As promised, here is a listing of all of the links for Christmas In July from our Facebook Page. Lots of great ideas and inspiration here, plenty of time to knock out your gift list! Imagine great Christmas Fabrics in some of these projects. Many are great year round gifts. Most are quick and easy. If you have a tutorial you would like to share or a link to a great page, please leave a comment below this post. Dig out your scrap basket and let's get our Christmas Gifting done!
Hope you enjoyed our post. If you have links you love with great Christmas tutorials or ideas, please leave them in the comments below, we'd love to see them!
We achieved our 500 "Likes" milestone on our new FB page www.facebook.com/sisterofthedivide So we are on to the next goal of 600 "Likes". To show our appreciation we are giving away a gift certificate for $35.00 at Hawthorne Threads! To enter the drawing, you simply go to our Facebook page, "Like" it (make sure that you hover your mouse over the "Like" button and select "Get Notifications" You won't want to miss any of our Giveaways!) Look for the Post with the picture shown above, leave a comment and share it on your Facebook page. That's it! That's all you have to do and you will be entered for the drawing. Now I want to share a little about Hawthorne Threads and their fabulous website.
Hawthorne Threads What can you say about a fabric company that is brought to you by two love birds that love fabric! Well plenty! I could spend hours on end, looking at all the modern and exciting fabrics they have at Hawthorne Threads. Let me point out some great features of their Fabric Site!
When you type HawthorneThreads.com into your browser you land on Lindsay's Picks...They are always fabulous! Here are the current selections...
Along the left side you can select how you want to browse their fabrics...but before you go there...get familiar with their Tiered Pricing...a wonderful system of discounts for you that are automatically calculated at your check out. Make sure you are logged in first!
A fun feature, when you click on a fabric that you like, scroll down a bit, people have uploaded samples of different kinds of work using that fabric. You will get a real world feel for what that fabric can look like in a project. Also as you scroll down the page you will see other fabrics that will coordinate with the one you are selecting, they will show you alternate colorways and if you like a particular color in the print, they will show you other fabric lines that have similar color in their prints by just clicking on a color you like under "find coordinates by colors in this print"
Right under their logo, you will find a search bar. Since our Facebook theme this month is Christmas in July... Searching Christmas you will find an amazing selection of all things Christmas for your quilting pleasure!
Want to know what the latest arrivals are? Want to be on the cutting edge of their fabric universe? Click the "New Arrivals" button at the top and let yourself leisurely peruse the offerings.
Along the left of their page are different ways you can search your fabrics. Maybe you like pre-cuts, maybe you have a favorite designer, a color or theme you are working with. There are literally endless ways for you to search their fabric selections, endless ways that will inspire you and help you to see fabric and color combinations you may not have thought about previously.
They carry Aurifil Threads. And a great selection of patterns, be sure to look at those... some are PDF format so you can get them immediately. I love this Spice Market Tote by Amy Butler.
While you are cruising their site, ENTER TO WIN! YES!!! They have a giveaway! OH, can it get much better? Well, yes actually! They change weekly but this week's giveaway features the Arizona line of fabric, a yummy fat quarter bundle of goodness! Get over there quick and enter!
See what wonderful things 2 love birds can create? I knew you'd love them.
We will be holding our month end drawing at our Sister Of The Divide Facebook Page on July 31st. Be sure to scroll waaaaay down our Facebook page and enter that drawing. Each month we will be giving away a fun quilting/sewing tool that you will want to add to your goodies. Nothing ever to purchase, just visit, leave a comment on the post and share! This month we are featuring The 3 in 1 Color Tool. An absolute must have for quilters. This tool will help you effortlessly coordinate your colors. Never go shopping for fabric without it!
If you have been reading the posts on our Facebook page, you will have noticed that are theme currently is Christmas in July. At the end of the Month, we will post links to all of the tutorials featured, here on our blog. You will have one go to place to link up with everything you see.
To celebrate when we get to 500 page "Likes" on our Facebook we will be giving away a gift certificate worth $50.00 to Fabric.com. You can pick out any kind of fabric you like! Wheeeee a shopping spreeee! And you will LOVE Fabric.com.
