Accuquilt Go! Challenge 2014 February

Hi everybody, welcome back to the Accuquilt Go! Challenge 2014!

Last month was SO inspirational with the first post.

Accuquilt sponsored a giveaway and I had a LINKY to upload ANY Go! quilts made in 2013 and there were 22 link ups!!

VERY inspirational….

First I have a guest BLOGGER!

Rhonda from Stitches n Stories

She made this awesome quilt using a 2” square die and the snowball die

Rhonda’s store is right here

and she has this special!

SPECIAL for YOU!

AC2014 – $5 off any mat purchase w/ the purchase of a feature die

AND

FSAC2014 – Free Shipping w/order (not required if ordering over $100 – in that case shipping is already free)

enter the code(s) at checkout on StitchesNStories

Now Let’s GO! Quilting.

 

Thanks so much Rhonda it’s GORGEOUS!!

Click on the link to see the tutorial

 

My quilt today is an older die, one I bought at a show quite a while ago and never used it, so it’s been haunting me to use it

but I wanted to do something “different” with it.

After doing the tutorial for the apple core die in EQ7 for SewCalgal’s red and white blog hop I started playing with the design some more.

I came up with this in EQ and knew I wanted to use this FQ bundle from connecting threads that fittingly had apples and pears all over it!

First I cut 3 1/2” strips from the FQs and 1 1/2” strips from a black dot- I just had a yard of it, so I cut as many as I could.

I think I got 4 strips from each FQ, each 20” long. I ironed the seams open.

Then got out the apple core die and drew a line straight on the top and bottom, 7 1/2” apart which was a smidge past the die shape.

then laid the sewn strips on top, 3 times with one strip and ran it thru the Go! cutter

Each combination I then had 6 blocks of and I set them up on the design wall the way I wanted as some of the fabrics were directional

Then pinned them and sewed them together, you need LOTS of pins!

I decided to NOT have a curvy edge on the quilt so the remaining scraps from the FQs I cut end pieces off to fit in place around the edges.

Of course I had my HELPER help me a lot by taking down some of the blocks and re-arranging them! SUCH a great help!

and sorting them very carefully

Here’s the edge pieces in place to be sewn.

Sewing the rows together can be tricky but the good thing about these are the dog ears! still used LOTs of pins, and I ironed away from the stripe, so the seams butted up against each other too!

Here’s the top done

Then I trimmed it, by laying the ruler at the 1/4” mark on the intersecting seams and cutting

Top done, but needs a border and I was out of the apple fabric, OH ME OH MY! I just HAD to place another order at connecting threads for more fabrics……

I didn’t take pictures of the border process, but this time I “winged” it which is NOT my norm….. but the process WORKED!

I cut out several WOFs 3” of the green apple fabric and 1 1/2” of the pink

(after I had added the black inner border btw)

sewed the pink to the green then sub cut into 4” sections and sewed a bunch of those together to extend over the side edges, centered it, chopped off the excess and did the same with the top and bottom.

Here it’s all quilted and bound!

I quilted bubbles on the stripes and then a curve to the corners but only on the inside of the block or rather the sides, kind of tricky to keep that straight when quilting.

and bubbles and curves on the outer border

and embroidered label, I also added a hanging sleeve and the whole backing is the green apple fabric

Now I’m not done yet!

My leader and ender this month has been the bow tie die- blocks

I had not scraps left over from a McCall’s quilt and figured I could use them up with solid black to make this

So I cut out a bunch!

I

and a bunch of black!

This was my project “box” next to my machine and computer

now SOMEONE Loved to sit in my chair and match up these little squares so when I was almost done with the blocks for the center part of the quilt I had a “feeling” a few pieces might be missing, because a certain SOMEONE  would sometimes takes scraps of fabric and put them in the trash!

Oh my!! a LOT were missing!

I went to work and cut out some more pieces- luckily I had a few more scraps and FIXED them and with my oldest daughter’s input we changed the layout to be HUGS AND KISSES and she wanted more KISSES than HUGS…. so this is as far as I got with this, I’ll show more next month.

One more little thing!

I had some tiny scraps left over from the apple core quilt so I cut out a bunch of cardboard pieces of the larger of the smaller hexagon die and fabrics from the smallest shape on the larger hexagon die and made this!

It’s around 14” so a cute small table topper!

and speaking of hexagons…

Connie made a cute quilt too last week

Cabbage rose

With the large haxagon die and equilateral Go! dies

Connie will also be a guest blogger for next month!

-if you want to be a guest blogger let me know, and which dies you’d like to feature-

Have you made anything with the Go! dies mentioned last month?

(Half hexagons or EPP hexagons or Hunter Star dies)

If you have, link up- even if it’s a project you started after the 15th and just haven’t quite finished it yet…. link it!

I’ll give away this little charm pack of Anna Griffin fabrics.

I’ll pick a winner on the March 1st.

This month, work on something mentioned in this post or last month’s post and there’ll be a giveaway also!

HAVE FUN!!