What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Mikayla’s Grace is a wonderful charity in my area of Wisconsin that supports families with a baby in the NICU (neonatal ICU) and those who experience the death of a child or pregnancy loss at hospitals in the Dane County area.

Crafters from all over make beautiful handmade baby items that they sew, knit or crochet and send to Mikayla’s Grace — from gowns, hats, and booties, to baby blankets and quilts. Several times a year volunteers meet to assemble these donations into care packages and deliver them to local hospitals to distribute.

Melissa recently sent out an email ...

This week Project Quilting Season 14 (2023) has as their very last challenge: Conquer Your Fear

They say in their post, “if you only do what’s safe and comfy, you’ll stagnate and grow soft.” I agree. You need to push your boundaries from time to time … and get out of your comfort zone.

As you probably know, the challenge is to make a quilted object (any size) from start to finish in one week using the challenge title as your inspiration. And post a photo at their website before the deadline.

So, after pondering all the fears that ...

A “Disappearing 4-Patch” may look intricate and complicated, but it’s really very easy. If you can sew a simple 4-patch, you can sew this quilt.

There are many great how-to tutorials out there. I chose these two YouTube videos as my favorites—

Jenny at the Missouri Star Quilt Company and

Laura Ann Cioa at Sew Very Easy.

After watching both, I decided to “merge” their info together to make my own Disappearing 4-Patch. Here’s how…

Jenny (MSQC) has you use a charm pack in her version, while Laura (Sew Very Easy) has you cut larger squares from fat ...

Like me, do you need a place to put all those punch cards, restaurant discount cards, gift cards, etc.? So you can take them out of your wallet, but still have them in your purse when you need them?

Or maybe you’d like to give your next gift card in style!

I’ve got a simple tutorial for sewing up a quick and easy fabric card holder for yourself, or to give as a gift, that takes only minutes. And it’s a great scrap-buster.

To make a this simple holder you’ll need to CUT:

One 4-1/2 ...

You’ll see in my recent posts that I’m obsessed with learning how much mileage I can get with my Accuquilt GO!Cutter and the dies I already own.

I love the simplicity of the Sawtooth Star block and so I decided to see if I could design some pieced items with it using the dies I have.

Although I don’t own the 8” Go!Cube, I have almost all the shapes (see those in bold print on the list below). The only one shape I was missing was for the “flying geese” part of the star: the ...

I purchased an Accuquilt Go die cutter awhile ago and have made so many great projects with it, including tumbler block baby quilts and Dresden Plate table toppers. But I wanted to use a combination of dies to create some other basic, well-known quilting blocks.

My original purchase of my AccuquiltGo! included a combination die (above). It has on it a 2” finished square, a couple 2” finished half square triangles (HST), and a 4” finished square.

Hey, that’s all I need to make the basic Bear’s Claw block! Perfect.

I haven’t yet purchased any of the ...

Normally I bind my quilts (baby quilts, lap quilts, bed quilts) using double folded straight-of-grain binding cut between 2-1/4 to 2-1/2 inches wide, folded in half (wrong sides together) and sewn on the quilt. For more info on that process, go to my blog post: How to Bind a Quilt—The Secret to Perfect Corners. Double fold is great for projects that will take need to stand up to a lot of wear and tear.

But I’ve found that single fold binding is perfect for most of my smaller projects, like wall hangings, table toppers, etc. I ...

It’s easy to make a triangle on the corner of a block, no math involved. I first heard of this technique from an amazing quilt teacher, Mary Ellen Hopkins, who wrote groundbreaking quilting books like “It’s OK if You Sit on My Quilt”, and “Connecting Triangles” among others. Mary Ellen was probably best known for creating the connector and perfect piecing triangles concepts. I was so lucky to have the opportunity to see her at her lecture in Milwaukee just a few years before she passed away (in 2013). Not only did she make quilting fun, her sense ...

I have found an easy way to hang smaller quilted wall hangings or art quilts on your wall…hanging corner triangles. They’re so easy to incorporate into your binding. Here’s how.

After you’ve finished quilting your wall hanging and have trimmed the edges to prepare it for binding, you can add these corner hanging triangles to the back.

Cut two 5” squares. I like to use the same fabric as the backing, but if you don’t have enough, any fabric scraps will work. I like to try to match the background so they will blend in ...

Wow! 2020. This has been one crazy year so far, hasn’t it? And I just realized I haven’t posted a thing since it all started.

One reason I haven’t posted is that I‘ve been busy making face masks. I started making them back in March when there was a shortage masks. I got a few requests from family…and then the requests rolled in from all over—our local EMTs, my family doctor’s clinic, friends who are medical techs, nurses, and of course family and friends. It was my pleasure and a labor of love ...