I am a FreeSpirit! | Material Obsession

Material Obsession: I am a FreeSpirit! The news is getting out so your I'd like to tell you myself....I am a FreeSpirit designer! This doesn't happen over night. For over 12 years I have been buying fabric with great joy. It is my favourite part of...

Quilting straight lines | Christine Baker - Fairfield Road Designs

Christine Baker - Fairfield Road Designs & Christine's Thrive Life: Quilting straight lines Do you ever find yourself procrastinating with a project that you aren't sure how to finish? This happens to me too, and this month I had one that I've been postponing for WEEKS!! Sometimes with a customer quilt I have to look at it for a few days before I get inspired by an idea for the quilting. With THIS quilt the customer specified that she wanted straight lines quilted in two of the borders, so I just had to decide how to quilt the third border and the centre of the quilt.  I came up with some ideas, but even though I knew how I would quilt it, I STILL kept finding other things to do first. My customer went on vacation for 3 weeks and I knew she would be home soon, so this week I FINALLY got it loaded on the machine, took a deep breath and started to quilt!!

Autumn Inspiration: Helen Philipps

Helen Philipps: Autumn Inspiration  We are having perfect autumn weather here at the moment...........golden days with chilly cosy nights........bright blue sky, sunshine, berries, fruits, butterflies (in autumn colours) and mushrooms and toadstools to discover on our woodland walks.....  .................and here are some of my autumn inspired makes......a pumpkin pillow......  ............and some fabric pumpkins.....these are projects from my new book *modern vintage gifts*..... ........i am pleased to tell you that all the templates in the book are the actual size for working from so no need to enlarge them in a photocopier :) ..................

Pink - Ta Da! - Machine Quilting With Style Blog Hop

she can quilt: Pink - Ta Da! - Machine Quilting With Style Blog Hop Here is a new quilt finish, Pink. The pattern is called Lightning and it is from my friend Christa Watson's new book, Machine Quilting With Style. Today is my stop on the blog hop for this great new book. You can read the story behind this pattern over at Christa Quilts today - go here. I was very excited to be included in Christa's blog hop. Christa and I have become internet friends and we even got to meet in person at Quilt Market and at QuiltCon. She loves machine quilting, and you know I love machine quilting, she wants to encourage more people to show modern quilts at quilt shows, and so do I, well, you get the picture, she is a kindred quilty spirit.

Dapper | Never Not Knitting

Never Not Knitting: Dapper I am so happy to have a pattern included in the Knittin' Little Fall 2015 Collection! Knittin' Little is a new website created by designer Andrea Sanchez. This awesome site is dedicated to providing knitters with patterns for children as well as ways to engage little ones in the love of fiber arts. For the premier collection, I wanted to design something special for my little guy to wear...  A proper, gentlemanly jacket for Fall appropriately named "Dapper". Knit in squishy Garter st, Dapper is complete with all of the pleats, buttonbands, and pockets, of a traditional suit coat. The handsome notched collar and buttonbands are worked right into the jacket fronts for reduced finishing work at the end.

Blacker Yarns - Cornish Tin Review | My Sister's Knitter

Blacker Yarns~ Cornish Tin Review... - My Sister's Knitter I am always honored whenever I am contacted by the creators of beautiful yarns to review their product. To also be included in being a part of a 10 year birthday celebration for Blacker Yarns was beyond exciting.

Grafting with Double Knitting

Technical Tuesday: Grafting with Double Knitting At the Kitchener Waterloo show I had a great question. How to make an infinity scarf with double knitting and graft the ends together. I had never actually thought about how this would be done. Dou…

Speed is relative | Glenna Knits

Speed is relative | Glenna Knits Last week a few of you asked me how I managed to fit so much knitting into my life. While I can't say that I try to speed knit a sweater every week (or every month), I do manage to turn out a coupl...

Nothing Left But The Buttons | Glenna Knits

Nothing left but the buttons | Glenna Knits It's been a finishing party around here for the last couple days, as I finally get my latest sweater design prepped and ready for both pattern release and general wear (I'll have a new sweater to w...

Sweater September... | It takes balls to knit!

