Southwind Inspirations

Mariposa . . .  means Butterfly and seemes like the perfect name for one of my new creations! This is one of the eight Butterflies, using a coordinating blue batik and blue batik print Another Butterfly using a coordinating gold batiks  First, make the half square triangles for the two-tone wings   Cut them apart and press seams open A neat stack of butterfly wings - almost ready. Using this nifty pressing bar makes pressing super easy. The wings are designed to be a bit over-sized and are easily cut down to the correct size.   Use a square ruler with a diagonal center line to make this even easier.  Ta Daaa - all cut and ready! Mariposa Sneak Peek Here are the Butterflies - there are a total of eight in the large quilt and four in the table runner.  I am putting the finishing touches on the pattern so it is ready for release by May 2015   Hope you enjoyed this pictur...

Good Morning - Today its our turn to blog about a Notion discovered at Quilt Market. My special featured tool is a ruler:    Bias Binding Simplified, designed by Janice Pope for Creative Grids . I can’t wait to show it to my students since it makes bias binding so easy .  Best of all, the ruler has all the instructions printed right on it, so there is never a question on how to use it.     It is 21” long on it’s longest side and has a 45° angle on one side, it is 2½” wide with an added 2¼” line for cutting binding in two sizes. Why even worry about Bias Binding? - Bias Binding is much stronger than straight-of-grain binding and absolutely essential to bind quilts with rounded corners or curvy edges.  Bias binding will smooth out around curves and make the binding lay flat and pucker free.  Once you use bias binding you will want to use it for most of your quilts -  I definitely do, even for small quilts and table runners. ...