Do You Still Read Quilting Blogs?

Published: Wed, 12/19/18

Free Motion Quilting Tutorial for Popcorn

Hi ,

I hope you're having a wonderful December! This past weekend James and I hosted a Cookie-thon and baked sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, peanut butter eyes, and lemon bars.

I realized after the fact that lemon bars really aren't a great choice for a cookie to send through the mail. My bars set up nicely enough in the refrigerator, but when I tried to stack them together, they melted into a gooey mess in a bag.

Don't worry, James and I enjoyed eating the messy bars with a spoon so nothing went to waste!

I hope you're enjoying this fun season with your family and enjoying the special flavors this season has to offer.

Pinmoors on Sale until Year's End

While I usually do not embark on a massive basting project during the holidays, we do have a fair amount of my favorite basting buddy on the shelf which we need to sell down before the new year...

Pinmoors are simple silicon nuggets that will help you baste your quilts quicker and easier than ever before! They're non-toxic and very easy to use - just push them on the end of a straight pin and they cap the pin and stay in place for as long as you need them.

Pinmoors are especially helpful for quilters with arthritis and joint pain because they're easier to cap the end of a pin and remove than safety pins.

Just slide your pin into your quilt and stick the sharp end into a Pinmoor. It's simple, easy, and effectively holds the layers of a quilt together for quilting.

Another great feature about these cool little guys is they are self healing so you can reuse them again and again.

Click Here to check out pinmoors which are on sale for 30.95 until the end of the year.

We also offer a special basting kit which includes a pack of pinmoors and a box of 100 flower head pins. Click Here to check out the Baste Your Quilt Kit.

How to Baste a Quilt with Pinmoors

Quilting Stippling on the Longarm

I loaded my quilting frame with my Scrappy Star Quilt Block and now it’s time to quilt!

Click here to find the pattern for block #1 of the Friendship Quilt Along. This block includes all the information you need to get started as well as resizing information so you can make a crib, throw, twin, queen, or king-sized quilt.

I’ll be making two blocks per month because I’m making the king-sized version of the quilt. This means you get to see two different quilting designs every month.

After quilting to the end of my block, I noticed the backing fabric was running a little small because I lost 1/2 inch from both ends from pinning to the leader cloth. I think cutting your backing fabric at 27 to 28 inches long might work a bit better. Remember we will trim the blocks down before connecting them together so it’s okay if your backing fabric runs a little small.

Click Here to watch how I quilted this Scrappy star block on a longarm frame.

A Frank Question: Do You Still Read Quilting Blogs?

I have a simple question for you today: are you still reading quilting blogs?

I have this sneaking suspicion that our behaviors online have changed. Let me give you an example:

Last week I wanted to find a sugar cookie recipe that is keto friendly and uses Swerve as the sweetener. Can you imagine searching a Betty Crocker cookbook for that? Never!

This type of diet-exclusive recipe is perfect for Pinterest searches, though. To make a long story short, I navigated through ads and various pretty pictures and text and got what I needed and left.

Sooo…what’s the problem?

The problem is someone took a lot of time to write that post! There were at least 10 pretty, magazine quality photos of the cookies as well. And the recipe was made and obviously tested before posting.

All of that was a lot of work and effort made in the hopes of getting something in return: a newsletter subscription, a comment, a like, an interaction of some sort or at least 5 minutes of my time so my traffic actually ranked on Google.

But I didn’t even give them that. I felt entitled to a diet-specific, holiday themed recipe for free, found it, and left nothing in return.

Anyway, I have a lot more to share on this so please click here to visit my blog and finish the post.

We've already gotten so many wonderful and helpful comments; , I would love to hear what you think too!

Please note: If you've had problems leaving comments, please try again. We realized there was a faulty plugin on the site that was blocking your comments and have since deleted it.

Josh and I apologize for any difficulties with commenting. We are on a new blog platform and are still ironing out the kinks.

Our family wishes you a very Merry Christmas and happy holiday!

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day