sheet so you can make your own from the great fabric that they are stocking!

The pattern will also be available as a free download from Search Press later in the year. I will let you know when!

I must admit I am not big on gadgets, always adhering to the belief that all you need to stitch a quilt is needle and thread and a pair of scissors.

However, over the years I have still managed to acquire a (large) number of rulers and sewing machines (yes I know! I have more than one back up, and more than one Featherweight to take when I travel!) as well as having templates especially cut to go with some of my patterns and classes!

So when I was asked by Sizzix  if I would like to have a go of their machine, the BIg Shot that cuts shapes for patchwork I was a bit sceptical. Surely I had everything that was going to make life easier in the world of patchwork.

Well I was wrong.

This was delivered,

and duly unpacked. I had asked for the Apple Core template as I figured it was a hard shape to cut accurately and then sew together smoothly.

I layered the fabric in the template 'sandwich', inserted and wound the handle! And out came fabric cut perfectly. I was amazed! From chatting with other people over the years I had been led to believe that this winding the fabric through was a bit of a struggle with other makes of cutters. But not with a Sizzix!

So out pops the sandwich, open it up and take out your pieces. I started off cutting a single layer of fabric, but soon decided to move up to six! Still smooth and easy! 

I then sewed some patches together to see how accurate the piecing was, and you guessed it, it was great!

And in fact it was all going so well I just kept cutting. It wasn't until I actually sat down and thought about all the patches that I had cut from fabrics in my 1930's stash, that I realised I wanted to sew a project in different fabrics!

So due to my over zealous cutting, due to the user friendliness of the Sizzix, I am offering all the pieces I cut for an Apple Core top (well enough to get you started!) to anyone who comments on this post by next Monday. I will select a comment at random, but you must have commented on a patchwork gadget experience, (good or bad!)

I am happy to say that my comment regarding the Sizzix is that it is great! If you are looking for a gadget to make cutting easier, with no measuring and sharp blades, then go and look at a Sizzix Big Shot!

So, 'Happy Bank Holiday Monday', hope you have some stitching to keep you inspired!

For those of you have who have been waiting for the new print run of Quilting-on-the-Go, you will be pleased to know that they are now here! I have sent some out to The Quilt Room and to The Cotton Patch, and other shops will get them shortly! Thanks for waiting!

Those of you who are eager to see my new book, Utility Quilting, well not long now! I will see the proofs at the start of September, and I think it will be ready for Quilt Market in October! Hang in there! 

I have been stitching away today at some ideas for a class at The Eternal Maker later in the autumn. It is strange to be thinking of the autumn when we hopefully have a few more weeks of Summer ahead of us! If only it would stop raining!

And this is something I played with just for the heck of it. Amazing how when I have so much else to stitch that I find time to fiddle with something new!

Yes, there are some spools blocks lurking behind these Window Pane blocks. They are patiently waiting to be sewn together!

Scrappy spools, with scrappy borders.

This is my sort of quilt, when I ran out of one thing for the border, I added another!

The spools (Klosjes) were stitched from my basket of  2 1/2" strips either by machine when I was sitting at it, or by hand when I was out and about. And as often happens it was quicker to stitch than I anticipated!

Come and stitch your own with me at The Eternalmaker on Sat 2nd July!

Every once in a while something will catch my attention and I really need to stitch it for no logical reason. (Actually now I see that in print, it probably accounts for about 99% of my quilt making!)

Anyway, a while back I started seeing Klosjes Blocks popping up all over the place! These are Spool blocks, but they sound so exciting in Dutch (I think it's Dutch, forgive me if I got that wrong!)

I wanted to stitch some but didn't want to make templates, I wanted to use the rotary cutter.I needed the 'quick stitching fix' approach! So I have made my blocks using Jelly Roll strips, ie: I used my 2 1/2" wide strips of fabric from my stash and my Creative Grids Half Square Triangle Non Slip Strip Ruler! These create a 6" finished block. This is what I did.

Take three strips of fabric 2 1/2" wide. One is the centre of the block, the other two frame it.

From the fabric for the centre cut a 2 1/2" square:

From the other two fabrics cut 2 strips from each 7 1/4" long:

Now using the triangle part of the ruler trim off the corners of the strips:

Layout the block and sew!

Stitching wise, I sew the frames around the centre square, then sew the mitres.

I am working on a scrappy version that will keep me going for a while I think!

What I love about this is that one ruler does it all, and I can just dip in and out of the pre cut strips!

I loved this quilt that Ann Champion showed a while back on her blog.

So much so that I have started to sew my own version!

As you can see it is yet another WIP…….. as I also have started these as well!

I had my copy of Sew Hip this week with the second of a series of quilts that I designed for them. They are based on the ideas in the Nancy Brenen Daniel book ‘Slice ‘em Dice ‘em’, but I used 5″ squares throughout. This means they are quick to start with the charm packs! Look out for this quilt in issue 11.