To Enter you must do three things: #1. Go to our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/sisterofthedivide and "Like" it by clicking on the button at the top of the page, select the down arrow on that button to make sure you are getting all our notifications. #2. Look for the post about the drawing and leave a comment on that post. #3. Share that post on your facebook page or with your friends. It's that simple! Nothing to purchase. Drawing will be held when we reach 500 page likes. Remember...we always have two drawings on the page. One is a "like" drawing and the other is a "monthly" drawing. Scroll waaaaay down the page and look for the posting featuring the 3-in-1 Color Tool. We will be drawing for that at the end of July. To enter that drawing, again, nothing to purchase...you just comment on the post and share it!
"fairyland" by De Leon Design Group for The Alexander Henry Fabrics Collection
When I was a child, playing with a kaleidoscope was sheer joy, all the colors and shapes moving and reflecting the light. If you just moved the scope the slightest bit you got a completely different fractal display of color.
As an adult and a quilter, you can STILL have that sheer joy and with fabric no less! Can it get any better than that? I think not. there is a product called Kaleidoscope Kreator 3, inexpensive and filled with creative opportunity.
Now that is great right? You can see the possibilities for scrapbooking definitely...well, you can use it for quilting by printing the saved Kaleidoscope onto fabric, or using the template to explore design options for a stack quilt.
Ever wonder if that fabric you purchased will work for a Stack quilt? Want to see the possible design options before you start cutting fabric? I took the fabric at the top of the blog and used the Kaleidoscope Kreator and here are just a few of the designs that popped up. I knew this fabric would be fabulous!
All out of the one fabric!
There are over 65 different template shapes to explore! Hexagons, circles, squares, stars, you name it!
Do you see the mouse or
do you see the two fairies sitting next to each other?
Okay, excited? I thought you might be! Now, think about this...You are in the fabric store or surfing online and you find what you think will be a perfect fabric for a Kaleidoscope Quilt. Fabric can be a bit pricy for trial and error purchases. What happens if you take a photo of an entire repeat of the fabrics that you are interested in...or if you are on the net, download a jpeg of the fabric you like. Now open those files in your Kaleidoscope Kreator and start playing...see if that fabric is going to do what you want, does it look the way you thought it would? No? Nice not to be out $40, $50, $60 or more depending on the number of repeats you need for your quilt. Do you see the potential? Audition your fabric and then purchase! Want to make a one block wonder and not sure if that fabric will work? Check it out! Then go create something like this!
Kaffe Fassett One Block Wonder by Karen Meyer
Here is the original fabric that this quilt was created from...
Kaffe Fassett Cloisonne Black
Run, don't walk, spend the $38. or so and get this tool for your quilting arsenal. If you go to their website, you can purchase the download right there or a CD, they also have a listing of local retailers and of course, it's available on Amazon.com. I have seen it priced as low as $20.
There is another program that you can use to play with your saved kaleidoscopes once you create them. Go To BigHugeLabs.com and use their Mosaic Maker to mock up a quilt. Here are the original fabrics which I photographed at the fabric store, made up into circle stacks and dropped into the Mosaic Maker to mock up a couple possibilties.
Starting fabric and resulting stacks
You can drop in any color background you want, I used the picker on Kaleidoscope Kreator 3 to select the green from the leaf in the print.
Here is another...
So much fun and I didn't purchase or cut either of these fabrics! Both would make good stacks...I didn't select either but opted for the Fairyland fabric instead. The Mosaic Maker program will also allow you to put larger space between your blocks and use different colors for the "sashing and borders"
If you are new to our Facebook page...each month we will have a drawing held at the end of that month for a quilting tool or notion. That post will be on our Facebook page and you will have to scroll down and look for it...as the month goes on and I post more items, you will need to scroll further down to find it. There is no purchase necessary, you simply need to "like" our page, leave a comment on that post, and share the post on your page with your friends.
