I decided to test the waters to see how people liked it by making a mini quilt using Lizzy House’s new Printmaking line for Andover fabrics. They sent me the fabric as part of their QuiltCon 2017 booth, so it all worked out perfectly.

It will be sold as a mini quilt pattern, but I will be including diagrams and more to show how to make a twin, full, queen and more. I seriously can not wait until to show my sample quilt! It’s epic, and I don’t use that word often.

Just keep an eye out here for the exact release date.

In other news, the Pixelated Circles Quilt is being printed right now and hard copies will be available after May 8th. I will also be selling acrylic cutting templates for each size individually, or as a pack of four. All preorders can be found in my shop!

I have a block or two to share from the book, along with all the information to enter the Well Wishes Charity Bee Quilt raffle AND I’m giving away a copy of the book. This is a jam-packed blog post, so make sure you read to the end!

The Book:

Let me start out by saying how much I love this book! I am a huge collector of instructional quilting books and this is one of those super useful ones. The ones you can refer back to when you need a little something extra for a project, or you just want to up your triangle making game.

Modern Triangle Quilts includes 70 layouts. Some are for Equilateral, Right Angle and Isosceles triangles. Some are pieced traditionally, some are paper pieced and a handful have some neat tips and tricks to make a unique block each time. She also includes 11 sampler layouts to help you decide how you want to use all of your new fancy triangles.

(all photos in the above section, along with the next photo, were provided by Bryan house Quilts | Rebecca Bryan for promotional use)

The Projects I Made:

This blog hop is a little different than most. Rebecca decided instead of us just making a project and sharing it, we would make one equilateral triangle block using the predetermined color scheme above and then send it to her. She then would take all of the blocks and make a quilt to raffle off (which I talk about later on in this post).

I made Block #2 from the Equilateral Triangle section. It was my first time using the technique shared in the book, and I am loving it. I think I want to do one of the included layouts just using this style block. Imagine what it would look like in Halloween fabric? They could be mummy triangles!

Sadly, due to reasons that were totally my fault, the block didn’t make it to Rebecca on time. So it was not included in the charity quilt. It MIGHT show up later down the road in another project. Who knows!

I decided to also make Block #12 from the Right Angle Triangle section because I felt like it would be fantastic for a large zipper pouch.

That’s whats so great about this book, since its mostly about the blocks and not the quilt layout, you can mix and match these to fit your exact needs. Mine just happened to be a zipper pouch to hold some tools. This one was foundation paper pieced and the template was super easy to copy on my home printer.

Plus I feel like the shape worked really well with all the neon I used since it has those classic 80′s angles and shapes.

The Charity Quilt & Raffle:

As I mentioned above, Rebecca took all of the Equilateral triangles she received in the gorgeous blue colorway above and turned them into a quilt.

How pretty is this?!? It’s been named the Well Wishes Quilt and you could win it!

Rebecca will be running a raffle by selling a limited time pattern for this quilt through her shop. The pattern is $5 and people can purchase the pattern as many times as they like. Each purchase equals one entry. All proceeds of the sales from the Well Wishes PDF pattern will go directly to Living Water International. You can read all of the details over on the Bryan House Quilts blog. Entries are open for the duration of the Blog Tour (April 2 – April 18) and the pattern will be removed from the shop at that time.

This really is a great idea and I hope that you all buy at least one pattern!

Blog Hop Tour Schedule:

Make sure to check out all of the other awesome quilters who will be showing off even more blocks throughout the month. The list is fantastic.

Book Giveaway:

Rebecca Bryan and Stash Books / C&T Publishing was kind of enough to offer one copy of Modern Triangle Quilts to one of my readers!

To enter just leave a comment below telling me your favorite color combos.

You can get a bonus entry by signing up for our newsletter. I send out newsletters sporadically and no more than twice a month. Newsletters include sales, new product notices and soon will include tips and tricks and video links.

