I have a new tutorial over on the Accuquilt blog for making a super-sized churn dash block. I really love making large-scale blocks. They pack a huge visual punch. You can have a quilt top in no time. This block finishes at 18" - these four make a nice baby quilt at 36" square! Big blocks also work great with large or small scale prints. The blue and white floral I used here was leftover from another project I made last week. I am always happy to use what is on hand and using scraps is a bonus! Pop on over to the Accuquilt blog for complete instructions. If you don't have a GO! Cutter, you can make this happen with just a little math. It's easy. I promise.

And for the fine print: I was given the cutter and the dies by Accuquilt, but the fabric, the project idea and opinions are all my own.

I'm very slowly, but surely working on the pattern for my Rinse and Repeat quilt. I have had a few emails wondering when the pattern will be ready and I promise it's coming. I made this second version to test my math (it's good!). I love how the saturated Anna Maria Horner prints look on that field of white. I had a handful of quilters test the pattern, too, and their versions all came out great. I can't wait to share more with you.

And speaking of sharing (or maybe over-sharing?), Accuquilt put me in their Spotlight earlier this week. I had a lot of fun answering the questions. You can hop on over to their blog to find out more about me. I even dish on why Fatty is called Fatty.....I know inquiring minds want to know!

Hope you have a great weekend and that it involves some sewing if you want it to!

I have a new tutorial on the Accuquilt blog showing how to make this adorable spring bunting. It's super easy and uses just two dies and very little fabric. Everything I used was taken from the scrap pile! There are just so many options of how to customize this to suit any occasion. Graduation parties, baby and bridal showers, birthdays, holidays...you get the drift. You can also customize it to make it longer or by using different size and shaped flags for variety. So many options! For the complete how-to, hop on over to Accuquilt and check it out.

I knew it wouldn't be long before I made a second Ryan Top. Four days since I finished the final hem stitches on my first version, I was wearing my second.

I followed the same process for making this one as I did the first. It's a size L and I omitted the neck facings and used a bias tape instead. I did cut my bias strips at 1 1/4" instead of 1 1/2" and I think this was a better choice. It's a much better and proportionate fit. The fabric I used was two separate pieces of Liberty Tana Lawn that I bought back in 2010 when we took a family trip to London. The pattern pieces *just* fit. One of my fabric pieces was slightly longer than the other so I used that for the bodice pieces, but it was still too short for the pattern as designed. To make it work, I shortened the torso by 3 1/2" at the bottom edge and folded the selvedges in towards the center of the fabric to give me 2 folded edges. For the front and back yokes, I folded the fabric in the same manner. It took some serious arranging and the fabric pattern on the back yoke may be upside down (who's looking?), but I made it work. Take that, Tim Gunn.

It's still a little snug under the arms and if I had had a more generous cut of fabric, I would have tried adding a smidge of width - maybe a 1/2" or so? Alas, it was not to be and the resulting top is still totally wearable. I love the length on this shorter version just as much as I like the long length on the original one - it's just a different look. This one worked great with my boyfriend jeans and will be equally as cute with shorts. Yay!

This week is a busy one and I wasn't holding out high hope to get much sewing accomplished. This top is so damn quick to come together - I think my total time cutting and sewing was just at 2 hours - that I couldn't resist jumping in. I do love a fast sew! I also managed to work a tiny bit on one of the quilts I have under construction in a spare hour on Monday and am wishing for a small chunk of time to put the finishing touches on the last blocks. Sometimes I get so discouraged when my time is limited. To that end, I have spent hours and hours each week at physical therapy for two minor, yet painful and annoying injuries over the last two months. It has really eaten into my creative time and that is has started to wear on me. I miss the making. I realize that I just need to change my lens when it comes to how I approach making at the moment. There ARE more minutes available to me than I think. I just have to find them. Have you read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert? (I LOVED it! And I would highly recommend it and, yes, that is an affiliate link.) There's this part when she suggests having an affair with your creative work. Get sneaky. Steal the time to create. Revel in the process. Do the work. Don't tell anyone what you are doing. Just keep it a secret. That is the notion fueling me right now.

