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Monday, July 8, 2013

Strip Your Stash

I started taking the Craftsy class Strip Your Stash by Nancy Smith.  She has some great ideas for using strips to make quilts that are fast and easy.

I really like her idea of using photos that you like and using the colors in the photo to select fabrics that will work together. 

I must say that Nancy has a much nicer stash than I do.  At some point I got into a blue phase and so I have tons of blue fabrics that now are not very exciting to work with.  Perhaps I could add a little orange to spice up the blues.  However, I have very few orange fabrics. So perhaps I will have to make a trip to the fabric store.  I do have some yellow fabric and they would work as well.

I am would love to try out Nancy's strip techniques but I am currently making a quilt for the Calgary Flood Relief.  Hopefully soon I will get to try out strip techniques.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Heartstrings New Quilt Pattern

I have a new pattern in the latest McCall's Quick Quilts magazine called Heartstrings.  It is very easy to make in just a few hours and is free with the purchase of the magazine.  McCall's does such a great job of taking my pattern instructions and making them so easy to follow.  McCall's Quick Quilts Heartstrings


Sunday, June 2, 2013

How to calculate the number of strips to bind a quilt.


It is frustrating to sew your binding strips together only to find that you are short and need another strip.  Here is the formula that I use.  Measure the width and length of your quilt.  Since fabrics come in slightly different widths, measure the width of your fabric with the selvage removed i.e. 40".  I subtract 2" from the fabric width to account for the mitered corners.
Use the following formula.

((quilt width + quilt length) * 2 )/ (fabric width - 2) round to the nearest highest number.

Example
(50 + 60)  = 110 * 2 = 220 / (40 - 2)  = 5.79 round to 6
You will need 6 strips to bind this quilt.