Table Runners

 Happy Monday. We had a busy weekend with our Spring Clearance Sale. Thank you to everyone who came out, endured the lines, and did some shopping. With your help were able to empty 100's of bolts to make room for new fabrics!

Today I want to talk to you about Table Runners. I love making Table Runners. They are usually a pretty quick project and I love changing the one on my dining table with each season and holiday. I have several different summer themed runners, a few spring ones, Valentines Day, Christmas, winter, and fall.

Table Runners are usually quite inexpensive to make and don't require a lot of fabric. Often they can be made with fabric already in your stash or scrap bins. I love buying a Charm Pack of a new collection and making a runner, that way I get to play with a new fabric collection but don't have to make a big quilt each time. 

At the shop we have several different Table Runner Pattern Books, each one contains a wide variety of patterns. 

The Little Charmer Patterns are written for 5" squares and most just need a little extra background fabric and a binding and a backing to make. Each of these patterns has 3 different patterns making them a great budget friendly choice. 

I am going to be making up a runner using Little Charmers 5 and a Happy Days Charm Pack. I think it will be so bright and cheery when it is finished. The Happy Days yardage should be in the shop this week and than we will put some kits together as well. 

Another option for Table Runner patterns, is quilt patterns. Some Quilt Patterns include a Table Runner option but for those that don't I will often take just make a few of the blocks or one row and turn it into a Table Runner instead of a quilt. 

Memi's Lemons is one example. I love this pattern but really don't need a Lemon Quilt so I will just make the Table runner option and have a really fun summer runner. We will have kits ready for this one in just a couple weeks, the pattern is being shipped to us now. 

Table Runners are a great way to try out a new technique, Memi's Lemons which I just mentioned has some curved piecing. Starting out with just a runner is a lot less daunting than making a whole quilt and if it doesn't go well it was just a little investment of time and money rather than what a full quilt would have been. 

I love giving Table Runners as gifts. They are such a nice way to let someone know you are thinking of them, especially now when restrictions are leaving a lot of people feeling really lonely. Esther made a several for some of the older members of our Church last summer and they were all so happy to receive one. 

Do you like making Table Runners and changing yours out with each season?

Carrie will be here on Thursday with the next block in her Garden Sampler BOM. 

Have a great week,

Kayla

Spring Clearance Sale

 Thank you to everyone who joined us on Worldwide Quilting Day. We had a lot of fun doing the videos, and we have posted them to our Facebook Page if you missed them or wish to watch them again. We did 3 different presentations, one on the Noodlehead Pencil Pouch, a presentation on Quilt Backings and a tutorial on the Moda Love Pattern. 

Our annual Spring Clearance Sale is this Weekend!

We have set our classroom up with 100s of bolts of fabric and it is all priced at $5 per meter. All yardage will be sold in 1 meter cuts only. 

 We also have hung up 50 different panels around the room, and have multiple available of each one, they too will be $5 each. 

Aside from Panels and Yardage we have some books, king tut thread, and some rulers. All of it priced at $5 per item. 

We also have bolt ends of cotton, cuddle and fireside. These are packaged and range from 0.3 meter to 1 meter of width of fabric pieces. All of these are also $5, so some may be a better deal than others, but all still cheaper than regular price. 

This time around there are no kits, precuts or scrap bags on the sale. 

Now for all the other details

The sale dates are as follows

Thursday March 25 10:00am - 7:00pm

Friday March 26 10:00am - 5:00pm

Saturday March 27 10:00am - 3:00pm

There will be a separate entrance from our regular shop to get to the sale. We will be using the southeast door of our building, which will take you straight down the stairs and into our classroom. 

We have a maximum of 10 shoppers at one time in the classroom so there will be someone by the door to let you know if you can go in or need to wait a few minutes. There is no wait list or registration just first come first serve. 

Masks are mandatory for shopping. 

There are no further discounts on sale items and all sales are final. 

We cannot accept Gift Cards as payment, we will accept Debit, Cash and Credit. 

If you are interested in a sneak peek of the sale, we will be doing a short video of the classroom on our Facebook Page on Tuesday March 23 at 10:30am

As we will be busy with the sale there will be no blog post this week Thursday. 

Have a great week,

Kayla

Worldwide Quilting Day

 Worldwide Quilting Day is almost here! 

As a shop we decided to celebrate the day with a few tutorials and informative presentations using the video platform Zoom. These presentations will all take place on Saturday March 20. 

Saturday Morning at 10:00 am I will be doing a video tutorial on the Noodlehead Pencil Pouch. This pouch is quick to make and is great introduction to zippers. It doesn't use much fabric at all and fat quarters work really well. I love giving them as gifts to Teachers and friends. 

Their isn't much of a pattern just a written tutorial to follow, but it is free and can be found by clicking HERE.

At Noon Esther is going to be giving a presentation on Backings. She plans to go over what we like to use as backings for our projects and why and also how to determine how much backing you would need for your project. 

