paper piecing

OH the excitement when the 2019 Quilter’s Planner arrived and I opened the beautiful box!! The anticipation of its arrival was intense. Not just because I have a quilt featured in the companion magazine, but, because I want 2019 to be better than 2018…and 2018 has been sooooooo good!

I ordered the unbound version just to experiment with adding pages and extras to my planning pages. I searched for a binder to accommodate the size of the planner and found the Five Star Flex. It is a bit smaller than a regular 3 ring binder so it didn’t bulk up my planner more than I wanted a binder to. The 3 rings are a perfect match for the unbound planner which arrives pre-punched for a standard 3 ring binder. The rings on the planner are flexible and I haven’t decided if they are a positive or negative yet.

The front and back cover of the flex notebook didn’t quite cover the planner tabs. I purchased some inexpensive chipboard and punched holes in it to create a more rigid cover and back . The more rigid cover now extends out over my planner edge to protect the tabs.

I knew I wanted to create a quilted Sketchbook Jacket for my planner. I always put a jacket on my sketchbooks and planners…it keeps all the papers in and I have a way to zip it up and take it with me. The Sketchbook Jacket PDF pattern is available on Payhip or in my Etsy Shop.

I was racking my brain for a month trying to come up with a mantra like cover design for my planner and remembered the fun Alphabet Spools pattern I had purchased from Quiet Play last year. Those spools with the little alphabet letters were just waiting for me to work them into a project! I love the little letters and how they sit perfectly in the spools…but I needed my spools to look more like my thread rack….

As you can see, I use Aurifil Thread. The 50 & 40 wt. are my go-to threads for quilting, bag making, and all kinds of sewing. And I needed the spools to be small enough to fit within the 11 inch cover of the jacket for the planner.

Foundation paper piecing is probably my favorite quilting technique. The detail you can get and the ability to scale the pattern gives me so much flexibility when designing a layout. I reduced the Alphabet Spools pattern to 40% and created a new top & bottom for the green and orange to match my thread rack selection.

I created a mini spool block without letters to fill in the blank space between my lettered spools. This is a simple piecing pattern and I was able to vary the width of some of the blocks to show fuller and emptier spools…all in my favorite colors of course.

The final ‘mash up’ of my Sketchbook Jacket & Alphabet Spools will be the perfect mantra cover for my Quilter’s Planner to keep me in the making mood for 2019. What are you planning for 2019 to keep on track with your goals?

It is Aloha Friday here and the sky is blue! I put together a fun pineapple block yesterday and am posting the pattern and some directions here if you want to put one together too. It has a lot of little pieces that give this pineapple lots of texture just like the juicy pineapples I buy at the local markets.

First you will need to know how to put together Half Square Triangles (HSTs). There is a little bit of instruction in the pdf file, but, it is not detailed. This pattern uses the traditional method for putting HSTs together and I recommend the tutorial at Blossom Heart Quilts.

First you will need to put together the dark yellow HSTs by putting together 5 pairs of dark yellow fabrics and creating 10 HSTs.

You will take 4 of those HSTs to make the dark yellow/light yellow HSTs. Trim the light yellow fabric to the same size as the dark yellow HSTs.

Draw a line on the light yellow and place right sides together with one of the dark yellow HSTs. Make sure to place your drawn line perpendicular to the dark yellow HST. Stitch a 1/4 inch seam on each side of this line. Cut on the drawn line to separate the HSTs and press seams open. Repeat 3 more times to make 8 of these finished HSTs.

Next you will create 2 light yellow/dark yellow HSTS. Take 1 yellow square and 1 dark yellow square and create 2 HSTs.

Trim 2 background squares to the same size as the dark yellow/light yellow HSTs. This will make approximately a 2 1/8 inch square.

Draw a line corner to corner on the back of the background fabric and align it perpendicular to the dark yellow/light yellow HST with the fabrics right sides together. Stitch a 1/4 inch seam on each side of the line and cut on the drawn line to separate the HSTs. Repeat to make 2 more HSTs.

Trim 2 background squares to the same size as the finished HSTs. This should make all your squares approximately 1 3/4 inch.

Additionally you will need 1 HST made up of the light yellow and background fabric. Trim to the finished HST size of 1 3/4 inch square. Also take one of the leftover HSTs with 2 dark yellow fabrics and trim to the finished HST size of approximately 1 3/4 inch square. Cut this HST in half on the diagonal to create the top center triangle of the pineapple bottom.

Sew the pineapple bottom together in rows on the diagonal as shown in the pattern. Stitch the triangle pieces to the corners of the pineapple bottom to extend the block out.

Now you can create the paper pieced top and add the triangle pieces to the corners of it as well. Trim the pineapple top 1/4 inch below the dotted line where it says to attach the pineapple bottom. Trim the pineapple bottom to be even with the top center triangle.

Match seams and sew a 1/4 inch seams to attach the pineapple top and bottom. I prefer to press all my seams open, but you can press the seams to what is comfortable for you.

Please connect to the Penguin Feats Newsletter to get the PDF pattern for the Piece by Piece PIneapple.

Tag: paper piecing

planner jacket ‘mash up’

Aloha Friday!!