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25 Nov
General Tutorials

Reverse Appliqué and Hand Quilted Pillow Tutorial {November Slice & Stitch Challenge}

OLFA and Aurifil teamed up in 2019 to create 6 Slice & Stitch Challenges. For each challenge, one OLFA ambassador and one Aurifil Artisan received the same products to create a project and tips/tutorials to share. This month Cheryl from Meadow Mist Designs and I were both given OLFA's 5" Precision Smooth Edge Scissors (SCS-4) and Aurifil’s Cotton 12...

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20 Sep
Tips

Evaluating Fabric Contrast {Photo Tutorial}

I received a great question in the Quilting Jetgirl Facebook group regarding the Wayward Transparency Quilt Along fabric selection: How much contrast is enough? Let's look at some real life requested examples and discuss! Above are are two potential Kona color palettes, photographed and evaluated as close to true color as possible. Above are the same two images in grayscale. Note...

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Last Call: Submit a Quilt to the Texas Quilt Museum
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29 Apr
Quilts, Tips

Last Call for Submissions: Texas Quilt Museum

The submission deadline for the Texas Quilt Museum's modern quilt exhibition is April 30 — this Thursday! The exhibition starts in Spring 2016 in La Grange, Texas. Submissions are open to Modern Quilt Guild members only, and more details are available on the MQG blog. If you're ready to submit, visit mqgcallforquilts.com to enter. Well, there is nothing like waiting until the last minute, right? I have been...

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Free Motion Quilting Trees Design and Tutorial
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10 Mar
Free Motion Quilting Tutorials

FMQing Trees {Tutorial}

For my "Out of the Woods" quilt, I wanted to add a forest of trees to a large, graphic mountain I had pieced. My idea was to use straight lines for tree trunks in combination with back and forth lines to create the tree branches. My hope was that these would resemble pine trees or the majestic Redwoods (both...

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Tying Off Video Tutorial
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03 Mar
Free Motion Quilting Tutorials

Tying Off {Tutorial}

While I was at QuiltCon, I learned a new technique for pulling the bobbin thread to the top of a quilt to ease in tying off threads when you are at the end of an area of quilting. I turned this tip into a YouTube video tutorial. It was a new technique for me, and I can see it...

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10 Feb
Discussion, Tech Talks

{Tech Talk Tutorial} Blogging Tips

Blogging Tips: What I Learned in My First Year of Blogging My goal with this post is to put together my thoughts about what I have learned in my first year of blogging, and to ask you for any other tips or tricks that you have regarding blogging that you wish your former self had known about! The major topics I...

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Parallelogram Placemat Tutorial
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26 Aug
Mini Quilt Tutorials, Quilted Placemats

Parallelogram Placemats {Tutorial}

I have been commissioned to create a set of 8 parallelogram placemats, and I want to share a quick tutorial for how to piece this fun 12.5" by 19" placemat pattern with you today. But first, let me talk about some more details about the background of this project. With input from me about the amount of fabric required, my customer selected and...

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Simple Drawstring Bag Tutorial
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30 Jul
General Tutorials, Sewing Project

Simple Drawstring Bag {Tutorial}

This is a tutorial for how I make a really simple drawstring bag to use to gift small quilts. Years ago, I used an online tutorial to make my first simple drawstring bag, but that blog is no longer available. I started playing around with what I remembered of the pattern and developed this simple pattern. As an added...

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Owl City Baby Quilt - 38" by 42.5"
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11 Jul
Quilt Tutorials, Quilts

Owl City {A Baby Quilt Tutorial}

My local fabric store was offering 30% off all fabric in their store to celebrate the 4th of July. While I really wanted to purchase much more fabric than I did, I had a budget and I stuck to it. Looking around the store, I noticed that they had just received some really cute owl prints. I chose my...

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Leaf / Vine FMQing Pattern
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07 Jul
Free Motion Quilting Tutorials

{Tutorial} Free Motion Quilting – Part II – Practice!

I want to pick back up where I left off in my Free Motion Quilting - Part I - Drawing Tutorial and mention again that I always start out working through new free motion quilting patterns by sketching and drawing on paper. I recently discussed this in my post about quilting flames on my Dragon Baby Quilt, and today...

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Google SEO Starter Guide
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26 Jun
QuiltCon 2015, Tech Talks

{Tech Talk} Increasing Site Traffic: Search Engine Optimization

It is possible to organically increase the traffic to your website by taking the time to consider how to apply some fundamental search engine optimization tips. This tech talk tutorial is going to focus on how to apply some of these techniques to craft blogs. My top 5 recommendations are below, and if technical background is boring, you can...

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5 Pointed Star
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17 Jun
Free Motion Quilting Tutorials

{Tutorial} Free Motion Quilting – Part I – Drawing

There are a LOT of great tutorials and resources available to help you gain confidence and learn to free motion quilt on your home machine (a long arm is not required!). I was intimidated enough by the process that I took a class from Elizabeth Hartman in order to force myself to learn. I kept reading about the techniques, but...

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Military Spec Dumb Phone
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05 Jun
Tech Talks

{Tech Talk} Website Design for Mobile Devices

If you have a smart phone or iPad or easy access to these devices, you might want to skip ahead in the post. However, if you are like me and still sporting a "dumb phone", then this first section might be eye opening. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but for numerous reasons (the battery lasts a week on a single charge,...

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Spring Rain Baby Quilt III - Teal and White
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07 May
2014 Finished Quilts, Quilt Pattern, Quilts

Spring Rain Baby Quilt Tutorial

I am so excited to share my first quilt pattern tutorial! A quick heads-up: The image and link below will jump you over to my Etsy shop to purchase a digital download of this pattern, if you are interested. In order to make the tutorial, I made one more version of Spring Rain in a baby size quilt, which is...

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