At 2:00pm Carrie has a little tutorial for the Moda Love quilt. This is a free pattern download available in 3 different sizes. The pattern utilizes precuts which makes shopping for the fabric fairly easy in terms of what to buy, the hard part is choosing just one to use! She has a few tips on how to trim the half square triangle units, and a few ideas on how to enlarge the size if you wanted to. You can download the Moda Love pattern HERE

All three of the videos are now posted on our Facebook Page, Chicken Feed Quilts

Kayla

New Fabric: March

 Happy Monday! Can you believe we are already halfway through March?

Today I want to share with you some of our newest Fabrics. 

Moda

Sanctuary by 3 Sisters, this collection is soft and dreamy with big florals, and a soft palette of grey, pink, blue and cream. 

Dwell In Possibility by Gingiber. This one had a really fun color combination of black, cream, grey, orange and olive type green. The florals are beautiful and it has a fun Moth Print in several colors too. We have a kit made up for it, and Esther made a wallet which features the wallet beautifully!

 

On The Go by Stacy Iest Hsu is a fantastic kids line with bright colors, and fun prints. We have a kit made up for this collection too. 

We have another new collection from Northcott, this one is called Journey. Esther will be showing how to make this Tote Bag using the panel from the Collection tomorrow on our Facebook Page. 

New Here is a collection by Dear Stella! Those pandas are so adorable. 

From Riley Blake we have a fun collection called Bloom and Grow, I picked a quilt for this over the weekend, and got the fabric for my sample cut today, so hopefully soon I can share it with you! It is a fairly simple project that should go together pretty quick.

Art Gallery

Pollinate is a really bright collection that has me craving summer in a big way!

Little Forester is also new in the shop. It is so cute!

All of these collections are available on our website or instore. 

Have a great week!

Kayla

Thread

Good evening friends. Today we got our new stand for Glide Thread all set up and loaded!  (and when I say we, I mean not me, but the girls at the shop) So I decided tonight I would go over a few things about Thread. 

We sell Aurifil and now Glide in our shop, we have been using both and have had great success with both products. 

Aurifil is a 100% cotton thread and has a wide variety of weights and uses. 

For weight the higher the number the thinner the thread is. 

We have some of all the weights (Floss, 12, 28, 40, 50 and 80 weight) of Aurifil thread in a variety of colors. For the 40 and 50 weight we have both the large and small spools, and we usually have cones in some of the more neutral colors. If we don't have exactly what you are looking for we can order it in for you. 

For all the details of which thread to use and when just follow this link 

The two most commonly used are 40weight and 50 weight, I do use both for piecing but keep it to the same weight in one particular project. If a quilt has a lot of piecing or small blocks I do prefer the 50 weight as it is a little thinner, so it takes less room in the seam allowance and also lies just a little flatter. I do like to use 40 weight when making bags. 50 weight is wound on an orange spool and 40 weight is on a green spool.

For piecing I primarily use a light grey or a light tan color. I have a lot of colors of thread, but the colors I normally use when binding my quilt or when making a bag. If I have to topstitch anything I will match my thread to the fabric. 

Aurifil is cross wound, if you look at a spool the thread strands run up and down the spool in a Zig Zag format. To have it pull nice and even off the spool and through your machine the spool should be either laying horizontal at the top of the machine, or standing on a cone stand behind the machine. This will minimize thread breakages. Standing upright on top of the machine is not the best option.

Glide Thread is used mainly for Longarm and Machine Quilting, as well as Embroidery. The thread is Polyester. 

We have had great success with the thread on our APQS Longarms, and Esther does use it on her Embroidery Machine. I have never tried to machine quilt with it on my regular machine so I cannot testify to how it works on a domestic machine. Esther did try sew a bag with it and it did not go very well. 

We have 110 colors of the NO. 40 Glide thread in the shop, on the 1100 yard spools, the other colors, weights and sizes will be special order for now. 

Now that I have gone over the two we sell, I want to just mention that quality of thread does really matter.

Thread literally holds our projects together, and so you want something that is a good product consistently!

I hear frequently that Aurifil is expensive, so Esther and I did some research. When priced out per yard, Aurifil is actually cheaper than many other quality threads that are currently available to purchase. Also a large spool of thread will last me about 5-8 quilt tops, depending on the size of quilts, and how intricate the piecing is. At $16 a spool that's just a couple dollars per quilt, so not a big expense at all. 

Both Aurifil and Glide have very little lint. This is very good for your sewing machine. They are also both very smooth and consistent, also good for that machine of yours that you spent $100-$1000s of dollars on. Lint build up and poor quality thread can damage your sewing machine and cause you a lot of money to repair. (this doesn't mean you can skip out on cleaning your machine, you still need to do that)

If you are looking to expand your color stash of Aurifil we have the Aurifil Color Masters club in which you get 3 large spools every month for 12 months. We also have color boxes in a variety of combinations as another option. We don't have anything in place like that for Glide yet, but it may be coming in the near future. 