Fine Print: One entry per person, per day. Entries that don’t follow this rule will be deleted. You must include your email address, otherwise I won’t be able to contact you if you win! The winning book will be sent by C&T and only addresses within the U.S. receive a hard copy of the book. Due to the extreme cost of international shipping, international winners receive the e-book version. Entries are now open and will close April 18th, 2017 with winners chosen and contacted by the 21st.

I believe most of the blog hop participants will also be giving away a copy of the book, so you can up your odds by checking out all of their posts throughout the month too! the Schedule and links are in this post.

Ok, whew! I think I remembered everything. There was just too much awesome stuff to talk about, I was worried. Good luck to anyone who enters the raffle and/or giveaway, and I hope you all have a wonderful day!

If you follow me on Instagram, then you have probably seen a few dozen photos showcasing this awesome fabric line in the past six months. I had the pleasure of working with Samarra and Lecien Fabrics to create a few samples for their Fall 2016 look book and Quilt Market booth. I was also given extra yardage, and decided to make a dress and some other little odds and ends. What better time to share all these goodies than a blog hop, right?

The Projects:

The first piece I whipped up was a 60″ version of my Spinning Icosahedron Quilt. Samarra really wanted to see her fabrics mixed with this pattern, and after a lot of convincing, I agreed. I’m glad I did too, because I am absolutely in love with this quilt. The colors were easy to mix and match, and they stand out beautifully against the white background (which is Lecien’s solid white cotton btw).

In normal Jessee fashion, I had to go that next step with my design. So of course I also made an actual 3D Icosahedron that matches the flattened quilt version. I even made a video of the 3D piece spinning in front of the quilt, but due to my lack of video editing skills, I have no idea how to share it!! There is a lower quality version on Instagram that will give you an idea of what im talking about.

I used a few techniques to assemble this piece, but I will not be showing a tutorial due to the finished piece (not the technique) being very similar to a project on Sew Mama Sew. I will post a tutorial at some point this year showing the technique with a different shape. Keep an eye out!

Of course I didn’t stop with just those two projects! I also made the calculator quilt from Samarra’s book Sew Adorkable: 15 DIY Projects to Keep You Out of Trouble (you may remember me making this quilt from her book last year) It is a quick sew with huge impact! It’s also a huge quilt in size and perfect for a kids bed, which is where this one now lives.

The photo above only shows the quilt top, since I never got a good shot of it all quilted up. You can kind of see the wood grain and wavy design I did in the photos further down. The size did make it a little difficult to photograph once quilted. I also used plush batting, so it is HEAVY!

For my final project today, I wanted to show that Geogram is also great for non quilting related things. I decided to go neutral and make a Geranium Dress with the dark grey fabric and just a little pop of color.

Since the prints are non directional for the most part, it was easy to get as much out of the yardage as possible. That is always a plus when making kids clothes that you know they’ll grow out of in a year.

I still have enough fabric leftover to make myself something nice! I’m thinking maybe a bag? A family of pouches? Some awesome pillows? I don’t know yet, but I’ll try and share it here when I do.

Quilt Market Booth:

I wanted to also take this time to show off what the booth looked like at Quilt Market this past fall. I was unable to attend, but Samarra and few others sent me some awesome photos of the quilts hanging up and the 3D piece hanging out with her other creations (I’ve heard that those animal portraits may be hand sewing patterns soon! How neat are they?)

Blog Hop Schedule:

Thank you for stopping by and checking out all the projects I made using the Geogram Fabric! I am just one of many stops along this blog tour, and I think you should go and check out everyone else’s posts too. There is a load of inspiration going on here…

Random Photos:

This one has a Christmas in July like theme and uses patterns out of Sherri Falls pattern book called Holiday Wishes. We were to choose a pattern of our liking and interpret it in our own way. My first choice was the Merry Gifts Quilt, but the lovely Nicole over at Modern Handcraft got to it first. She’s fast. So I went with my second choice which was the Norwegian Holiday Quilt. It was my second only because of all those tiny squares.

It was a bit intimidating.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish a whole quilt, so I decided to just make one block and call it an XL Mini Quilt.

