Dog Gone Cute Blog Hop and Bone Tutorial

Remember this?

 

 

Yes, it's my turn on the Dog Gone Cute blog hop! Thank you Lorna for inviting me to participate!

 

I've enjoyed visiting my fellow bloggers posts with all of the adorable dogs. Although I am not a dog person, I definitely found their creations cute. If you want to visit my blog hop friends for the day, visit them here:

Teje of Nero’s Patch and Post

Valerie of Val’s Quilting Studio

Ellen of Georgia Florida Studio

Cristina of Pretty Little Quilts

 

And if you want to make your own, all of the instructions are on the Sew Fresh Quilt blog.

 

So now, for the main event of the dog bone tutorial!

 

Here are the pieces you will need.

 

And when you are finished, it will look like this! It finishes at 6 by 12 inches.

 

Now on to the details.

 

Step 1.

 

After you have cut all of your pieces, take your four B pieces and four E pieces. Draw a diagonal line across each of your E piece and sew them each to a B piece. Notice that two are sewn on the top right side, and two are sewn on the top left. When you reorganise them, you'll have one on each corner.

 

 

Trim the extra on the corners, leaving your 1/4 inch seam allowance and flip them to end up with the blocks above. Now you have four corner blocks.

 

Step 2.

 

This one is a little trickier, so pay close attention!

Take a block from step 1 and put it right side down.

On the long edge, across from your triangle, measure 1 1/4 inch from the edge and draw a line from that point to the nearest corner. Repeat on the three other blocks.

 

 

Step 3.

 

Another tricky bit, but hang in there, it will be easier.

 

Take one D piece and one each of the corner blocks (one with the corner on the left, and the other with a corner on the right). On the long bottom edge of the D piece, measure 1 1/4 inches from the corner, then take a corner block with a triangle on the top left. Right sides together, align your corner piece so that the marked corner is at the 1 1/4 inch mark on piece D, and that the other end of the line meets the corner of the D piece.

 

It's a bit difficult to explain, but the picture below is so much easier to follow!

 

 

Repeat with the corner block that has the triangle on the top right on the right edge of the D piece.

 

Repeat Step 3 again with your remaining corner blocks and D piece, so that you have the two blocks below.

 

 

Step 4.

 

Take one F piece and two C pieces. Create a half square triangle using one F and one C piece, trim. Take the second C piece, place it right sides with the half square triangle, then sew across to form the piece below. Repeat.

 

Step 5.

 

Sew each of the blocks from step 4 on either end of block A, with the background triangles facing out. Then all is left to do is to assemble your three strip.

 

And there you have it, a bone block to accompany your dog blocks!

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

 

Do not hesitate to write if you have any issues understanding the directions. If you do make one, or two, or more, feel free to share your pictures below.

 

Dog Gone Cute Blog Hop

I have had computer problems lately... that made me sad... but now, I'm happy, because everything seems to work fine and I've caught up on my blog reading!

I unfortunately missed the first two days of the Dog Gone Cute blog hop organised by Lorna, but I've now caught up with checking out all the lovely work that's been posted so far. If you want to join in the fun, it's not too late! Go check out the people who have posted so far :

Tuesday, October 6

Karen of Run Sew Fun

Kris of Kris Loves Fabric

Anja of Anja Quilts

Kelly of Quilting it Out

Tish of Tish’s Adventures in Wonderland

Thursday, October 8

Carol of Just Let Me Quilt

Nina of Inchworming

Doris of The Quilting Queen Online

Brandy of Pampered Pettit

Leena of Creative Instincts

If you want to follow along for the rest of the month, go check out the full schedule here. And if you want to make your own quilt, the first post of the tutorial can be found here.

Then, come back on October 27th, when I'll post a tutorial on how to do this lovely dog bone.

 

 

Dog Gone Cute

Now that I have taken the summer off from quilting, I'm ready to go again! It will be nice to have a regular routine again with the kids!

I have two projects to share that I completed in the spring, however, they aren't the one I'll be sharing today. The day's topic is my latest quilt, the one my son had me do with a very tight deadline!

So it happened like this... I was reading Sew Fresh Quilt's blog one day when I hear: "Mommy, I want a shiny blue dog blanket!" My youngest son was about to start junior kindergarden and we had just been discussing purchasing a nap blanket for him. That idea quickly went out the window. Since it was already late August, I had two weeks to plan and sew a whole quilt before school started... cue the panic!

I bought the pattern and ordered the fabric (thanks for the quick delivery Mad About Patchwork!), which then left me with left less than one week to sew! No way I was doing as many dogs as on the original. So I pulled out paper and pencil and drew a few sketches. I came up with an idea that my son found suitable... phew!

