Thrilled to be Finished!

Posted in Uncategorized by Simple Bird Applique

I’m so excited to have finished this quilt! I wish you could see my face…I am beaming with pride:) To say I am thrilled with the results would be an understatement….a major understatement! I’m also very excited to announce that I am offering this quilt once again as a Block-of-the-Month. If you didn’t get in on the first go-around, this is your lucky day. The blocks are nine of my favourite blocks from Sue Garman’s “Friends of Baltimore”. I used the setting from Sue Garman’s “Baltimore Squared” pattern.

Here is how it works, once a month for the first 9 months you will receive the pattern and fabrics to do all 9 blocks. The fabrics will be exactly as shown below. Then the following 3 months you will receive the fabric and pattern for the paper-pieced stars, sashings, borders, swags and bindings.

You have until November 1, 2017 to sign up. (Don’t fool yourself…November 1 is not that far away). Details are on the website.

Very often people ask me which thread I use. I have always used Mettler 60 weight and probably always will. It’s the one with the green writing on the label. From time to time I do purchase a spool of something similar, but I always come back to Mettler. It is a little hard to find in shops, so I carry it on my website, along with other hard-to-find applique notions and tools.

Til next time….

Kerry

21Jun2017

So excited!

Posted in "To Everything There is a Season", Uncategorized by Simple Bird Applique

So excited to announce my quilt, To Everything There Is A Season, has won the Award of Excellence in Applique at Quilt Canada 2017! This quilt is superbly machine quilted by Rose Bell of Fancy Feathers.

It was a thrill just to have my quilt juried in, but to win an award is definitely the icing on the cake. For those that have asked, the complete pattern for this quilt will be available on the website mid-July. We are fine-tuning a few of the blocks, so sit tight!

Meanwhile, I am busy getting my borders ready for the current BOM, a combination of 2 patterns designed by Sue Garman. I love a border with swags on it (especially on an appliqued quilt). I just think it has such a classy look:)

First, I taped 6 copies of the swags together (each border has 6 swags on it). Then I placed the border fabric on top of the paper pattern and traced the swags. I used plastic to make a template of the swag to make tracing much easier and so much faster.

I prepped all the pieces and glued everything in place…

…and Ta Da! Let the stitching begin!

Til next time…..

Kerry

15Feb2014

I know I should be packing…

Posted in Circle of Tulips, Hand-Quilting Techniques, Uncategorized by Simple Bird Applique

It’s the day before I fly to Williamsburg to attend The Elly Sienkiewicz Applique Academy and I should be packed by now, but I am not. I am too busy working out the rest of the border on Circle of Tulips and I want to get it figured out before I go….so I can relax!

So, in my last post I figured out how to center the swags and how to fill in the space between the swags.

My next step was to decide how curvy I wanted the scalloped edge to be. (Not terribly curvy, I thought, because I have to bind the curve.) So this is what I did…

I took a piece of upholstery vinyl and placed it on the already marked swag. Next, I marked some placement lines with a Sharpie marker. The vinyl is clear, but it really is there!

Next, I drew a curved line 3 1/2″ away from the bottom edge of the swag. Then I cut the upholstery vinyl on the curve, making sure that the Sharpie line was on the template, so I could see it.