Sashing Pre-Quilted Blocks - Tutorial

Adding backing strips with edges ironed under over batting, which
has been whip stitched to block seam allowances

I've never made a "quilt-as-you-go" quilt before. This piece, however, was my attempt to both satisfy my personal challenge to complete a 5 x 7 art piece each week along with preparing a piece to enter in the Contemporary QuiltArt Association's upcoming "Salsa!" Show.

I have to admit I'm a bit behind on my weekly 5x7's, but putting together the Salsa quilt, as well as some other projects, have taken priority for me right now.  I'll be getting back to my    5 x 7's soon enough.

Front side of my Salsa quilt with sashing

So, now that I have all my blocks done, how do I put it all together without having a problem of differing amounts of layers in the sashing versus the blocks?  The way I solved this puzzle is to start with making the sashing and puting the front side all together.

Then, I turned it over and carefully cut pieces of batting to fit right between the blocks seam allowances, so that the batting would be consistently uniform across the quilt.  I chose to do the vertical pieces between the blocks, then the long horizontal strips, and afterwards the vertical borders.

Batting cut and added between blocks vertically

After cutting all the batting to size, I did a long whip-stitch to hold the batting in place while I will be freemotion quilting the sashing.  I then cut pieces of the backing fabric about 3/4" wider than the finished width of the sashing and pressed under the edges of these strips with my steam iron.

Batting Whip-stitched to seam allowance of blocks

Next, I carefully hand-stitched down the strips over the batting and seam allowances of the blocks.

While this might not be the most expedient (or fast) method, I think the outcome will be quite nice.  Next step is going to be freemotion quilting the sashing/borders!

Batting added other than vertical border; backing
strips added to vertical centers

Backing strips all added and ready to hand-stitch

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True Triangles - Video Tutorial

Working on sample of True Triangles

I've had some wonderful comments on my Salsa blocks, as well as a few questions on how I did certain aspects, including my background of my most recent block, Chili Pepper.  Today, I'm going to go over the triangles freemotion quilting design. 

Practice and notes from my sketchbook - True Triangles

I started working out this triangle design in my sketchbook, because I wanted a way to have triangles, but not a bunch of connecting lines or other angles.

More notes from my sketchbook

The main trick with this design is to make your first triangle and then backtrack (or "travel stitch" as Leah Day of the Freemotion Quilting Project calls it) to the middle of one of the sides of your triangle, where you start the first corner of your next triangle.

Difficulty: Beginner- The main difficulty with this design is in getting your sides of your triangles straight and in carefully backtracking, so your stitches stay on the line of the original triangle's line.

OK, I'm still working out the bugs on how to do a nice job on videography for my tutorials, so bear with me.  I cut down time on this video by speeding it up a bit during part of the sewing, but I need a bit more practice on my hand position while videoing and also adding audio to the part which has increased speed.

Click Here if the Video isn't Showing Above

True Triangles used in the background of my Chili Pepper block

If you haven't linked up yet, make sure to visit Design Wall Weekend!  Or just stop by to find some other great blogs!

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Tutorial: Adding a Button to Your Blog

This Tutorial is for "Adding a Button to Your Blog" using Blogger.com.

When you find a button that you'd like to add that has the code included underneath the button, copy the code (highlight it and click Control-C or Command-C.)  You can use my "Design Wall Weekend" button on the right.

Open your Blogger interface and click "Layout."

Your layout (below) can be modified in the Template Designer, but at this point, let's focus on adding the button.  Look over your existing layout.  You should see several "Add a Gadget" links.  Choose where on your page you'd like to have the button and click the "Add a Gadget" link.

A new window with a list of options (gadgets) that you can add to your blog appears.  Scroll down the list until you get to the HTML/Javascript option and click it.

Now you just need to name your button and paste in the code which you have copied for the button:

If you don't want the button to show up on all your posts, you can just add the code in to your post.  To do this, click the HTML button at the top of the screen where you are writing your post.  Determine where you want the button and Paste the code into the HTML.  Then, click the "Compose" button to return to the visual version of creating your post.

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Tutorial: Adding Your Link to a Blog Linking Party

First of all, it's important to understand WHY? you'd want to have a link from another blog to yours.  The obvious main reason is to get more people aware of your blog and reading it.  But beyond the additional people that will come directly from one blog to the other, you'll also get more traffic from search engines like Google.  One way that search engines determine your ranking (how far up on their pages your site turns up) is whether you have other websites linking to your page.  By having reciprocal links (where you link to my page and I link back to yours), your search engine ranking will increase, helping you get more traffic from people searching for content like you have on your blog.  It's also important to fill out the Post Settings of "Labels" and "Search Description" for each of your posts.

Blogger.com's Post design allows you to add labels and a search description for every post

Now, here is the process to add your blog's link to a linking party (I'm using inLinkz.com's software, but most are very similar):

1. Get your specific link to the post you want new viewer's to see.  To do this, click on the title of the post you'd like featured to go to that specific post's page.  Highlight the web address (URL) in the address bar and right click to get the drop-down menu.  Choose "Copy" (or use Ctrl-C or Command-C to copy it.)

2. Go to the "Add your link" button. This opens up three fields that you need to fill
   (1) This is the URL to your post which you can copy and paste from your browser
   (2) The name or description that will show up under your link
   (3) Your email. This is only known to the owner of the link-up and it is not visible to anyone else.

inLinkz tool step 1 for adding your blog to the blog party list

3. Add your post's web address to line 1- URL by clicking inside the box and either right-click and use the dropdown Paste or use Ctrl-V or Command-V to paste it.  Then fill in your name and email address and click the "Next Step" button.
   

   

   Paste your specific post's URL or website address 

4. You have 3 different options for adding an image: picking one from your blog's post, giving a direct image URL, or uploading an image from your computer.    With picking an image from your blog, you will see a "Select" and a "Crop" button under each image.  If you choose "Select", your image will automatically be converted to a square thumbnail and proceed to link-up.  Personally, I prefer to choose how my images are cropped, so I recommend choosing "Crop".
5. 
   You then can take and drag the corners of the the square to increase or decrease the cropped image, or move the square to position the square over the part of the image you want to show.  When it's right the way you like it, click "Crop the selected area."
   
   
   
   
   
   You will then have the option to tweet or post to facebook about your link.  Clicking on "Tweet" or "Share on facebook" will pop up a window to let you take action. InLinkz will first let you choose your text to post and then tweet or cancel. The default text on twitter mentions both your blog and the target blog.   You also have the option to "Skip this step" (3) if you do not want to tweet about your link.  

Alternately, rather than using an image from your blog post, you can choose "Upload from Computer" and then click "Choose File."  This will then open a window which shows your files on your computer.  Navigate to the file you want and click "Open"  After the file name shows next to the "Choose File button," click "Upload."

Any questions?  Just post a comment and I'll get back to you a.s.a.p.

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