Melissa Dunworth – Page 71 – Sew Bittersweet Designs

A Lovely Year of Finishes – 2014 Edition

11 Comments / A Lovely Year of Finishes, Fiber of All Sorts / By Melissa Dunworth

That’s right the fantastic Shanna and I have teamed up again! I love working with her, she is AMAZING!

We are so happy to be doing this again this year. And make sure to check out our sponsors.

There are some ground rules.

This is a sewing and crafting link-up. Although it would be awesome for cooking or millionaire making. . that’s just not who we are. 🙂

Be nice. We love the encouragement that is in this community. Just keep it going.

To win a prize you’ll choose one month to work in. Add in a photo or a blog post during the goal setting linky. Work on that project & finish it to where you stated you would get to. Add a new photo or blog post during the finishes party linky.

For your goal post, if you could pick one project that as your ALYoF goal. That makes it easier on us. And if it’s easier on us, it’s easier for us to give you a prize if you’ve been chosen. And to that end if you can help by linking back to your goal setting post as well.

What is a project? There is no shame in not meeting a goal. You just aren’t in the running for a prize that month. But hey, try again another month!

A finish is whatever YOU choose. Seriously it could be cutting out all the pieces for a fantastic quilt-top. Getting the last 2 blocks done for a quilt top. Your goal could be getting your lingering bee blocks into a quilt top. Binding, quilting, or something else crafty. This isn’t a finish a quilt a month club this is a you’re awesome and you can do it club. One piece at a time baby! Celebrate you’re small finishes and I bet you’ll finish more.

We want to encourage you to visit one another and leave comments. This is what makes us all so much better.

Please grab our button over to the right

to keep the love going

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or the specific blog post to show off the month you’re working on.

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Remember there is a flickr group

A facebook group

& A hashtag #ALYoF for instagram or twitter

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I’m planning on making 2014 my year of sewing from my stash. I already have 3 big quilts planned for family plus I need to finish my hubby’s king sized quilt (we’ll see if this actually happens!).

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As always if you have any questions drop a comment or an email. Between Shanna and I we usually have some ideas or suggestions.

Can’t wait to start off 2014, oh wait I need to go pick a January goal.

See you all soon!

December Finishes Party – ALYoF

7 Comments / A Lovely Year of Finishes, Fiber of All Sorts / By Melissa Dunworth

We did it! We made it a full 12 months! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it! My goal this month was a beautiful quilt for a very special person.

This is the Dizzying Diamonds quilt. You can read all about it here and the pattern is available for purchase too! I am so excited to see the reaction of the recipient of this quilt. How did you end 2013? Did you finish your final goal? Shanna and I want to see!

Shanna and I want to thank our wonderful sponsors for adding such a fun element to A Lovely Year of Finishes!

December Prizes Include:

1, 2,3, & 4.

3 Thread Packs and one special thread pack from Aurifil Threads

5. Choice of $15 or 2 charm packs from Stitches n’ Giggles

6. A Paper Piecing Kit from Paper Pieces

7. A Fat Quarter Bundle from Moda United Notions

8,9. TWO winners each getting to choose one pdf pattern

from Sew BitterSweet Designs

($10 value)

10. Quilting Patterns designed by Quilting Lodge

Make sure to go visit 2 other people who have linked up before you so that we can cheer each other on!

This is the last of the “regular” link-up’s.

January 1-7 Shanna and I will be holding the 2013 year in review party with additional prizes, for those that finished 6 or more months worth of your goals.

Dizzying Diamonds Pattern Release

15 Comments / Sew BitterSweet Designs Patterns / By Melissa Dunworth

Today I am releasing my latest pattern, Dizzying Diamonds. It does make you just a tad dizzy looking at it doesn’t it? That is all party of my secret plan to hypnotize you into buying this pattern!

The fun thing about this pattern is that it is a layer cake pattern. It is time to cut into those precious layer cakes I know you have been hoarding and start sewing some beautiful quilts!

The quilt above is the large size version of the pattern using a full layer cake – 42 10″ squares. It measures 72″ x 84″ and was made using Barcelona by Zen Chic for Moda.

Above is the smaller version – measuring 60″ x 72″ and requiring only 30 squares from a layer cake. The smaller pattern was created first because I had a partial layer cake left of the Quilt Blocks line. This quilt was my November goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes and was gifted to a wonderful family friend on Sunday. She loved it!

