I just had a light bulb moment!! (Mini Tutorial)

I just checked my emails and I had one from Missouri Quilt Co....Jenny was showing us the following video for a JRR (Jelly Roll Race) quilt version 3.0



It was whilst watching her do the triangles that I thought of this technique that Ricky Tims & Alex Anderson shared



Then......I thought oooooh, what if I combined the two techniques...and so I madly scrambled to the cutting mat (ok, so it might have been stumbled over fabric etc to get to the cutting mat, but we won't go there lol), found a few pieces of fabric in the right sizes, because I don't want to try it on a big size project if it ain't gonna work, right?

So I cut myself two x 2 & 1/2" strips by the width of this roll of fabric I have (the roll is approx 9 & 3/8" wide) THEN, I cut a 2 & 1/2" x 4 & 1/2" rectangle in another colour fabric.

I folded the rectangle together with the wrong sides together. As shown in this next pic.

Have your 2 & 1/2" (Jelly Roll strip) strip laying horizontally with the r/s facing up, place the folded rectangle onto either the left or right hand bottom corner of the longer strip.  Make sure that the fold is at the top, click on the pic to enlarge it to see it better  *Note, it shouldn't matter which end you do, so long as you are consistant, especially if you're doing this on a quilt sized project.

In the next pic, I've put my scissors on the fabric to show where the fold of the rectangle should be.

Now take the next 2 & 1/2" strip and place it on top, to create a sandwich, making sure to place it r/s facing down.

Now you're going to sew down either the right or left hand seam...depending on which end you've placed the folded unit between the two jelly roll strips.  In the pic, I sewed down the side seam indicated by my thumb!

(This next bit I didn't take pics of, but it is shown in the video down a bit further.)  Take your work to your iron, and you are going to set the stitching first, then you'll open up your jelly roll strip so that the seam allowance is away from the goose!  Press this nice and flat.  Now you're going to reach in under the goose.....no, not to tickle his belly, but to open the goose out....spread his wings so to speak!

Once that's done, and you're happy with how the bottom edges are lined up, press your goose down really nicely, you want a nice crease along the triangle edges, especially if you're doing this as a JRR (Jelly Roll Race quilt....guess this one is 4.0 or would it be 3.1??) as the geese are going to be loose until you start sewing the long strip together as you would normally do.

 This pic shows the front view

And in this one, you can see the back view

If you're making this as a smaller project, such as on a pouch. bag or tablerunner, then just add strips either side as I did in the crappy video below.

Once you've either sewn strips to either side, or you've finished making the JRR quilt top, then you get to Cathedral window the geese....however many you've done or want to do....because this version of the geese have bias edges to them, they soooo easily curve towards the centre and make a really nice effect...see the video and pics for more explanations.

Hopefully I've explained this good enough for you to understand....do you like it?  I do, and I will be trying it out on a quilt size project soon....wish me luck.

I'm not claiming this as all my own idea, but more like inspired by Jenny Doan and The Quilt Show with Ricky Tims.  If you know of someone else who has already done this technique, please let me know...and I'll happily give them credit.  I wouldn't even know where to begin to name it apart from JRR Version 3.1 or 4.0 lol

Now it's your turn...if you try this mini tutorial out, please let me know and send me a link to where you have the pics of the block so I can see how yours turned out.

Well, here's where the video will be...eventually, it's taking what seems like an eternity for the block to upload to my dropbox, so hopefully I can work out how to share it on here directly from there, or I'll have to upload it to YouTube and then embed it here...bear with me, the video is coming, I promise.

Update....the video is in my dropbox, so fingers crossed it will be right under this paragraph by the time I submit this post.  Sadly it is too big to be embedded, so for now I will share the link to the video in my dropbox, and whilst I sleep tonight, I'll upload it to YouTube and pop it in later.



Error alert...in the video I tell you to fold the rectangle in half with the r/s together....the observant viewer will have noticed it should be w/s together......ignore my jammie sleeve in the video, and my fluff bunny coated iron.  No laughing at my accent either lol

Sue's block from my tutorial

A few weeks ago, I popped up a tutorial for a Gothic Weathervane Block, and one of my bloggy friends, Sue Niven, successfully attempted it....and here's her block, didn't she do a great job????

Thanks for sending me a pic of your block Sue, sorry it took so long for me to pop it up on my blog (better late than never right?)  If you'd like to try the block out, you can click HERE or where the name of it is underlined above.

Sue does lots and lots of charity work, both knitting and sewing, and even obtains fabric and cuts it up and mails it off to quilters all over Australia.  A little birdie has even let me know that Sue is going to be showcased on Aussie Hero Quilts blog tonight, so be sure to go read more about Sue there, and maybe also take a look at what Aussie Hero Quilts & Laundry bags do, if you haven't already....like my block of the month for instance (gotta love the subliminal plug for my BOM huh? lol)

Quilt block tutorial - Gothic Weathervane

Remember yesterday I showed you some blocks I'd been making?  Well I thought as I had another block to make, that when I did it, I would do a heap of pics and do a tutorial on how to make the "Gothic Weathervane" block....the one pictured at the bottom of yesterdays post.

I don't have mad tutorial writing skills, nor do I have a photographic thumb, so you'll just have to bear with me while I do my best to show/explain to you how to make the block.  If you get confused at all, feel free to leave a comment with your question, and I'll answer it via a comment, in case someone else wants to see the answer....(I hate it when you visit a blog, and you have a question about the post and when you go to ask it in the comments section, someone else has already asked it.....and you have to hope the blog owner still remembers the answer if it's an old post lol)

Rather than traumatise myself trying to write the tutorial out in Blogger, I've made a pdf version, which you can download by clicking HERE

If you make one, please either send me a pic HERE, or leave a link in the comments section to your pic showing your block.  I'd love to see them.

It's not all about the freebies...well it is kind of....lol

Let me explain the title....well try to anyway....I don't want you all to think that all I'm going to have on my blog is giveaways, but I will try and save you money when I can....I'm going to start sharing tutorials etc that I find, or have found useful.....to kick things off, here's a good photo tutorial and pattern link on a simple paper (foundation) pieced heart block. Yes, I could've found a template and done my own tutorial, but why re-invent the wheel when it's already out on the www. Thanks to Mojoquilts for generously sharing the photo tutorial. Now off you go and create! I'd love to see pics if you give her tutorial a try....so please leave a comment with a link to wherever it is you've shared pics at. Happy sewing.