Sentimental Stitches

Clutch and I got up bright and early. Well, I got up bright and early while Clutch was in no way ready to face the day even with the morning sun shining on him.

This block will take a bit of time to put together. I think I’ll hand piece mine. If you want a little [...]

My progress on the Shipshewana Amish quilt came to a screeching halt. I started to put some of my sections together

sorry this picture is so lousy!

and just wasn’t happy with some of the colors I’d chosen. No design wall here at the lake and I only had a small basket of solids with me so…………..it’s [...]

I am happy to say we are on the home stretch with this fun Shipshewana Amish Mystery Quilt. I am pretty darn pleased with the way it’s coming together.

I uploaded Section 13 this morning.

This is an easy section with a rotary cut, machine pieced block and three quarter square triangles sewn together for a filler [...]

I finished my two basket blocks from the Shipshewana Amish quilt and have been working on some of the other blocks. As I was sewing I wondered how everyone was sewing half and quarter square triangle sections together. I know I’ve tried just about every known technique and keep coming back to the same ones. [...]

I’m sorry it took me until Tuesday to get back to this tutorial but I had a feeling that would happen. I’m pretty sure you were able to finish your bag following the instructions in the pattern but I’m going to add a few more steps here just in case.

Turn the outer bag right side [...]

We are getting to the home stretch here. How many of you are laughing at me and saying “You can’t make this bag in a couple of hours”. Yes, you can make the bag in a couple of hours but let me tell you, you can’t write a tutorial that fast. Dang – it’s taken [...]

Isn’t it amazing the results you get after stitching those twisted seams? That’s when you feel like you’re making progress toward an actual bag rather than a strange looking pinwheel with no possible use.

Hopefully your bag looks like this.

Now we’ll work with the fabric and batting strips you cut for the handles and get started [...]

This seems to be the place lots of people get confused about what to sew together. I was scratching my head the first time I made a bag so don’t feel bad if you’ve gotten stuck here.

We’re going to be bringing these two strips together. The seams that connect the strips appear to twist around [...]

It’s time to lay out the squares and triangles that will form each strip that twists around the outside body of the bag. I’ve been known to mix up the fabrics or change my mind on something at this point. Now’s the time to rearrange things if you’re not happy with how things look.

Referring [...]

Now that we have our fabrics selected and a placement decided on it’s time to begin cutting. I’m only concentrating on the outside part of the bag right now and the handles.

From fabric “A” cut four 8″ squares. I wanted to use the large flowers for this square. I cut an 8″ square from tracing [...]