Sweater September … » it takes balls to knit! A couple of years ago, New Stitch A Day developed a 30 Day sweater template and had a 30 day sweater challenge. The concept was completing the seemingly daunting task of knitting a sweater in 30 da…

Summer Fun of Quilts, Published and Tutorials! | Jackie's Art Quilts

Jackie's Art Quilts: Summer Fun of Quilts, Published and Tutorials! Does the summer really translate to 'I am too busy quilting and enjoying family life to post?' Maybe this summer it did for me. I have had some fun though.   It is such a thrill to see my quilts in print.  Here is my 'Falling Leaves' in Quilter's World magazine.  I designed it on EQ7 and used Riley Blake Fabrics and WonderFil thread to create it. Then I got a little hooked on doing videos... but still have lots to learn, like turn the phone the other way!  The best part is my 2 sons, 10 and 11 years old were my camera men!

Paper piecing - a mini tutorial | she can quilt

Paper piecing - a mini tutorial | she can quilt I don't have all my usual pincushions unpacked, but I did unpack this tiny one from Mad About Patchwork. They sent it to me for shopping at their sidewalk sale (I think it was a sidewalk sale, but I shopped on line) last summer. It is nice as it is filled with some kind of heavy sand item and stays put. So I loaded it with flat topped pins. I use these pins to position and hold the first piece of fabric when I paper piece, as one can fold over these pins and iron over them. Of course the ironing seems to contribute to the flowers falling off the pins so try to avoid that part.

Up and Coming: Stitches be Slippn

Up and Coming I still can’t believe it is September already. It’s going to be sweater season soon and you can bet your bum I’m preparing for that. I really can’t wait for the fall season. Especially since this L...

Knitting Essentials | Glenna Knits

Knitting Essentials | Glenna Knits Around here right now everyone is talking about back to school, and vaguely aware of incoming fall seasonal things despite being in the muggy fog of a heat wave that has not let up for a week. I my...

A quilt of another colour | Christine Baker - Fairfield Designs

A quilt of another colour | Christine Baker - Fairfield Road Designs One of the BEST things about designing in quilt patterns is getting to see the quilt made in a different selection of fabrics! This pattern is called "Stella Violet", after Nellie's cute little grand daughter, and last week I got to quilt Donna Taylor's version of our pattern. Not for the faint of heart, this quilt pattern has blocks that have 49 pieces in them, but Donna likes a challenge, so not only did she make the quilt, but she made it twice as big!! And for her colour palette she used white as a background with dusty blue, rose, pink and grey fabrics. It turned out just beautiful!!

Harvest JOY Stars and Basket Block | Sew Joy Creations

Sew Joy: Harvest JOY Stars and Basket Block #fullpost{display:inline;} Just in time for some long weekend sewing! The next block in the Harvet JOY wall hanging is ready. For the pattern this will be the block you see. Somehow I had missed finding this background fabric in my leftover stash from my Halloween 1904. It has tiny little stars on it! The fabric inspired me to play with the color of my stars and so now I have one grey basket with burgundy stars.  {which has inspired another project - for later!} Link to Stars and Basket Block instructions

Technical Tuesday: One REALLY Excellent Book | Stitches Be Slippin

Technical Tuesday: One REALLY Excellent Book One of the most invaluable skills I learned about early was yarn substitutions. I was extremely lucky and am very happy the way I went around learning to knit. It was totally on accident as well. I...

Hexies On The Farm Tutorial | Jackie's Art Quilts

Jackie's Art Quilts: Hexies On The Farm Tutorial I am back!  I finished two quilts today, they are off to the publisher so am super excited about that. And breathing a little sigh of relief as well. My family has been heading up to my favourite place in the world each weekend - my grandparents farm. Last weekend, I decided that it would be fun to try a youtube video on my easy way to make hexies. My only problem is that I didn't have a camera man. In stepped my 10 year old son to do the job. We did 3 takes and I love the last one. We even have cows photo bombing it!  How cool is that.

Wrapping it up | Glenna Knits

Wrapping it up | Glenna Knits It's the last gasps of summer around these parts - Labour Day weekend hits this weekend and it's back to school soon, and the temperatures have hit peak heat and humidity just to make sure we all r...