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Star Quilt

I’m a real Pinterest fan, and I love getting my inspiration for making quilts from other peoples designs. I See a picture of a finished quilt I really like, and then follow through to the web page of the creator of it. I look to see if there are instructions for making a similar quilt, and then try it our for myself. This is probably the reason why I like to write up my quilt making process, and load up some photos. I hope that someone is helped along their quilting journey, by checking out my posts on pamperstamper, or some other persons blog.

The link below was the quilt I fell in love with, and decided to copy. If you open up the link you will see that there are wonderful and descriptive instructions on how to make this design. I have also taken photos of the journey of creating my quilt. You will see the similarity 🙂

Charming Stars Quilt

1. Pick your colours. Cut out all the squares, and place them in the way that they look their best to you
2. Four of the squares in each block will need the smaller squares sewn into two corners
3. Continue to sew the smaller squares into the same patterned material. Trim to sewn edge and iron flat
4. You will end up with a pile of stitched and unstitched squares that will create your block
5. Join the rows of three squares and iron the seams in the same direction for the top row and bottom row, but the other direction for the middle row. This will help the next lot of stitching line up easier
6. You now have a completed block. Continue to do the same with the rest of the blocks for the whole quilt
7. I used the little squares that were cut off the corners to fill in between each block, and also strips of the same material as the star. In my quilt I chose white
8. Continue to join all the blocks in rows using the white strips. Make a joiner row using just the while strips and little blocks, and then join all the rows together
9. Now you can border, layer, and bind your quilt.
10. I chose to topstitch my quilt by outlining the stars and blocks. I was kind of pleased with how the back of the quilt looked. It had a pattern of it’s own

Can you believe how easy it is to make that wonderful star pattern block with just 9 initial squares of material? Having the centre block, the little squares that are cut to make the points, and the strips the same colour makes the stars stand out. This could be a great quilt for using up lots of scrap material. You could make the quilt using different materials for every block.

Maybe I could make that next time?

Now if I have encouraged you to try making this patterned quilt for yourself, please let me know how you got on. A photo of the finished product would be great. I look forward to your response.

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Chevron patterned Quilt

I’ve always loved the Chevron pattern. I have made two crochet blankets in a chevron pattern, and now I have also made a chevron patchwork blanket.

My first chevron crochet blanket.
The chevron pattern looks great!

This blanket was suppose to be for our youngest Grandson. He was born November 2016. I made it in pure New Zealand wool, but it ended up being so heavy. I would have to pay a fortune in postage to get it to London, where he lives. My eldest daughter now uses this blanket at work. On a cold day it is perfect to wrap around her legs and keep her toastie warm.

Great colours for a little baby boy 🙂
This photo shows the colours better

This was my next attempt, and I am really pleased with how it turned out. I made it out of acrylic, which is really great for wash and wear. It was also much lighter and cheaper for postage 🙂

Look how snuggly this blanket turned out! Little grandson is tucked up nice and warm in his Nana made blankie.

Now onto sewing Chevron. It is actually a whole lot easier than it looks. In fact with patchwork, there are often little secrets to the sewing that make the whole process a lot easier than you think. Thank goodness for that, because, by nature I am a rather impatient person, and to have shortcuts really suits my personality.

Here is the process I used to create my quilt.

Start off with two piles of square cut materials. One pile is plain fabric. I used calico. The other pile has a number of each colour. The amount depends on how big you want to make your quilt
Place the two squares together, good sides facing each other, and sew a quarter inch seam right around the outside joining the two pieces of material together
Using a cutting mat and quilting ruler, cut diagonally in both directions
You will end up with 4 new squares from each of the original squares. These ones have a join in the middle and have two different materials
Once all the squares are cut and pressed, lay them all out to work out the pattern and colour scheme you want
Sew each row together and iron the seams one way on one row, and in the opposite direction on the next row.
I keep the rows in order as I sew, so it is easier for ironing and joining
Now you sew the rows together. As you sew them together, you will notice that they fit together nicely when the seams are ironed opposite.
once the mail chevron pattern is sewn together, you can pick how you would like to border the quilt. Put the layers together and do your top stitching
I’m lucky to have a lovely big craft room with two big tables that I can spread my quilts out on. This makes putting the layers together a little easier. I love the curved safety pins that I can use to temporarily hold all three layers together while I do my topstitching.
I do all the topstitching with my cheap brother sewing machine. It has served me well, I can tell you. I roll up the quilt, and slowly feed it through as I sew. This is a process that requires lots of perserverance and patience. I do my own topstitching as I am too scroogey to pay for it to be done professionally. I’m quite happy with the finished effect.
The finished product

