During the golden age of cinema, you’d never catch a leading man without his fedora in place. Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and even Mr. Dreamboat himself, Gene Kelly. They all wore hats, and always with a dapper little tilt.
A perfectly positioned angle adds so much charm – even to quilts! Click HERE to learn how to use our Large Half Hexi Template to transform 10-inch squares into a beautiful Slanted Half Hex Quilt!
(If you haven’t watched Jenny do hexies before, you’re in for a treat! They’re easy as pie and so fun! Click HERE to check out all our Half Hexi tutorials!)
The most popular sandwich cookie in the world is now available in a brand new flavor: cookies and cream. Now, let’s take a moment to remember that cookies and cream tastes like … sandwich cookies. That’s right, the cookie masters have reinvented the sandwich cookie by adding more sandwich cookie. It sure sounds funny, but folks are going wild for them!
This week Jenny is working on a churn dash pattern. The churn dash is a great old block, but we’ve figured out a way to make it even cuter: add more churn dashes! So we’ve wrapped our churn dash blocks in an extra layer of churn dashes. It’s churn dash mania, and we love it!
When Jenny is designing a new quilt, she always asks herself, “What happens if…?”
What happens if she rotates every other block? What happens if she snowballs two corners? What happens if she uses solids instead of prints?
Today’s new quilt came to life when Jenny found out what happens if HALF square triangles are cut in HALF. Click HERE to learn how to make the Half and Half quilt!
What do you do to relax? Do put together jigsaw puzzles or work on crosswords? Do you enjoy pulling weeds or folding laundry? We all have our quirks, but the truth is, creating order out of chaos is the most satisfying feeling in the world. It’s what draws us to quilting and keeps us coming back for more.
This week’s new quilt is made with stacks and stacks of little pieces. This is the kind of project that just melts away my stress. Stitch by stitch, block by block, those pieces come together into a beautiful quilt and I am left feeling peaceful and accomplished and pretty darn proud of myself!
It’s March, and we all know what that means, it’s National Quilting Month, an entire 31 days dedicated to cutting, sewing, basting, and all kinds of creativity in between! This month, we want to share with you some inspiring stories from our Missouri Star team, and the reasons why they sat down at a machine and started quilting! The first story up is from Jenny! Read on as she shares how her quilting career began.
When did you make your first quilt?
I was actually quilting before I knew I was quilting. As a girl, I often sewed quilt squares together for my grandmother, but I took my first honest-to-goodness quilting class in 1995 shortly after we moved to Missouri. It was a quilt in a day class about the Log Cabin pattern. It was held in Chillicothe at the Vo-tech school. And I haven’t stopped quilting ever since!
Why did you make it?
I made my first quilt because I have to sew! It is my creative outlet. I sew, and when sewing is your “thing” and you don’t need any more clothing, and your children won’t wear matching clothing, and no one needs a costumer, you jump at the chance to quilt!
Who did you make it for?
I made it for my son Alan. He still has it.
This log cabin quilt is one of the very first quilts Jenny ever created. She sewed this one for her son Jake, who requested the purple and orange fabric, more than 20 years ago.
Is it the kind of quilt you would make today? Why or why not?
It IS the kind of quilt I make today! I gravitate toward quick and easy projects, so that was a great one for me to start on.
What has changed since that first quilt?
For me, the main change was the onset of precut fabrics. They make quilting so much easier for me. Also, the Internet has changed everything! You can learn all kinds of neat things from the Internet.
After reading Jenny’s story, are you ready to make a Log Cabin Quilt of your very own? Here are some of our favorite log cabin quilt tutorials to help you get started:
Log Cabin Quilt Snips
Curved Log Cabin Quilt
Summer Camp Quilt
Check back throughout National Quilting Month for more quilty stories! And be sure to share your creations and your first quilt stories with us on social media using #makesomethingtoday and #msqcshowandtell!
