Hi , 

Have you every pieced a batch of quilt blocks, put them on your design wall or floor and thought, Wow, that is ugly. What do I do now?

I recently had this experience myself. The 4 Patch Quilt Blocks I pieced were not necessarily ugly as just too busy to be pieced together side by side as I did in this 4 Patch Baby Quilt Pattern.

So I decided to try a simple fix for these busy blocks - turning them into large half square triangles using solid layer cake (10-inch) squares. See how this worked and some layout ideas in this short video:

I used a Fine Line water erasable marking pen in the video, which is one of my two all-time favorite marking instruments. My other favorite is a mechanical marking pen made by the Fons & Porter company.

Click Here to find both pens in the Mark Your Quilt Kit.

4 Patch Half Square Triangles

The nice thing about this busy block fix is I was able to use up more precut fabrics! I pieced my busy 4 Patch quilt blocks using precut 5-inch squares, and then used a precut 10-inch square to turn them into half square triangle blocks.

Just in case you need a reminder about piecing half square triangles, you can click here to find a handy tutorial, plus chart and HST formula.

I really like how these blocks turned out and found many creative ways to arrange them to create simple chevrons, diamonds, and Square in a Square blocks too:

By slicing up the busy quilt blocks and adding in some dark solids, I'm sure these quilt blocks will be easier to work with.

Great Sale on Grace Company's Best Priced Frame

You have a few more days to enjoy a great sale on the Cutie Breeze frame! This small, tabletop frame is on sale for only $549. 

The Cutie is our smallest frame designed to fit home machines and smaller longarms. The Cutie tabletop fabric frame is made for you to set it up, quilt your project, then put it away in a closet or under your bed when you're done. You can even travel with it if desired!

Click Here to learn more about this quilting frame.

In this video, you'll see that I use pins to connect the backing to the leader cloth, and the batting to the leader cloth, AND the quilt top to the backing and leader cloth. I've been searching for an alternative to all of this pinning because it does take a lot of time to pin this much for each quilt.

I recently found these quilting magnets that significantly help with the first load on hoop frames. Instead of pinning to leader cloth, I'm able to lock the backing fabric directly to the back rail of my Cutie Breeze quilting frame using 8 SewTite Magnum Magnets.

I still have to pin the batting and quilt top, but using these magnets has effectively reduced the amount of pinning by 1/3! As for the type of pins I'm using, I've been searching for quality longarm leader cloth pins for awhile. We need pins that are long and sturdy, and able to take the weight of a big quilt over and over again.

I'm now using these Taylor Seville Magic Pins for pinning when I load my hoop frames. They are just the right length and sturdy enough to resist bending as I pin heavy quilts. Click Here to find all of the tools and supplies that can make loading your quilting frame faster and easier.

And yes, all of this means I need to make another video on loading and quilting on a hoop frame. I love finding solutions like this that help us speed up or simplify our quilting process.

That's it for this week, . Do you have any busy or ugly quilt blocks you're struggling to work with? Reply to this email with a photo and I'll see if we can come up with a solution together!

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day