It took me one evening to figure out the dog... I am flippy corner challenged! No matter how I double checked things, I ended up several times putting my directional fabrics on the wrong side... I don't think I've ever used my seam ripper so much! However, don't blame the pattern for that, it was very well written, I was just totally hopeless in terms of figuring the flippy thing. I found out that my spatial awareness was not as good as I thought!

Then to make matters worse, I drew a bone on my sketch, so I had to figure out how to do that... more flippy corners! That took me a whole other evening.

Thankfully the rest was simple and I put the top together in a third evening and took one day to do my sandwich, quilting, and binding... I was done with two days to spare!

So if you want to check out the lovely pattern that Lorna put together, go visit her site, she has a quilt-a-long for the whole of September. Then in October, loads of bloggers will be sharing their projects. Go check them out to see how they intepreted the pattern!

With that said, I am really excited because Lorna asked me to be one of the bloggers on her Blog hop. Check out all of the other bloggers and make sure to come back October 27th, I'll be sharing a tutorial for the bone on my quilt!

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Linking up with Quilt Story , Crazy Mom Quilts, and Sew Fresh Quilts

Zippered Pouch Swap

I gave it away, now I can show it to you! I meant to post this weeks ago, but I got a bit side tracked by life.

The top portion is Blossoms in Creamcicle from the Oh Dear collection from Momo for Moda and the bottom is Kona. I used Anna from Noodlehead's pattern again, but this time, I used the width of the large bag, with the height of the small bag. I think it turned out quite well.

Like for my first pouch, on the inside, I used a fabric I bought from Stampin' Up on clearance (I don't think they sell fabric anymore). I don't tend to wash my fabrics, but since I wasn't sure of the shrinkage on their line, I pre-washed that portion of the bag. For the tab, I used a scrap piece of fabric from the Weeds collection by Me and My Sister for Moda.

I miss sewing, I haven't been at my machine for almost a month because I've had back issues so bad I can barely move. What do you do when you can't get to your machine and can't handle hand sewing?

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Linked to Sew Fresh Quilts and Crazy Mom Quilts

OMQG - Quilt Bee 2014/15 - February- Stamp Collection

For this month's bee, I got to try something I find a little bit difficult, going scrappy!

Katrina for whom we made the block this week wanted a scrappy version, no holds barred. She directed to use a tutorial by Oh,Fransson! but to only make the block 6 x 6 squares.

It took me way longer to pick and place the fabrics than to sew it. It's really easy to sew. However, the directions to cut the interfacing with scissors in order to open up the seam allowances takes a while. I had done a similar technique before and just used my ruler to trim the edge as skinny as possible, which was much faster. If I were to do this again, I would use the ruler technique.

I hope Katrina will enjoy her block!

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Linked up with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts

Doodle Time (2)

Here is your next doodle page! It's a simple design, but I imagine it would be quite a bit of work, because the way I see it, it would take a lot of half square triangles to make.

Then again with the Magic 8 half square triangle method, I guess it could we done much quicker than the traditional way.

Have you doodled lately?

Retro Geek Zippered Pouch

I signed up for a zippered pouch swap, after never  having sewn a proper zipper before, what was I thinking?

Thankfully, after a little bit of research, reading some tips and tricks and tutorials, I was ready to give it a try. However, I did not want to take the risk of ruining my swap mates' pouch, so I made one for practice first. I used this tutorial from Anna over at Noodlehead since I loved the promise of a pouch that opens very wide so that you can see everything that is inside.

I found the tutorial very easy to follow, and my pouch turned out great, even though I accidentally squared the bottom using the measurement for the small pouch instead of for the large one. Note to self... do not sew pouches past midnight!

There is only one part that gave me a little bit of trouble, but I blame that completely on my lack of knowledge on how much room a zipper takes. On the side where the zipper sticks out, I hadn't stopped sewing far enough from the edge so I had to undo some stitches and re-stitch a part of the bag by hand. I still think it looks great though!

I love that I was able to add some details in the stitching on the bottom by varying my quilting, and adding the tab at the end of the zipper ended  up being another cute bonus. Now I just have to find something to store in it!

This pouch finished at about 9 inched tall by 8 inches wide and 3.5 inches deep. It's taller than Anna's version because of the error I made in measurements.

I can't show you the pouch I made for my swap mate yet, but I'll provide pictures next week after I've given it to her. I can't wait and hope she likes it!

If you had a lovely zippered pouch, what would you put inside?

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Linking up with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts and Quiltstory