I originally was going to go for a minimalist look for the mini, so it wasn’t tied to just one holiday, but after piecing it all together, I realized it kind of has a grungy Halloween look instead.

For the background I used a half yard of Moda’s Grunge in Onyx, and for the design I used a fat quarter of Lizzy House’s Metallic Yellow Constellations. Both were subtle but have a bit of texture too. So the look of solids, but with some depth.

The pattern and cutting guide tell you what to cut for the entire quilt, but I figured out what to cut just for one block and figured I’d share it in case anyone else wanted to make one too.

Each letter coordinates with a letter in the pattern. You can find the size of each block in the book.

The finished block ends up being .

I think the most difficult part of the pattern was I kept mixing up the background and design fabrics and ended up sewing this thing three, maybe four, times. Totally my fault. The pattern itself was written really well, and if I had more time on my hands, I’d totally sew the entire thing!

As you can see from my photo’s, I haven’t quilted this top yet. It’s purely because I just can’t decide how I want to. Do I want to go swirly with gold thread? Or straight lines with dark grey thread? Or do I want to do something different and use thin, almost invisible thread? Once I do decide, I’ll totally share it here with you!

Now, If you would like to see what everyone else in the Sew-A-Long made then just click away below. There is some really talented people showcased here.

Renee Lange
Heidi Staples
Lorrie Gartman
Kathryn Jones

This post was sponsored by the Fat Quarter shop, and I was compensated for my time.

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Back in September I was approached by Michael Miller Fabrics to design a pattern that coordinated with an upcoming fabric lined called Arrow Flight.

I was able to pick out the exact colors and design I’d use, which was fun.

I also went a little crazy with the quilting, because I felt like it needed it. It was my first time doing an all over free form design on my longarm too. What do you think?

The pattern is a free download available on Michael Miller Fabric’s website, and it comes complete with instructions and a yardage list. You don’t necessarily need to use this exact fabric too. I imagine it would look awesome with some solids or other patterns. The sky is the limit!

If you do end up trying out the pattern, please let me know! I’d love to see.

About two months ago I was contacted by the lovely people over at Andover Fabrics with an idea they had for a rainbow wall of mini quilts at QuiltCon this year. They would send me the fabric in a specific colorway and I would send them a mini quilt to hang in their booth during the event. I have been very sick, and haven’t had the energy to finish anything large, but I figured I could hand sew most of the mini so I said “yes!”

They sent me the gorgeous bundle of blue and white fabric shown above, which arrived right at the beginning of the blizzard we had. The majority of the fat quarters were either by Lizzy House or Alison Glass. The rest was from various other lines with Andover (I really should look in to them because they were all beautiful).

I decided to hand sew this mini using the technique called English Paper Piecing. I’ve talked about it loads on here before, but usually I just sew hexagons. I’ve been branching out in to other shapes lately and I’m just dying to show you all where it’s taken me. This piece of course being the first one. It took me about a week and a half to baste and piece, and then one day to matchstick quilt.

As you can see if this photo, I tried something new and did matchstick quilting (super close quilting) in various directions to kind of break up the design a bit. I also quilted to middle in a grid pattern to separate it from the rest of the design.

The finished piece ended up being 18″ across, and I am over the moon happy with how this piece turned out! I really can’t wait to mess with this idea a bit more. Would anyone be interested in a pattern? I number all the pieces and have a legend already to go, since that’s the way I work.

Added Bonus: Here’s a shot of my mini surrounded by all of the other pieces made for their booth!! (photo by @giucy_giuce on IG . One of the faces behind this project btw) How gorgeous are they?!? I feel so honored to be included in this group full of peers and friends. I really wish i could of been there to see it all in person, byt that just wasn’t in the cards this year. Next year however I WILL be there,no matter what!

Back in September I participated in a few mini quilt swaps. You guys know how much I love those! They were all super strict and themed, and I loved making each and every piece. Sometimes guidelines are just what I need.

The first of the mini quilt swaps due that month was one where you were only to use Heather Ross fabric. My partner just happened to be one of the other Sewing Party quilting contributors and friend, Christopher (the Tattooed Quilter). This made it way more fun!!

