The theme for this week’s quilt contest is Wall Hangings. The quilt you enter must be completely finished (i.e. bound and quilted).

This week’s sponsor is Marie Bostwick. She has donated two copies of her latest book Ties that Bind for the top two winners of this contest.

Plus, this week I’m hosting a blog hop tour with 10 guests and chances for everyone to win a copy of her new book. Stay tuned!

About Marie Bostwick

Marie Bostwick is a New York Times best selling author of uplifting contemporary and historical fiction. Her Cobbled Court series of novels, A SINGLE THREAD, A THREAD OF TRUTH, A THREAD SO THIN, AND THREADING THE NEEDLE, and TIES THAT BIND, have proven especially popular with quilters. Her newest book, TIES THAT BIND, will be released on April 24th.

Marie’s books have been translated into German, Swedish, Hungarian, Polish, Finnish, Spanish, and Turkish. Two of her novels were chosen for publication as Reader’s Digest “Select Editions” and many of her books have appeared as alternate selections for the Literary Guild and Doubleday book clubs. Her second Cobbled Court novel, A THREAD OF TRUTH, was chosen as an Indie Next Notable Book for June of 2009. In 2012, Marie was awarded a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

When she is not traveling the country to speak at quilt shows, quilt guilds, bookstores, and libraries, Marie can be found at her home in rural Connecticut where she enjoys writing, spending time with family, friends, and her fabric stash as well as trying to get ahead of her twenty-five year backlog of UFOs. Marie is a member of the board of The Alliance for American Quilts

Enter the Contest

Get your cameras out! To enter the weekly contest, read the rules and guidelines, then submit your quilt photo by Thursday evening (EDT). Voting will start on Friday and last until Sunday night.

Weekly Quilt Contest Links

• Guidelines
• Submit your photo
• 2012 Themes, Winners & Sponsors
• Sponsor a contest – only a few weeks left

Last Week’s Quilt Contest

Thanks to everyone who entered last week’s Just Squares & Rectangles quilt contest. There were so many gorgeous quilts to see. The Fat Quarter Shop donated two $35 gift certificates to the winners:

Jan

Susanne

Today is my special day for Jennifer’s Garden Party Blog Hop. This month, 30 designers are creating 10″ paper pieced blocks. Links to download the free patterns are available here and you can see the blocks that have been created so far in the Flickr Group.

Patio Umbrella

Here’s my block: Patio Umbrella. Download it here.

My fabrics – the flower prints are from my 1930s stash of fat quarters. The two prints are from Feedsack by Sara Morgan for Blue Hill Fabrics. The blue sky fabric is from my hand dyes and the orange dot fabric is Arabella by Pat Sloan (I think!).

I prefer to measure my paper pieced segments, add 3/4″ for seam allowance and fudge room, and then pre-cut my fabrics into usable shapes in advance. I have included my measurements in the PDF file. This way, I have all of my pieces ready when I head to the sewing machine and I know that all of my pieces will fit the required sections.

Lately, I have been doing my paper pieced projects with freezer paper following the ideas presented in this tutorial: Freezer Paper Foundation Piecing.

I really like the C. Jenkins Freezer Paper Sheets that I can run through my printer. While the sheets of paper are more expensive, the leftover pieces not used in the printed diagram can then be used for appliqué.

Here is section B stitched, but not trimmed yet:

When trimming the pieces, with freezer paper foundation piecing, you need to add back the seam allowances that were cut off the paper templates. Here are the three sections:

When stitching the three sections together, I first joined sections B and C, being careful to match up the pole/trunk of the umbrella. I stitched with section B on the top, so that I didn’t accidentally cut off any of the points of the umbrella.

The completed block, unfinished it is 10.5″

Download Patio Umbrella!

If you complete the block, be sure to upload it to the Garden Party Flickr Group as Jennifer is giving away a prize each week to one lucky quilter.

Thanks so much to Jennifer for organizing this blog hop party. I have enjoyed seeing all of the blocks the talented designers have created.

Give-Away

In this week’s Learning Center post, Pat Sloan is exploring embroidery, crazy quilting and sashiko with two talented guests. Plus, Aurifil is giving away a Sashiko thread kit to one lucky reader.

Read the post and enter the give-away here!

It’s voting time!! The theme for this week’s contest is Just Squares & Rectangles. There are many fabulous quilts to review. Grab yourself a cup of coffee or two and a pencil to make note of your faves. You can vote for SEVEN favourites this weekend.

The Fat Quarter Shop has donated two $35 gift certificates for the top two quilters this week.

Now it’s time for you to vote for your favourites!

• Voting is open Friday – Sunday @ 11:59 p.m.
• One vote per person (based on IP address NOT email address), so have your family and friends cast a ballot for their favourite quilt (from home if you send it to coworkers)
• Winner announced Monday!

How to Vote:

• Review the photos and stories below… there are several, so you’ll need to scroll down to see them all. You can also click the link to the slider version to review the quilts in the large format and then return to this page to vote.
• Underneath the photos, scroll down, you’ll see the names of all the quilts with a square button** beside each one. Select the buttons for the quilts you want to vote for. You can select up to SEVEN quilts this week.
• Then scroll down, all the way, until you get to the bottom of the names of the quilts. Press the vote button.

** Note: If you don’t see the square buttons to vote, but instead see the voting results, that means someone on your IP Address already voted, or that the voting period has ended, or that you need to refresh the page to see the voting options. Shared IP Addresses are very common in home or work networks.

Slider version: To view the large photos of all the quilts and descriptions, CLICK HERE. You’ll need to return to this page to cast your votes. Note: Due to the large number of quilts this week, the slider may not be working correctly. I’ll try to get it fixed soon.

Please Note: If you are not seeing all of the photos, check your browser settings. Go to view, and text size. Make sure it’s set at medium. If you need web sites to be larger so you can read them more easily, then use the browser’s Zoom function, not the text resize. You can also use the scroll bar above, beside the photos, to scroll and see the hidden ones.

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Next Week’s Quilt Contest

The theme for next week’s contest is Wall Hangings. The quilt you enter must be completely finished (i.e. bound and quilted). Get your cameras out!

To enter the weekly contest, read the rules and guidelines, then submit your quilt photo by Thursday evening (EDT). Voting will start on Friday and last until Sunday night.

Weekly Quilt Contest Links

• Guidelines
• Submit your photo
• 2012 Themes, Winners & Sponsors
• Sponsor a contest – only a few dates left for 2012

Quilter’s Super Deal

This week’s Quilter’s Super Deal is from A Joyful Soul Fabrics. Save 25% off EVERYTHING from the re-released Freshcut by Heather Bailey this week only! That’s yardage, pre-cuts, kits, etc. Until April 25 at Midnight. Use the code FRESH at checkout to apply your discount!

Start shopping here!

The Learning Center

In this week’s Learning Center post, Pat Sloan is exploring embroidery, crazy quilting and sashiko with two talented guests. Plus, Aurifil is giving away a Sashiko thread kit to one lucky reader.

Read the post and enter the give-away here!