Melissa Dunworth – Page 151 – Sew Bittersweet Designs

Finishes – where do they end up?

5 Comments / Charity / By Melissa Dunworth

What do you do with all your finishes? I find that I make a lot of projects for the blog for sponsors and some for myself that truly have no purpose or intended recipient. For example I made last week’s Valentine’s Pinwheel Table Runner with nobody in mind, I just started sewing blocks and suddenly a table runner was born. What do you do with all your projects – you can’t keep everything, can you? I mean she who dies with the most quilts still ends up cold in the end (sorry, that was a bit morbid…).

So what do I do with my finishes? I have about 6 quilts in my house right now – these were actually made with my immediate family members in mind. Everything else I giveaway. I have so many wonderful people in my life and I love sharing with them, but what I love doing even more is donating to charity. My Valentine’s Pinwheel Table Runner is going to be going up for auction to benefit a mission started by my friend Sarah – THE Mission (Tanzania Health & Education Mission). Last year I donated one of my framed photographs:

(I call this picture “Cradling the Sun”, I took it while my hubs and I were on our honeymoon in Carmel, CA. It can be seen on the 17 mile drive if you are so inclined to go find this beautiful tree! Sunset is the time to go if you ask me.)

We can’t keep everything, try though we may and because we can’t I think it is important to find good causes that you believe in to support. The table runner above is being donated for auction, the money raised will go towards health supplies for the Tanzanian people and will help raise awareness about the mission. If you are at all interested in finding out more information about THE Mission, please email me (melissa (at) sewbittersweetdesigns (dot) com) or go to their website. I can put you in direct contact with THE Mission founders. Also, if you have anything you would like to donate for their annual auction, please let me know, any donation would be truly appreciated.

And don’t forget to start making your Valentine’s Day projects – I have now seen 3 of the ones from our esteemed guest bloggers and my oh my are they AMAZING! Get Working!

NOTE: Don’t forget, I am one of the bloggers who is going to lose Google Friend Connect in March 2012, please take a moment and follow me via Bloglovin’, Facebook, RSS or networked blogs. You are important to me and I want to be able to stay in contact with you! Check my side bar for all the best ways to stay in touch after GFC goes bye bye!

And the winner is…

11 Comments / Fat Quarter Shop, Giveaway, Valentine's Day Showcase / By Melissa Dunworth

Everyone loves a good giveaway – gives you the chance to sit around and dream about what you would make/do if you are the big winner. What makes me sad about giveaways is that there is usually only one winner. What makes me happy about hosting giveaways is bringing a little bit of joy to the winner’s day.

Today’s winner is courtesy of Fat Quarter Shop – Kimberly and her team are so supportive and generous. Please take a few moments to head over to their site and look around if you have never done so before – you will be blown away by their selection!

Author: Mary
Website: http://mary.emmens.co.uk/
I can’t wait to get my hands on Curious Nature, so excited to see some masculine prints that are not ‘novelty’! Roll on February, thanks for the giveaway

Thank you for entering Mary and Congratulations on your big win!

I would like to remind everyone about the upcoming Valentine’s Day Showcase – which will start on Wednesday, February 1st with a project from Sharon who blogs at Craizee Corners.

There will be some fabulous prizes, including a $75 gift certificate from my premier sponsor – Fat Quarter Shop. You don’t want to miss out on the chance to win, so grab a button from my sidebar and start creating, the linky party will open for entries on February 15th!

Quilt Binding Tutorial

15 Comments / binding, tutorial / By Melissa Dunworth

In December I posted a quickie basting tutorial and I asked if anyone would like me to do a binding tutorial, several people asked and it is time for me to deliver!

This is a picture heavy tutorial – my apologies!

The steps that I am going to detail in this tutorial will work for virtually any machine quilt binding that you will do.

For the Valentine Pinwheel Table Runner you will need three strips measuring 2.5” x WOF (width of fabric) – I am using solid fabric for my border. If you are using a patterned fabric make sure you sew your strips right sides together.

Placing fabric corner to corner, right sides together, take a ruler and draw a line with an air or water soluble pen/pencil from corner to corner.

Pin in place and sew along the line you drew.

Place your ruler with the ¼” mark on stitched line – trim triangle off

Press your fabrics open and repeat until all your strips are sewn together

Fold your strip in half and press along the entire strip.

Note Before: when you are going to do the entire binding on the machine – sew your binding to the back first. If you plan on hand sewing your binding down – sew your binding to the front first!

Place the raw side of the strips to the quilt edge. I like to start in the center of the quilt and have an excess of 8-12 inches of strip when you start sewing.

Sew the strip to the quilt with a ¼” seam. Stop sewing when you are ¼” from the corner. (I like to measure with a tape measure and place a pin so I know where to stop).

When you reach the corner, you will want to fold the fabric back (refer to picture)

The fold your fabric back down – align it with the next edge you will be sewing on (you are creating your mitered corners)

Repeat the last two steps at each corner. Stop sewing when you are 8” from where you started.

Fold the strips in towards each other – meeting in the middle, fold the strips back on top of themselves.

Fold the strips down, making a point

Using a quilting ruler – place it on the edge of the quilt and cut off the excess fabric from the binding strips.

Place the strips right sides together, draw a line corner to corner, sew on the line and trim ¼” from stitching and press open

Finish sewing down your binding

Fold your binding over to the front, at this point you can pin or not pin (I start out pinning usually and then end up just folding the fabric over with my fingers). Pick a decorative stitch or straight stitch. NOTE: Make sure when you fold your fabric over that you are covering the stitching from when you attached the binding to the back!