Often, after working on a quilt with a lot of math and small pieces, I feel like I need a good, easy, but still interesting project to work on. A palette cleanser of sorts. I've been in the mood to sew some clothes, but I am not ready to undertake my big clothing project of 2016 just yet. (Spoiler alert: The big project is JEANS! You all, I'm saying it here: I am going to make my own jeans!) While scrolling through Instagram, I saw something that lead me to the Ryan Top by Whitney Deal. It's a sweet, cute, simple top and I knew it was just the kind of project I needed.

I purchased, download and assembled the pattern Wednesday morning in a spare hour at home while washing the fabric at the same time. Skills, I tell you! I cut it out early in the afternoon and set it aside for after school sewing. And by four o'clock, I was stitching away. With a small hiatus to cook and eat dinner, I had the entire thing finished by bedtime. Man, did it ever feel good to start and finish something in one day!

I pulled the fabric out my stash - it's a lightweight cotton yarn dye that I picked up in Nashville last summer. It is lightweight with a nice drape and beautiful hand. I love it. The pattern contains five pieces - a front yoke, back yoke, front facing, back facing and the bodice (you cut two of this one piece). The pattern is well-written and is geared towards beginners. My only issue was that some of the seam allowances were 1/4" and some were 1/2" so I really had to pay attention to exactly what each step called for. Not a big deal - just something to note.

Instead of using the front and back facings on the neckline, I decided to finish it with a bias binding. This all personal preference. I don't care for the way facings feel on my neck while I am wearing a blouse. First I cut a 1 1/2" bias strip from some Liberty scraps. (This was a little too big - I could have done it with a 1" strip). Before sewing the shoulder seams, I stay-stitched both necklines at 1/8". After the shoulder seams were completed, I sewed the bias tape on with the 1/4" seam called for when attaching the facings. There's a good tutorial for this method over on Grainline if you don't know what I am talking about. I followed the pattern as written for everything else.

My bust measurement put me right in the middle of a size L so I felt confident making this without a muslin. I do think the pattern runs a little small - I feel like I could use a tiny bit more easy under the arms. I'm a C/D cup for what that is worth. I think if you are much bustier than that, you would have to make some adjustments. If you are on the high side of the measurement range for your size, I'd say go ahead and make that muslin. I know. Boring, but better safe than sorry. Even though I feel I could use a tad bit more room, I will still wear this a lot as it is. It's comfortable and cute - a perfect summer shirt.

Note: this top is long! Almost tunic length, I think, although Jane told me that it is too short to be a tunic. What do I know? Regardless, I like the extra length as I am long in the torso and normally have to add a couple of inches to compensate. Not this time. It's perfect as is for wearing with skinny jeans or leggings. I could make a darling dress if you lengthened the bodice piece or be a super cute top with even five or six inches less length. I can envision many different iterations of this pattern in my closet. I'm thinking about a shorter one in a sweet Liberty floral to wear with shorts this summer or even a two-fabric version, one for the yoke and one for the body. I could go on and on - you get the drift. Bottom line: I recommend this pattern.

Unrelated: something prompted me to go back and read some of my archives last night. What a trip down memory lane! It's hard to believe that I have been writing in this space for almost 10 years (RIGHT?!?). It made me realize just how much I miss sharing some of my process and daily thoughts. I am on Instagram daily, but I don't think that is the same. I feel there is just not the space to write about some of the things swirling in my mind on that platform. I'm not promising anything, but I am wondering if you may just see more of me around here with small bits to share instead of just finished projects.

Happy Friday, friends! Enjoy the weekend.

I whipped up this sweet little lap/baby quilt a couple of weeks ago. I used my GO! Cutter and I'm sharing the tutorial over on the Accuquilt blog. It's a very fast make with two different blocks finishing at 6". I made this quilt specifically for donation to a local hospice organization. They ask for quilts that are between 36" and 48" and this design is perfect for that. It also would make a sweet play mat for baby and can be easily sized up into a throw or bed quilt. While I chose decidedly feminine fabrics from my stash (Amy Butler's Gypsy Caravan), I think this would be stunning in solids or as a scrappy quilt.

