{friendship} february: tools of the trade & (yet another) giveaway

Hello there!

I hope you are all having a great weekend....here on the Causeway Coast we are all breathing a huge sigh of relief, the big project I have been slaving over working on day & night for the past couple of weeks is finally done & we can go back to eating at the kitchen table, if I can find it under this lot....

But on to more important things...like the crochet giveaway.......and the winner is Number 5 -  Strawberry Patch, congratulations Emily! (sorry I had to remove the image as the number kept changing on random.org) Thanks so much to Sarah & to you all for the interesting comments about crocheting. I was inspired to find out more & here are some of the many wonderful crochet projects & tutorials out there...

http://pinterest.com/songbirdstitch/crazy-crochet/

But back to the next installment of {friendship} february. I'm so thrilled to introduce you to the lovely Leanne, a relatively new bloggy friend who I've met through our do Good Stitches bee.....over to you Leanne....

Hi there – I’m Leanne - I blog over at daisyandjack and I’m very excited to be guest posting here today.When Karen asked me to do a guest post for her {friendship} february series I immediately thought of this quote that I saw recently…

Life is short.

Do what you love.

Live your dream and

share your passion.

I think sharing your passion is what sums up online friendships – the online quilting world is full of fabulous people happy to share their passion and knowledge with anyone who is interested and that’s often how online friendships start.

So I thought I’d share my passion and my ( little) knowledge and tell you about a few of my favourite quilting tools that I now can’t live without.

First up is my design wall – mine is by Fons and Porter ) and can be hung from a wall with small clips which is fabulous for me as I rent and I also seem to move house a bit so it’s very transportable which is handy – my mum says a vinyl backed tablecloth works just as well but mine already has the holes for hanging J

I discovered a need for a design wall as I live in a very small house and I was laying out quilts in progress on my bed which meant that I couldn’t leave them laid out for very long (I need to sleep occasionally) and I discovered quite a few bloggers used design walls so I thought that would be a perfect solution and it is! There are a couple of reasons I think a design wall is great – one is that you can leave your layout where it is for as long as you want – I tend to leave mine for at least a few days so I can move and change blocks around.  It’s easier to place blocks so you don’t end up with too many of the same together and it’s easier to see the colour placement.

This is the first “big” quilt I made which I laid it out on my bed as I didn’t have a design wall – all the blocks should be scattered around evenly but as I discovered (after I’d sew the quilt together) I had sewn the same coloured blocks next to each other and quite a few times as well !

There are quite a few tutorials around that show you how to make your own design wall – Oh Fransson has a good one and there’s another one here

My next favourite item is a hera marker that my mum sent me for my birthday last year. I must admit when I got it I wasn’t quite sure what it was or what it did and then I watched Sarah Fielke using it to mark her lines for applique.

A few weeks later I was making a quilt with a heap of half square triangles and flying geese and I thought I’d use the hera marker to mark the lines instead of a pencil or pen and I’ve been hooked ever since – it’s a fabulous tool!

And my last favourite tool is actually flower head pins – I made quite a few quilt tops last year and after working out the block placement on the design wall I was pinning bits of paper to the blocks with the block and row numbers and I thought there had to be a better way!

My mum had sent me some flower head pins and I thought that I could write block and row numbers on those and then I wouldn’t have to worry about the bits of paper (yes, my mum is a great inspiration and sends fabulous things my wayJ)  So I ordered two lots of yellow flower head pins and have been using them for a while now and wondered why no-one else had thought of it.

Well, a few weeks ago I was blog surfing and I discovered a tutorial and yes, you guessed it, the lady was using flower head pins with the block and row numbers marked on them – so alas I’m not a genius after all –and the tutorial was done in 2006 so my bright idea has been around for a while!

So that’s my post for today - if you’ve made it this far, well done and to thank you for sticking with me. As a reward, I have a copy of Emily Cier’s Scrap Republic book to giveaway.

All you have to do is leave one comment telling us your favourite quilting or sewing tool or gadget and you could win a copy of this fabulous book. If you follow Karen's or my blog, please leave extra comments & let us know

I’d like to thank Karen for having me on her blog today and I’d love you to visit me at my my blog sometime !

Leanne

Thanks so much Leanne!
We'll keep this giveaway open until 29th February & announce the winner on 1st March, good luck!

Fancy crocheting this???

Hope you have a wonderful weekend

Take care

Karen