In addition to that Giveaway, there will be one that is pinned to the top of our page, that Giveaway will be held when we reach the ascribed number of page "likes". The faster we get there, the quicker the drawing is held. Again, no purchase is necessary, you simply "like" our page, leave a comment on the post and share with your friends on your page!
Occasionally, as the mood strikes me, I may have a special Giveaway...you will just need to keep your peepers open! Good Luck!
Right now, there are two giveaways on our new Facebook page...look for these posts...
Do not miss out! I will be giving away 2 half yards of Kaffe Fassett Wood Ear and 1/2 yard of Kona Cotton White! How can you win??? Just go to my new Facebook page, Sister Of The Divide
you must "Like" the page and scroll down and leave a comment in the post that looks like the photo above! It's really that simple. As soon as the page reaches 300 "Likes" we will have the drawing and announce the winner. There is nothing to purchase.
There is a second drawing on the Facebook page, you will need to scroll down the page a bit to find it. Make sure you enter this one also. We will be giving away The Binding Tool. If you don't have one, you need it! If you have one, you know how amazing they are and you will want to give it to your friend. Again, "Like" our new Facebook page Sister Of The Divide and be sure to scroll down and leave a comment in the post for the drawing which will be held June 30th!
Check back frequently with us, we will have all kinds of fun drawings coming up in the next few months and you won't want to miss out!
Would you like an additional opportunity to win??? You would!!!
In addition to "Liking" our Facebook page and leaving a comment on the post there...leave a comment here!
This will be a short tutorial on placing the borders on your drop shadow stack quilt. By now you have placed your sashing and your quilt top should look something like this:
Quilts tops can vary in size during construction based on your accuracy in cutting and the accuracy of your 1/4 inch seam. For that reason there is a method designed to help you kind of "square" things up. Here is a little video by Wenatqueens that will walk you through this process. This is an excellent tutorial so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel!
Once I have determined my measurements for the length of my border I start auditioning possible borders. I find it helps to take a photo of each so that you can kind of "stand back" and take a look at the different options.
One of the obvious choices is to border your quilt with the original fabric that you cut your stack blocks from. This is a nice option. Shown here with a thin strip of black. I did not select this because it took my eye away from the bold graphic nature of these blocks. Same for the reverse below.
What would it look like if you put the thin strip of the original fabric first and then a black border and used some of the smaller blocks in the border? Also interesting. Again, I did not select this option, although I was teetering (I love the little blocks in the corner) because it drew the eye to the border and away from the graphic nature of these blocks.
The third option I considered was a black border, some random extra blocks and a bit of the original fabric for the binding. This also did not make my cut...too much draw away from the graphic nature of the blocks.
After considering all of the options above, I decided to go with a simple black border, when I quilt this I will also bind it with black binding. Why? It keeps the focus on the blocks and the optical illusion of the drop shadow. I think you would agree that your eye stays there and does not drift to the border in this quilt. If there was a lot of busy stuff happening in the border you would be looking at that and the overall effect would be diminished.
Having said that, here is another one that I finished shortly after and you can see that I used the original fabric for the border. This quilt has a softer look, almost like an opal to me. That softer look did not require the boldness of the border above.
Let's talk a moment about the width of your border. The two quilts above use the same technique in creating the blocks. The blocks in the red quilt were made with a 6" square stack and the blocks in the opal quilt were made with a 4" square stack. The quilts are about the same width (65" vs 63") but the length is longer on the opal quilt. (65" vs 73"). Your border can be as wide or as narrow as you want, my rule of thumb that I personally use is to pick a border width that works with my blocks. Either as wide as the block, or 1/2 or 1/4 of the width of my block. I like the aesthetics of that balance. There is no "right" or "wrong" width to your border. You may need to cover the edge of a bed and don't want to make more blocks, you want them floating on the top of the bed, well then, make your borders long enough to complete your drop.
Quilting is an expression of you! Your choice of fabric, design, and ultimate execution is an expression of you. You don't have to color in the lines, the quilt police will not come to your door. Use your camera as an audition tool and don't be afraid to try something wild! Be bold! If you make one of these drop shadow quilts, I hope you will send me a photo, I would love to see your creations!
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