Terri Stegmiller and Sue Bleiweiss of Two Creative Studios are doing a free Mystery Block of the Month project on their web site. Block Two was posted last week.

What I love about this project, besides the fabulous blocks and great colours, is that they’ve included multiple ways to complete each block. You can choose from paper piecing, rotary cutting or template cutting. Fabulous idea.

Block 1

Block 2

The files are available in PDF format so you can save them to your hard drive or print them out too. Visit the main BOM page. If you’re like me and need a monthly reminder, you can sign up for their newsletter too.

In honour of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Connecting Threads has available a free tutorial to make paper-pieced Pink Ribbon Pins.

Help raise awareness by sewing this simple quilted ribbon for your family, co-workers, and friends. Two sizes are available: large pin is 3″ x 4″ and the small pin 2 1/4″ x 3″.

Kaaren from the The Painted Quilt teaches us how to make these gorgeous fabric pumpkins in her Pumpkin Tutorial – Crazy Quilt Style!.

You’ll start with 6.5″ blocks, stack them, whack them, stitch them, then trim blocks to 4.5″. You’ll stitch the 4.5″ blocks together, make a tube, gather and stuff.

A great tutorial with lots of detailed photos.

Here’s a very quick and easy tutorial to make a spooky trick or treat bag for your little ones to use this Halloween. You’ll need 18 charms, 1/2 yard of fabric for the lining and 2 1/2 yards of black nylon webbing for the handles (or make your own).

I wish I had time to make new trick or treat bags for my nieces this year, but unfortunately I don’t. I’ll see about picking up some Halloween fabric on sale after though to make them for next year. Hopefully we can convince Lucy into letting Baby Alice use her little bag. It will also be Alice’s first birthday, born last Halloween.

I’m actually going to be spending Halloween with the girls… my first Halloween with little ones since my sister was a kid. Very excited. Lucy is going to be a Princess in her “pretty blue cinderella dress”. Do you have little ones? What are they dressing up as?

Phyllis Dobbs has designed this super cute tutorial just in time for Halloween. It uses felt and can be made into a trick or treat bag or a wall hanging.

Get the full-sized pattern and instructions here: Halloween pumpkin and cat felt treat bag or wall hanging

Running the Quilting Gallery site, it’s no surprise that dozens of quilting-related blogs come across my screen each day. I can’t remember another blog that captured my attention so thoroughly like Leah Day’s 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs.

I’ve been watching the progress daily on this blog for a few weeks, and I must say, I’m totally impressed. Doing 365 days of anything, is a huge accomplishment. Coming up with 365 different designs, stitching them and capturing them on video is mind boggling.

Day 47 features Cubing, pictured and the video is featured below.

Each daily post includes:

• photo of the completed design
• stitching video
• inspiration for the design
• filler design type – stacking
• difficulty level
• directional texture
• suggestions for use
• photo of the back

Blogs are notorious for being difficult to quickly and easily find what you are looking for. Leah’s solved this by creating design pages that show 20 designs at a time, and you can click the corresponding link to view the blog post related to that design. Fabulous idea!

You can also search by difficulty level: beginner, intermediate, beginner/intermediate and advanced designs. Just click a link on the side of the blog for the level you are interested in. You can sign up to receive a weekly summary email too.

Leah will also be releasing digital books and DVDs. There’s more information in this blog post. I’ll have to see about featuring Leah in an upcoming Friday Give-Away.

My goal is to try the beginner designs to start and hopefully progress to beginner/intermediate in time. I’ve been working on some scrappy blocks for a queen size bed quilt (for me!!). It’ll have 99 – 9″ finished blocks. The perfect size to sample stitch. I’ll stitch it on my domestic machine in pieces so that it’s manageable. I doubt I’ll get to any of the quilting until the new year, but it’s nice to have an idea in mind.

Leah also sells quilting supplies on her site, Day Style Designs Online. Lots of free articles and videos there too.

Thanks Leah for creating this fabulous resource. I can’t wait to see all 365 of the designs. They are a huge inspiration. Thanks too for the permission to use your photo and video in this blog post.