I hope this answers some questions you may have had about thread, and if you have more please come see us at the shop or send us a message. 

Have a great weekend, the weather here in Southern Alberta is looking fantastic for the weekend, so we are hoping for some time at the park.

Kayla

The Bonnie and Camille Quilt Bee: Month 2

 Good Evening! Thank you to everyone that emailed me pictures of their fabric pulls and month 1 blocks for this Quilt Along. It is great to have so many people joining me in making this quilt. 

This month we need to make a total of 4 blocks, however, only 3 different ones, as the last block we are going to make 2 instead of 1. 

The first block is the Bloom Block on page 84. This is a nice large block, and with a bunch of flip and stitch corners. The block itself is fairly straightforward to assemble, just watch where D and F are placed on each piece, and be sure to place them in the right corners on I, J and K. 

If you are struggling to have your flip and stitch corners come out the right size it may help to move your needle over one tick and stitch right on the outside of your drawn line rather than directly on top of the line. 

Next we move onto the Butterfly Block on page 87. I found this block pretty quick to make. The cutting is simple, and you can chain piece the components. I pressed my seams on the flip and stitch corners to the background fabric rather than open, and to the "stem of the butterfly" also instead of open. 

The Celebrate Block on page 88 is the final block for this month and we need to make 2. 

I did my hourglass units a little different than the pattern. I try to avoid working with triangles if I can, and I was able to quite easily with this block. 

For A, E and F  I cut my squares at 3 1/2 for a little extra trimming room. 

I than made Half Square Triangles in the following combinations AE, AE, AF and AF. 

To do this I followed the steps for the BD units. 

Rather than trim the units down I took my Half Square Triangles and took the AE and AF units for one block and put them right sides together, making sure the the seams nested in the center and the prints were right sides together with the background fabric. Than I drew a line corner to corner going across my seam line and again sewed on each side of the line. 

When I cut it apart I ended up with the correct Hour Glass units. I pressed them and than trimmed to the correct size using my 4 in 1 Half Square Triangle Ruler. 

Hopefully the photos help explain what I did. (In my block I used Black in place of Navy and Yellow in place of Green)

To assemble follow the photos in the book, watching the orientation of the hourglass units and half square triangles. 

And don't forget that you need to make 2 of these blocks. 

Have fun sewing up this month's blocks and please share your photos with me I love to see them!

Kayla

Garden Sampler: Month 3 - Basil Block

 

We are already into March! That is crazy, February flew by way too fast! With it being March, it is time to pull out our samplers again. This month for the garden sampler we are making the Basil Block. This one I found nice and simple, and easy to put together which was good for me, as I looked at my week and realized I had some busy evenings and days.

For this month I made no adjustments to any cutting instructions.

This month had a lot of stitch and flip corners, so I was very thankful for my Folded Corner Clipper. Instead of having to draw the diagonal line on all of the 32 squares, I got to cut the excess off before stitching, giving me the proper 1/4" seam allowance right away, and then i could follow the line on my Diagonal Seam Tape to ensure I came out with proper points in the end. 

Using my Folded Corner Clipper

Sewing my 1/4" following the Seam Tape

Components

Once your components are finished it is a few more quick seams and you have your block complete. I needed to double check a few times to make sure I had all the corners pointing the right way to give my block the proper look in the end. 

I love the look of this block when it is finished. 

March Events

We took February pretty easy at the shop, and while the store was busy, we did not do a lot of extra events, as we were supposed to be on vacation. However even though we are just at the very start of the month, March is looking to be quite busy. 

Today we had a Facebook Sale, which is always fun. I upload a photo album of items for sale, and you shop from the comfort of your home. We will be sending out invoices tomorrow, so feel free to check it out on our Facebook Page and see if there is anything left to purchase. 

This evening we have the first session of our sold out Tabletastic Club. We will be making a Tablerunner from the book Tabletastic together via Zoom

Our weekly Facebook Lives resume tomorrow. With the first one being a PhD checkin, next week we start a new sew along called Stitch Pink. We will also be touring my Sewing Space at the end of the month. 

This week Friday we have an Open Sew Day via Zoom, and another one on March 19. You can sign up for that by sending me an email. 

Next week Friday there is a Bag Club Session taking place also via Zoom, I think there are still a couple spots left if you want to jump in on this fun class. Just click here to register 

Saturday, March 20 is Worldwide Quilting Day! We are still in the planning process of our event but we will share all the details in a newsletter, as well as on the blog next week. 

We ordered a lot of collections that were due to ship in March so we should be getting a lot of new fabric for you all to shop from as well. All of us have been sewing up a storm, so we will be hanging up lots of new quilts in the next few weeks and making new kits as well.

Happy Sewing

Kayla