MORE from Katie's Modern Nest

Monday, January 31, 2011

More Single Girl and Paper Piecing

What a fun sewing weekend!  I spent quite a bit of time working on my single-girl project for my spicing up the kitchen partner. I still haven't decided if this is going to become a wall hanging, table runner, or individual placemats.  Maybe you could weigh in with your opinion. 



First I cut up my squares 3.5" x 4"  (in retrospect, I wish I had cut them larger.  It would have made the paper-piecing less tedious as I tried to make sure I covered each bit of the arch.  I would probably recommend making 5" squares just to make it easy on yourself).


Then I chose a short stitch length and did my paper piecing.  If you are doing this, make sure you double check the positioning of each piece so that your arch is completely covered when you flip the fabric back over.


Then I trimmed each arch to the actual size (my templates included the seam allowances) by cutting along the dark line that shows through the paper.


I made all 16 arches, and started piecing it to my background fabrics.  One block is finished, 3 to go!  Love the way its shaping up! 

What should I make of my SG blocks?

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Single Girl and Paper Piecing

I've been itching to do a Denyse Schmidt Single Girl quilt for some time so I bought the pattern this weekend.  Then the stars aligned and I found out on Monday that there is this nifty "Single Girl Support Group" quilt along that just started.  So now I've got a support network.


I decided to use paper piecing on my curves instead of cutting out 31 individual templates for each block, so i spent some time last night creating my new curve template.
First I tested out that my curve was the correct shape


Then I traced each of the template pieces into the curve.  I ended up with 4 curved pieces and they are essentially the same shapes as the individual templates in the pattern.




Let me know if this is helpful to you and your Single Girl efforts!

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

long lost blogger returning...kind of

Its been a long time since we talked.  But the holidays, guests, new carpet upstairs and the job have all stolen the show for the last month and a half.  I have missed blogging, but just because I haven't been writing doesn't mean I haven't been sewing. Over the next few weeks I'll (slowly) catch you up on some of my projects this month.

First up: Bee Blocks for Erin:
 Erin said "Work with Triangles" and sent a FQ of the black and white fabric and asked each of us to pick a color and use fabrics from our stash.
I went for green (of course) and this was my first time ever doing half-square triangles.

These were fun blocks to work with and I hope that Erin enjoys them.