Thursday, July 28, 2016

Searching for Cephalopods-Free Pattern


Searching for Cephalopods
42” x 42”
Designed by Heidi Pridemore
GO! Big Electric Fabric Cutter (55500)
GO! Qube 6” Block Set  (55775)
 I don’t know why but I love Octopus! Perhaps its because they have eight arms and some days I wish I did too so I could get more done. Maybe it is because they are smart animals that excel at creative problem solving, a daily requirement for my job. Whatever the reason is, when I saw “Come Dive With Me” from Windham Fabrics, I fell in love. So this month I used my GO! Qube Mix & Match 6” Block Set to create a sweet wall hanging using these darling fabrics.  I placed the diver prints in the borders and the cephalopod prints in the center so it looks like the divers are searching for the Octopus. This ideas became the inspiration for the name, “Searching for Cephalopods”.
The pattern for this month’s project is free from The Whimsical Workshop. You can download the free pattern at www.TheWhimsicalWorkshop.com along with our past free patterns. We have also included traditional cutting instructions for this project in the pattern too.

When designing the project, I laid out the fat quarters by pattern scale and directional prints. As you can see this group has a lot of directional prints and the scale on these is pretty small. The scale of the prints made it a perfect group to use with the GO! Qube Mix & Match 6” Block Set since those dies are pretty small. So I designed the quilt making sure to use the larger prints as block centers and the smaller prints in triangles and squares going around them. This helped showcase the fabrics and balance the design.
First step was to precut all my fabric into smaller pieces and lay them out on each die before cutting. I find this step keeps me organized and makes it easier to cut the right shapes from the right fabrics.


                                                  
Since there are so many directional prints in this quilt that I was cutting into triangles, I wanted to share a few tips on working with directional fabrics with half-square and Quarter Square triangles. First up, Half-Square Triangles (HST), to cut the HST and have them all going in the same direction around the block, you need to cut half of the squares from the upper left to lower right corners and the other half cut from the upper right to lower left corners to create a mirror image of the print in half of the triangles. At least hat is how you would cut them traditionally.
Well when using the die cutter, you need to make sure the direction on the fabric is going in the same direction on all the squares, then flip half of them upside down, so half the squares are right side up and half are wrong side up, still the direction of the print going in the same direction. Then once you cut them you will have two sets of triangles that are mirror image of each other and will work perfectly in your block.


For Quarter Square triangles, they are even easier, you need to make sure all the squares are going in the same direction, then cut them with the fabric facing up on all the squares. For each square you will get four triangles, one in each direction. I like to separate them out by direction and lay them out in block as shown in the quilt.



 Now I am ready to visit the my 8 legged friends in the deep blue sea with my new wall hanging. As always I would love to see what you come up with using our pattern. We would love to add you to our Bragging Rights Page on our website!


Make sure to visit my blog each month where I will share with you some tips and tricks on cutting and assembling of the project of the month along with posting the free pattern on our website The Whimsical Workshop You can also see our pattern and post at www.accuquilt.com
Until next time…..
Heidi 



Friday, July 1, 2016

Parrot Party


Parrot Party
by Heidi Pridemore & The Whimsical Workshop
Featured in McCall's Quick Quilts-Aug/Sept. Issue

 We have a quilt featured in the Aug/Sept issue of McCall's Quick Quilts this month to share with you.  It is called Parrot Party. The quilt features Viva Brazil collection from Benartex. This McCalls Quick Quilts issue is available now.

For this project, I was asked to design a simple quilt for beginners. These types of quilts are perfect to showcase bold, bright and fun prints. The fabrics stand out of the simple design and take center stage. I added a balance of tonal prints to act as resting stops throughout the design.As always this was made using beautiful threads from Aurifil on my BERNINA. The Quilt top was sewn by Kathy Norton and quilted by Sue Mitchel.

The title of the quilt comes from the happy parrots that are having a party in the outer border. Sadly we are not offering a kit for this quilt, though I have to say this pattern would work with just about any large print collection.

For more info about this quilt and the McCalls Issue it is featured in Click Here.

 Print or digital download format of this issue is available at QuiltandSewShop.com.

Until next time....
Heidi