I knew he liked triangles and flying geese, so I designed a quilt that featured numerous sized flying geese and allowed to do some fussy cutting.

I had to get a bunch of fabric printed off Spoonflower using Heather Ross’ print book because I only had pink and yellow prints and I needed more blues. Using the book allowed me to scale some of the designs to fit the triangles perfect. Others I left be just because I don’t believe everything should be perfect and center ALL the time.

I may have gone a little photo crazy with this one! I just couldn’t stop taking photos.

I always like to add a few little extra’s here and there when I send my mini’s off. I prefer handmade little somethings over store bought ones just because that’s who I am.

This time I went a whole extra step and designed Christopher an embroidered zipper pouch using his logo as the centerpiece! I believe this is my favorite extra to date!

I also took a few photos of this because I was just so excited about it!

The package has since arrived (like two months ago) and it seemed like the recipient was just as excited about it, which made it all worth it!!

Today I am super excited to share a project from the newly released book Sew Adorkable: 15 DIY Projects to Keep You Out of Trouble by my friend Samarra Khaja. When she contacted me asking if I would like to review the book, my response was “I’m not great at reviewing things. I don’t hate enough. So how about I make something?” She went for it, and here we are!

To make this post even more awesome, there is a giveaway involved! You just have to read on a little more for all of the details.

The Book:

Samarra is one of those ladies who sees the fun in everything around her, and her sense of humor is great. When you flip through Sew Adorkable, you can see just how much of herself she poured in to this book. Every project has just the right level of cute, funny and nerdy and most can be made for kids or adults. All of my favorite things.

There is a nice mix of small and large projects, so no matter your time constraint, you can finish something! You can see above the super cute Toothy, the Tooth Fairy pillows and the Typewriter Tissue Box Cover, that are perfect one day projects.

Then there are projects like the Candy Dots Quilt and the fabric Prehistoric Portrait Painting

Plus there are clothing projects for both kids and adults, more home decor and even more quilts. Then to top it off, Samarra talks about her life as a textile designer and shows a peek at her process. I love a good back story!

If you would like to see more inside peeks at Sew Adorkable: 15 DIY Projects to Keep You Out of Trouble, and hear Samarra talk, then check out this cute video CT Publishing put together to promote the book.

The Project I Made:

It took a little while to pick out the perfect first project to try from this book. I was torn between the Calculator Quilt, The Odd Socks Quilt and the 8-Bits Bird Quilt. With help from my husband, I settled on the Odd Socks Quilt.

I’m not going to give away the secrets to making this quilt, but I will say the instructions are well written and not scary at all! You need to buy the book to get all the juicy details.

I used a nice mix of white on white fabrics for the socks, scrap fabric for all the details and Hoffman Fabrics new ME+YOU batiks line for the background and the binding.

The overall finished piece is 38″ square and I long arm quilted it using two layers of cotton batting to give the piece even more texture and dimension.

I absolutely love the finished piece and have already hung it up in my home, right outside the laundry room. I am also already planning on trying out one of those other projects I wanted to make. Maybe the 8-Bit Birds quilt first? I wonder if I have any family members who would like it as a gift? (I’m in holiday sewing mode these days)

The Giveaway:

Here’s that giveaway I was talking about earlier. Samarra and C&T Publishing are giveaway away a free copy of Sew Adorkable to one of my awesome readers! All you need to do to enter is leave a comment below telling me your favorite nerdy thing. It could be a TV show/movie, book/graphic novel, video game, board game, event or anything else I’m forgetting. Let it all out!!

Now the technical details: One book per winner. Open internationally, however if winner lives outside of the US, they will receive a promo code to purchase the ebook version free of charge. US winner will receive a hard copy. Entries are open until midnight, October 26th. Please make sure your email address is correct when commenting, otherwise I won’t be able to contact you! Winner will be chosen at random, using random.org.