I like to pin my corners down until I am ready to sew them (literally right until the needle is about to hit the pin). I also leave my needle down, lift my foot and turn at the corner rather than starting and stopping at each corner.

Congratulations you have just machine sewn your binding!

Valentine’s Pinwheel Table Runner Tutorials Day 2

7 Comments / bittersweet quilt designs, block tutorials, Fat Quarter Shop, quilt blocks, SewHappyGeek / By Melissa Dunworth

Here are the tutorials for the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th blocks in my Valentine’s Pinwheel Table Runner. The first block can be found here.

You will want to continue using the two 4.5” strips that you cut yesterday.

2nd Pinwheel Block

Make sure that you cut your left and right B sections correctly – cut your first left sections from the left side of the fabric and your right sections from the right side of the fabric. Meaning when you have your strip laid out in front of you – cut 4 pieces starting on the left (which is probably natural for right handed people) and cut 4 pieces from the right hand side of the fabric (a little less natural for us righties).

Sew your first section together, then place the block right side facing down on your cutting mat and create a new A section (see picture).

Following the photo above sew your sections together and voila – block 2 complete.

3rd Pinwheel Block

This block is what happens when you accidently (ok, when I accidently!) cut your block right side facing up instead of facing down!

The cutting is slightly different:

Sew your first section together and this time you will place the block facing up to create a new A section (see picture).

Attach second B section. Make 4 total – follow photo above to layout your block – voila! Block 3 complete!

4th Pinwheel Block – this one is slightly more complicated, but I really love the way it looks:

This time you will need four A sections and eight B sections:

Sew together first two sections, the placing right side facing up with red triangle at the top – create new A section (see picture):

Attach second B section . Make 4 total – follow photo above to layout your block – voila! Block 4 complete!

Cutting for borders and sashing – you will need 4 strips of the red fabric for your sashing

I used a scrap piece of fabric for the backing and also scraps from a larger project for the batting. I decided to hand quilt this project. I pin basted like crazy.

This was the first time I ever hand quilted anything – my hand issues have always kept me leery of doing it for fear of extra pain and swelling. I decided it was finally the time to give it a go (and yes, I did have extra swelling and pain the next day – but it was short lived and the resulting project was so beautiful that it was WORTH IT!). I asked my friend Jenna from SewHappyGeek for some guidance and she oh so graciously offered to do a video tutorial! If you are even the least bit interested in learning this technique – please go check out her video – it is totally worth the 5.5 minutes of your time. She did a wonderful job with it plus you can finally put a voice to the words on the screen!

Come back tomorrow for a quick tutorial on how to do a machine binding!

If you haven’t already – make sure you enter to win the Lazy Angle Ruler and a Layer Cake from Fat Quarter Shop!

Lazy Angle Ruler Review & Tutorial

12 Comments / Fat Quarter Shop, Giveaway, product review, table runner / By Melissa Dunworth

Have you been intrigued by the Lazy Angle Ruler? I was and when the opportunity to do a giveaway and review came up with Fat Quarter Shop, I jumped at the chance and here’s why…I created the 4 blocks for this table runner and 1 additional during Anne’s nap time – all of TWO hours!

The first thing I did was head over to the Lazy Girl Designs website and download the “Getting Started” chapter from the Lazy & Lovin’ It book. If you are going to invest in the ruler – I highly recommend printing out these 12 pages. After taking the time to read it and get a real understanding I was able to create these blocks by just cutting, sewing and playing.

I decided to make 8 inch finished blocks – mainly because I have recently been intrigued with that size block. An 8 inch block requires 4 blocks measuring 4.5″ x 4.5″.

Start with two different fabrics measuring 4.5” by width of fabric.

(It is important to remember when piecing to use a ¼” seam)

Start by cutting your A sections – for the 1^st pinwheel block you will need 4 section A’s and 4 Section B’s.

Lay out your block

Next you will need to sew your sections together – make sure you slightly offset your pieces – the Lazy Girl Designs website describes this as making a bowtie at the bottom of your piece. Here is how my sections look:

Press your seams open, trim dog ears and you have made your first section! Make 3 more and sew your block together.

Things I like about the ruler:

Concise – Aside from trimming dog ears – I didn’t have to trim my blocks to size – they were consistently 4.5” each time (meaning – make sure your ¼” seams are ACCURATE! – if they aren’t you will cause yourself a lot more work!)
Once you master this first block the options are ENDLESS – after I had the proportions worked out I designed 10 or more blocks in EQ7 for this ruler
The 12 page free downloadable chapter is a wonderful font of information – READ IT!
You can create finished blocks measuring from 4” to 12”

Area’s for Improvement:

Learning curve – the pamphlet that comes with it was not enough for me to figure out how to use the ruler – however, the Lazy Girl Designs website had a great deal amount of information to help me figure it all out
If the pieces are not offset just right, then your square will not line up properly – it took me 3 or 4 tries and lots of quality time with Jack (a.k.a. The Ripper) to figure out the exact right alignment
There is quite a bit of waste when you are creating blocks with 3 or more sections – be prepared for a scrap pile

Final Thoughts:

I love this tool – I see myself using it quite a lot in future quilt designs. While there is a learning curve, DO NOT let it intimidate you. Take the time to download the free chapter and read it. If you are still struggling feel free to send me a message – I would be more than happy to walk you through using this ruler.

Come by tomorrow (internet access willing – we are still having trouble in our neck of the woods) – and I will have up step-by-step picture tutorials for the other 3 blocks in the table runner and cutting instructions for the sashing and border. The day after that I will put up a tutorial on how to do a machine binding on this quilt.

Do you have this ruler? Do you want one? Head over to my Fat Quarter Shop Giveaway for your chance to win one!

Author name: Melissa Dunworth