Fabric Requirements (Large Version):

1 Layer Cake (with 42 squares) – for main fabric
Option One: 1 layer cake of solids for background fabric
Option Two: Solid background fabric – 3 ⅛ yards. Sub-cut into forty-two 10” squares
Batting
Backing Fabric – 5 ¼ yards
Binding Fabric (for 2.5” strips) – ⅝ yard

Fabric Requirements (Small Version):

30 squares of main fabric – 10”x10”
30 squares of background fabric – 10”x10”
Batting
Backing Fabric – 3 ½ yards
Binding Fabric (for 2.5” strips) – ½ yard

Other Supplies:

Rotary Cutter
Rulers: 1 measuring at least 15” long, one square 6.5” or larger ruler
Basic Sewing Supplies

I was very blessed because Vicki from Orchid Owl Quilts quilted my larger version – which is a Christmas gift for someone. Check out her amazing quilting on my dizzying diamonds and pinwheels. She managed to bring so much movement into the overall design. You can see more of her quilting and the quilt here on this post.

Even Anne loves the pattern!

Here are the quilts side by side – It is amazing how different they look just by simply changing the fabric!

The pattern is now available for purchase in my Craftsy Shop is $7.50 for the pdf instant download. I hope you enjoy!

To see other versions of the quilt please check out my wonderful pattern testers! CeLynn from CeLynn’s Sunflower Patch and Debbe from Pieces to Love.

December Mid-Month Check In – A Lovely Year of Finishes

3 Comments / A Lovely Year of Finishes, Fiber of All Sorts / By Melissa Dunworth

Well we are in the home stretch of 2013! This is our last mid-month check-in for 2013. I have no pictures to show you of my finish – but I can tell you that it is…finished!

Here are the prizes that are up for grabs in December!

1, 2,3, & 4) Thread Packs and one special thread pack from Aurifil Threads

5. Choice of $15 or 2 charm packs from Stitches n’ Giggles

6. A Paper Piecing Kit from Paper Pieces

7. A Fat Quarter Bundle from Moda United Notions

8,9. TWO winners each getting to choose one pdf pattern from Sew BitterSweet Designs

10. Quilting Patterns designed by Quilting Lodge

Make sure to go visit 2 other people who have linked up before you so that we can cheer each other on!

Don’t forget:

January 1-7 Shanna and I will be holding the 2013 year in review party with additional prizes, for those that finished 6 or more months worth of your goals.

Product Review – 2013-2014 Blog Planner

7 Comments / Modjeska Designs, Uncategorized / By Melissa Dunworth

(Note: No products were provided to me for this review. I purchased the Planner and liked it so much I wanted to share with all my blogging friends.)

Last month Kristin from Modjeska Designs released her 2013-2014 Blog Planner. I have to admit, I was intrigued by this notion of planning your blog. It just seemed so foreign to me because I am a fly by the seat of my pants type of blogger. In all honesty throughout this entire year only the posts related to A Lovely Year of Finishes have been planned. I like the idea of being organized so when payday rolled around I bought her Blog Planner.

What I love most about this planner is that it is a way to keep track of practically EVERYTHING! There is a month by month calendar where you can write in your individual posts. I have already started filling in dates for A Lovely Year of Finishes posts.

I clearly need to get some more ideas in store for my January planning, but I think 3 posts is a good start. There is also a section with all of the holidays listed. What is nice about this is that holidays are a great opportunity for special sewing projects and with them listed all in one place I can easily see what is coming up and decide if I want to do a project around a holiday theme.

Some of the sections include:

Holidays
Budget Tracking
Project Sheets
Linky Parties
Giveaways
Weekly Timesheets and planning guides
Security section for passwords
Advertising (helpful if you are trying to monetize your blog)
And many many more (for a full list – click here).

This might be my favorite part of the planner, a section of Idea Sketches. I am a bit of a doodler (not a very good drawer, but great doodler) so this section is perfect for me to collect my ideas for a quilt design and write out my supplies list. I know I will refer back to these sheets when writing my tutorials and it will be so wonderful to have them all in one place.

The entire Blog Planner is 67 Full Color pages and you have so much flexibility. I didn’t print every section, just the ones that make the most sense for me right now. You could easily print this at home or take the instant download PDF file to your local print store and run off a copy of the file. I also like that I can go back and make as many copies as I want of specific pages – ie. the Idea Sketches.

This is a very complete planner, after spending several days picking out which pages I wanted to print, there really wasn’t anything else I could think of to include. Kristin really did think of it all. The only thing I added really, was my super pretty binder that I bought at Target. I thought that the outside of my planner needed to be as pretty as the inside.

It is a 2″ thick binder, though now I am only using about 1/8 of the space. I have a feeling I will be reprinting the Idea Sketches and Supply List pages of the planner over and over again and will easily fill this binder. If I do…that will mean that I had a successful year of actually planning ahead of my blogging!

So if you are in the market for a little organization for your blog, I highly recommend the 2013-2014 Blog Planner by Modjeska Designs. It is only $20.00 and well worth every penny! (Oh yes! She has one for food bloggers too!)

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Author name: Melissa Dunworth