The Rest of the Tour:

I am just the fifth stop on the Sew Adorkable: 15 DIY Projects to Keep You Out of Trouble blog tour. I highly recommend checking out all of the other super talented and interesting bloggers and companies involved. I’ve already seen some amazing projects, and from the looks of this list, I bet all the future posts will be just as awesome.

Check out their blog to see the finished design along with a full, step by step, photo tutorial.

I am now a quilting contributor on the Sizzix blog!!! How awesome is that? This here is my first official post with them and I’m super excited to start sharing all of my projects on their blog and here on my own.

Ok, enough about all that, let’s talk about these trivets…

I made the above two trivets as part of the Spring Fling Blog Hop. We were asked to pick out a flower die and make something awesome with it. I chose the Sizzix Bigz Die Flower, Daisy #5 for the simplicity of the design and the options it gave me. I could go super crazy with patterns or very basic with solids.

I seriously struggled with which one to try out first, so I just did both.

The design itself measures 4.75″ square, (which means it’s very charm pack friendly). I knew I wanted to go with this particular layout right away, so to start I cut out a 10″ square from each of my fabrics to use as the background, and set them aside.

I then cut out two 10″ squares of Wonder Under Lite and adhered one to the wrong side of the patterned fabric and one to the solid using a dry iron (don’t turn the steam function on, otherwise you will get ripples). After they cooled down I cut around the interfacing and then cut the 10″ squares into four 5″ squares. This made them the perfect size to lay right on top of the die, with a little wiggle room. Fun Fact: I always wait to cut my fabric after adhering the Wonder Under so I don’t have to worry about centering, shrinkage or accidentally adhering it to my ironing board. It’s less work and stress in the long run.

To get a clean cut, I layered two squares at a time and ran them through my Fabi. The design can be flipped easily, so I didn’t worry about fabric direction or which side of the fabric was facing up. If you have fabric with words, or directional prints, keep track of which piece is going which way.

Once all of the pieces were cut, I took the 10″ square backgrounds and the flower pieces over to my ironing board. I placed each flowers corner exactly on the corners of the background pieces and ironed them in place. I made sure the leaves were the same distance from the side and everything was straight all around. Things can shift a little when there are thinner pieces like those stems.

I decided against stitching around the appliques before quilting the entire thing, because I thought it would be neat to use the outline of the flowers as the quilting itself!

I knew these would actually be used as trivets (unlike most of my projects that hang around looking pretty) so I wanted to make them the right way. I used Insul-Bright Insulated Lining to help protect whatever surface would be under these trivets from heat damage. Then I went the extra mile and added a second layer of cotton batting on top. I sandwiched both of those in between my prepped background piece and my backing fabric and basted them all together.

Like I said above, I wanted the flower design to be my actual quilting design. So I straight stitched around all of the flowers using coordinating thread. These are pretty thick because of the extra batting, so if you attempt this project, make sure to use a walking foot!

I absolutely love this process, because it leaves the neatest design on the back! Plus its a total time saver because you are combining the applique and the quilting in to one step.

Once I finished quilting both trivets, I attached the binding and hand stitched it to the back. Again, because of how thick these are, I seriously suggest hand sewing the binding on. I feel like you have more control this way.

Ta-Da! They are finished!

I didn’t realize when picking out my fabrics just how well they match my Pyrex collection. I really wish I had taken some shots of them together. Maybe another time?

Fabrics Used:

• Grid Fabric and Binding – both are from the Doe collection by Carolyn Friedlander for Robert Kaufman
• Solid Fabric – Kona Cotton in Curry by Robert Kaufman
• Background Fabric – leftover bits I had of Widescreen 108″ in Grey by Carolyn Friedlander for Robert Kaufman

I hope you enjoyed my first project with Sizzix! You should also check out all of the other amazing projects made as part of this blog hop:

Monday, April 6th – Jamie Fingal
Tuesday, April 7th – Nicole Daksiewicz
Wednesday, April 8th – Leslie Tucker Jenison
Thursday, April 9th – Cindy Cooksey
Friday, April 10th – Victoria Findlay Wolfe
Saturday, April 11th – Sue Bleiweiss
Monday, April 13th – Karin Jordan