Designing Monday

It has been a busy couple of weeks, but I have been sewing whenever I can.  I was so lucky to be chosen winner in Lea Anne's drawing over on Podunk Pretties.  She has been posting some really great quilting and sewing tips on her blog and inviting others to share their tips as well.  Plus Bev at 44th Street Fabric conspired with Lea Anne and provided some cute, cute fabric called Santa Express for the giveaway.  I just love it and couldn't wait to dig into this bundle of fat quarters.  Thank you both for your generosity!!!

I really love the hexagonal table topper that Luann of Loose Threads designed, so I asked her if it would be okay if I gave a demo to my quilt guild this week using her design.  She graciously said yes, so I put together another fall design and used the Santa Express fabric to make up my samples for demo-ing.  I had 10 minutes to demo the whole thing and I had to repeat it 6 times.  I am a fast talker, but I can't remember ever having to talk that fast.  I had to keep telling myself to slow down, 'cause I knew I would lose my audience if I didn't.  At the end I passed out slips of paper with LuAnn's blog address so they can review all the steps before starting on their own projects.

I showed how to make a Dresden Plate as well as how to assemble the quilt as you go segments.  On LuAnn's tutorial, she makes a hexagon freezer plate pattern for the background using a hexagon template make of plastic.  Since I don't own one of those, I made my freezer paper pattern by using a protractor and a ruler (back to geometry class.)  This is not hard, but takes a bit of time to explain and demo, so that took as much time as the rest of my demo.  I felt it was an important part of the process and allows you to make your table topper any size you want.  Stay tuned as I am going to put together a blog post on how to do this in the near future.

Tonight I am hosting my stitching group, the Fiber Friends, and I'm showing another friend how to make the hexagon table topper, too.  It is really catching on!!

I joined AQS two weeks ago as I am going to attend one of their quilt shows in the near future and I want to take advantage of the discounts they offer to their members.  As a thank you gift for joining they sent me a free book, Judy's Weekend Quilts.

Plus it came in this really cute box. Sweet!

Hop on over to Judy's blog to see more beautiful designs.