Back to Fabric Land - A Bit of Catching Up

Only one more day until I head off to the AQS show at Lancaster. I am really looking forward to the show this year, as it's their second year in this venue and I'm sure things will be well organized now that they've got the lay of the land nailed down.

If you remember, one of my favorite exhibits in this show last year was the display of domestic machine quilting by some of the well-known quilt celebs. I was both awed and inspired by what you could accomplish on your home sewing machine, and now, here I am, going through those very same motions on my own machine a year later. Had I not been on a mission to scrutinize the stitching on every quilt in that show, I might still be doing giant meandering with my BSR attached.

Attending the large national/international shows is something that I hope everyone  gets a chance to do, at least once. Not just for the beauty and the inspiration, but the vendors are something to behold as well. (And Lancaster has about 135 on site....not Houston mind you, but certainly not too shabby).

I know what you're thinking....shopping show and tell on Saturday's post!!!..you all know me far too well. I'll also be picking up a little somethin' somethin' for this month's Follower Appreciation Giveaway, and in honor of National Quilting  Day on Saturday, we're going to have an extra giveaway....details on this tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm off to start a new project. Actually, two new projects. Here's the direction I'm headed in:

I've been trying to make some time to work on a GO! project with a couple of my Christmas gift dies, so I'm going to throw caution to the wind and just run with it.

Let's see what we can come up with using the Dresden Plate die. And my new smaller (thank you Accuquilt for listening to our suggestions!!!) Drunkard's Path die.

 We'll use the In The Beginning Adelaide fabric with the Drunkard's Path. This could be interesting.

And we'll pull some mirror image black/white white/black prints from the FQ cubby. Though I have a feeling I'll be suggesting Accuquilt make a smaller one of these dies as well. We shall see. In fact, I can't wait, let's dive right into this one.

First and foremost.....IRON YOUR FABRIC. Otherwise you'll be cutting shapes with creases in them that will become new shapes when you do iron them  :)

I've layered 4 layers of fabric over the cuts on the die that I want to use. They've all been cut and placed on the lengthwise grain so there is no stretch across the width of my wedges.

 Feeding the die through the GO! is super easy. I'm turning the crank with my left hand for the picture.

And this is what you wind up with. I've got 16 perfectly cut slices of a plate in minutes.

And they were cut with tiny little guide notches to help me align them when I stitch them together. Seriously, how great that we can take that from garment piecing and apply it to quilting.

Unfortunately, this plate is quite a bit larger (brand new pencil added for scale)  than what I planned to use it for  (the Quilt in a Mousepad kit), so we'll have to find another decorative use for it after it's stitched. And we do need to stitch it because I purchased this die for my 1930s repro fabrics, and I need to be very sure I want plates this large on this quilt....if not, I'll be waiting to see if Accuquilt scales down this die (as they did the Drunkard's Path). While I did buy two other Dresden rulers/templates, having just cut this one on the GO! I have no intention of manually cutting a quilts' worth of these pieces, with, no less, no notches. Sheesh!

In the meantime, the die also included the wedges for pointed petals, and you can lay these out in a winding path kind of pattern.......I think I may have found a project for Suz Zwizzle, Fledgling Art Quilter. Looks like we might have a mission for Friday's show viewing.

More on these projects tomorrow.