Happy spring ! I hope the weather is starting to warm up in your area of the world. It looks like we have one more week of cold rain and then hopefully winter will be done with us. I have a bag of bulbs to plant and I'm excited to see new colors in my garden this spring and summer.

Speaking of sunshine and bright colors, check out this beautiful Marvelous Mosaic quilt:

This was created by Mary N, a quilter and Machine Party Quilt Along follower. She decided to change up the pattern quite a bit to make it fit the fabric and size of quilt she wanted to create. Here's her experience with Marvelous Mosaic:

I started with a box of random width Kona cottons. I decided to use 12.5" squares (unfinished) for a smaller, lap-sized quilt and because I have a square 12.5" ruler. The finished quilt is 50" x 62.5".

Excellent work, Mary! Thank you so much for sharing your quilt with us.

The Marvelous Mosaic quilt is part of this year's quilt along and you can find the quilt pattern in the book Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day.

Ever turn on your sewing machine only to find it sounding more like a meat grinder?

Yeah, that's what happened to me this weekend! 

I push my machines hard on a regular basis and in order to keep them running smoothly, I regularly service them myself.

I take the base of the sewing machine apart, then brush out all the parts and apply oil.

The most common questions I get about this are about the little details: how often do you clean the machine? How often do you change needles? Where and how do you oil it?

Mary used last Friday's pretty free motion quilting design in her Modern Mosaic quilt.

All Foundational Designs begin with a single line and for Desert Sand it's a curving line that forms sharp points like huge flame shapes on your quilt.

I usually mark this line on the fabric so I can plan it out and know exactly how it flows over the surface. 

This is especially helpful when quilting a Foundational Design in the borders of a quilt so it fills the space consistently and the lines meet at the end so you can quilt through the entire border with one continuous line.

After you stitch the foundation, quilting the rest of Desert Sand is very easy. Simply echo the foundation line to one side, then to the other side until the entire quilt or the entire space is filled.

That's how you create this rich, amazing texture on your quilts!

Last week I chatted with Elizabeth Townsend Gard about quilting and copyright.

I was also on Elizabeth's podcast and we chatted about business, the ups and downs of running a quilt along, and how copyright plays a role in my business. Click here to check out that episode.

I have long felt that copyright and quilting is a tricky subject. On the one hand we have a huge range of public domain quilt blocks and patterns. Basically if your great grandma was piecing log cabin blocks, chances are her great grandma was too. 

On the other hand many designers struggle to sell patterns because quilters copy and share them rather then purchasing their own copy. It's one thing for a log cabin block to be in the public domain, but the pattern itself - the cut sizes and the words used to describe how to piece that particular quilt are the property of the designer. 

In the podcast we discussed a specific issue that happened recently with a private Facebook group. The members of the group were copying patterns and quilting books and intentionally covering up or removing the attribution and the information about the authors.

We tell the whole story, which is both interesting and also pretty nasty, so be sure to check out this super informative episode.

I'm teaming up with Grace Company to make a new set of quilting rulers, and we're nearly finished with the beta phase and will have them available for purchase in April!

This weekend was a whirlwind of ruler quilting and I've had a blast quilting my new Dresden Plate sunshine blocks. I'm still not sure about the name of this quilt. Here's the first block I finished, pictured at right.

Sunburst? Sunshine? Sunny Day? What do you think? Let me know if you think of a fun name for this bright, beautiful quilt.

The quilt is going to be 4 super sized Dresden Plate blocks and I'm going to put the quilted blocks together like the Winter Wonderland quilt with curvy bias binding.

That's IF I can get all the blocks quilted. These are taking a LOT longer to quilt than I expected. Mostly because I start quilting in one section, then I get an idea for another section, and that takes another few hours, then I get another idea for the center...and you get the idea.

But I couldn't be more in love with this gorgeous texture! Who would have thought you could do all this with 3 quilting rulers?

I plan to make this quilt all over again and shoot videos of each step, but right now the push is on to get this quilted, connected, bound, and finished by Friday so I can take it with me to a show on Saturday.

Cross your fingers... It's going to be tight!

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day