For more details, check out the tutorial over at Accuquilt.

I started this sweet Mustang quilt last spring while I was working my way through quilt kits and going through the motions of making to keep myself engaged in something creative. I was excited to see this one come together. I love the fabrics and the piecing was varied enough to keep me interested through every stage. It should have finished around 42" x 55", but I had trouble with the half-square triangle border.

To this day, I do not know where the mistake was. I followed the pattern directions, but the borders did not fit as they should have. I went ahead and sewed them on anyhow - always a bad idea - and then shoved the entire thing to the side until this past January. In an effort to #finishiterin, I decided the best course of action would be to take the borders off and see if I could fix them. I spent some q.t. with my seam ripper and removed the four borders. Then as I looked at them, I really couldn't remember what the original issue was. Were the HST units too big? Too small? It just seemed easier and more efficient to plow ahead without the borders.

And you know what? It's still a sweet quilt, albeit slightly smaller than the original one, about 38" x 51". It is missing the interest that the border adds, but if I didn't tell you, you would know. And it made the perfect gift for a baby girl whose mother loves horses.

The details: All of the fabric is by Cotton + Steel and, as of this posting, the kit is still available (and on sale!) at the Fat Quarter Shop. The pattern is available for free on the Cotton + Steel website. The backing fabric is I Heart Bees in Denim and the binding is a random pink solid from my stash. I used a cotton batting and quilted it with straight lines on either sides of some of the seams. I chose to quilt it rather lightly so it would have some drape after washing. I add the entire binding by machine and it came together well.

Did I mention that this is the year I perfect my machine binding? It is! If you have a favorite machine binding method or tip/trick, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

I've been sewing like a little bit of a mad woman this winter and I have a bit of a backlog of finished quilts to share on the blog. If you follow me on Instagram, you have most likely seen snippets of all of these quilts in various stages - in progress, in top form, quilted, finished, bound, etc. For some reason (um, WINTER), I have not been motivated to get it together long enough to pull out the DSLR and really give these quilts their due. Now that Spring has finally sprung, I am trying to use the nice weather and longer sunlight hours to get them properly photographed and documented here. And, by them, I mean just this one. I have two more that are washed and ready for some time in front of the lens. For now, though, I give you the Super-sized Ohio Star. Yellow glow provided by the late-in-the-day, setting sun. ;)

In January, I watched the first of the Creativebug Block of the Month videos which features Heather Jones and the Ohio Star block. I had never made an Ohio Star quilt so I decided to give it a go. Thirty 12" blocks later, that quilt was finished (and is still waiting to be photographed. Ahem). Around that time, my guild did an exercise about enlarging blocks to different sizes, and since I was really into the Ohio Star, I chose it as my candidate for super-sizing.

I could go into the math for this, but really all you need to know is that the Ohio Star is a nine-patch block made of 5 squares and 4 quarter triangle squares. To make it bigger, I knew I needed a number divisible by 3. I limited myself to fabrics from my stash and, based on yardage I had on hand, settled on a nine block quilt (a nine-patch of nine-patches!) with finished block sizes of 21". Each square in the nine-patch block finishes at 7" (7 1/2'' unfinished), giving a final measurement of 63" square. It's a good throw size, perfect for a cat nap or picnic for two. I like the quilts I make to be usable and I find that anything smaller than around 60" square just isn't as useful as I'd like.

The background fabric is Essex Linen in Ivory and I love, love, love how it feels in a quilt. LOVE IT. The prints are one colorway of Anna Maria Horner's Fibs and Fables line which I paired with bright, cheery solids in hot pink, chartreuse and aqua. I used Labyrinth in aqua for the backing and bound it by machine with Helios in incense. I quilted it with rows of loops in off-white thread and 100% cotton batting on the long arm at Quilted Joy. Between the linen and the cotton batting, it came out of the wash with the best crinkle. Cozy!

This one came together FAST! I know I say that often, but, in this case, big blocks make for less piecing over a greater square footage. I mention this as a reminder to myself. Not everything has to be difficult or tedious to be satisfying to make and to look at. The large squares pack a good punch and have me itching to super-size all the things.