In a post a few days ago I told you I was being sucked into the Carolina Christmas Mystery Quilt vortex over at Quiltville, no? Well Bonnie just posted that she’s going to be gone for a few days so everyone following the mystery ought to have enough time to catch-up!
(She don’t know me very well). Catch-up? Okay…I’ll just try to get step 1 in and we’ll see where we go from there. Okay?
Alright people. Move aside. I need to look for my reds, my greens, my neutrals and somewhere I need to locate a golden yellow.
Reds. Check.
Greens. Check.
Neutrals. What do you mean by neutrals? What? I can’t believe with all this fabric I have in boxes, bins, and drawers there aren’t any neutrals? Geez!
Golden Yellow. Harrumph. Again. I could have sworn I had some nasty golden yellow around here somewhere. Nothing.
Step 1: Bonnie is using the golden yellow matched with a neutral in 2.5″ strips sewn together and then cut into 4.5″ units. I’ve used the strip method before but have been experimenting with my own paper piecing method using 8.5″ x 11″ pieces of paper.
I cut two fabrics the size of the paper, match them right sides together and stitch along pre-printed sewing lines that I’ve drafted on the paper. I’ve done this technique a few times and it works for me on strips, half square triangles and quarter square triangles. I guess the closest I’ve seen are the Thangles products but from what I can tell those use strips and not the paper that comes out of your printer.
Here is the template I created for the 2.5″ strip sets:
I printed 16 pieces of paper to get enough units.















It seems I have about 20 or so projects that are in bins, bags and boxes throughout my house. I know I’ve tossed a few others over the years but why is it so many just hang around…unfinished?
I spent this past weekend pulling out fabric scraps and sorting through old projects. When we were in Fairbanks this past spring I picked up the Amy Butler pattern for the Weekender Travel Bag. A sample of the bag was in the shop and I couldn’t resist the impulse to purchase the pattern and figure on someday I’d make one.