To finish my quilt, I did multiple rows of stitching on the outside border. I then sewed the binding on and it was complete. I love it and it has become my quilt that is used the most. I can just throw it in the washer and it comes out great. A very practical quilt that is pretty to look at as well 🙂

I hope you can follow my instructions and create your own Chevron Quilt. You can finish it off to your own liking. Please post a photo of yours in the comments below. I would love to see what you create.

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Holiday is well and truely over!!!

Well we have been back home now for 2 months..and man has life been busy! We are back on the daily tredmill and the weeks just seem to go by faster and faster. But life is good! Winter is over and Summer is just around the corner 🙂 My weeks have been filled with mainly music, mainly music preparation, Scrapbooking, and work work work. I have also made about 5 DVDs of our holiday (still have a few left to do) and also made photo books of most of the holiday. I still have 2 to do. I decided to do photobooks this time round and then just print off a few holiday photos to scrapbook. I will add some photos of our latest scrapbooking pages for you to have a look at. I must admit that since I purchased my iphone, I haven’t been very good at uploading photos from the camera, and the phone is full of photos! It’s so easy to upload photos onto Facebook directly from the iphone, and I have discovered Instagram, and love uploading photos into my Instagram album. My Instagram name is also pamperstamper, so it should be easy to find me 🙂 So here are my scrapbooking pages and when I upload my iphone photos I’ll put some more photos up.

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Before I leave!!!

Just thought I would add some more of my scrapbook pages before our big trip overseas again!! Yes…we leave New Zealand at 11.30pm tomorrow night and arrive in Shanghai at 7.30 am. This will be a 3 days stopover on our trip to England to see Daniel and Marysia. I plan on keeping you all up to date on my blog rather than Facebook…well I plan on it but it all depends on when and if I can get free wireless! The bags are packed and I just need to do a bit more housework tomorrow. The scrapbook room is tidy and everything put away awaiting our return at the end of July. Then it will be a very busy work room as I will have tons of photos to scrap!!! So here are the latest pages anyway…enjoy

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Some more pages!!

I just realised that I have loaded up my latest pages but forgot to load up the pages before them. So I will now update my blog with them….and you will have heaps to look at and be inspired by 🙂 My next post won’t be scrapbook pages….okay 🙂

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A sample of my latest pages

Our Welcome On Wednesday (WOW) scrapbooking and card making mornings are well on the way for this year. We usually have 4 of us here each Wednesday but have actually had 6 ladies a couple of times. It is such a lot of fun and even though we only get 2 pages done each week, we all enjoy being together and the bonus of creating beautiful pages. I love scrapbooking! I also love looking through my finished albums. So as you can imagine everywhere I go I take my camera with me. I can’t miss another scrapbook opportunity, even though I still have heaps of photos waiting to be scrapped! I hope my pages will inspire you to create some for yourself. I certainly don’t mind you copying my pages….I also get ideas from other pages I see and love…enjoy 🙂

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My latest pages and my new Scrapbook room

So now I have started to set up the new room, and it has been so much fun! I am very spoilt! I didn’t realise just how much scrapbook supplies I have, but I LOVE them all! I thought I would share a few more photos with you. Some of the room and others of my latest pages. I hope you enjoy looking and get inspired to create your own pages

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Latest events

Well…I am seriously thinking about finishing up with Stampin Up. (AND I HAVE GIVEN UP). The new catalogue comes out on the 1st of September, and I have a huge decision to make. Do I buy the new products and keep up with all the Stampin Up supplies…or do I finish up and just use the products I already have? They do have some really lovely stamping and scrapbooking supplies available, but as I don’t sell (as a business) it does get a little extravagant buying the products for my own use every quarter….and I do have heaps of supplies! Only trouble is that I now have an amazing scrapbook room! Yes a ROOM! We have converted our family/games room into a big craft/movie room! It is fantastic…and nearly available to use…I just need to load it up!

 

I am so blessed….I can’t wait to have all my scrapbook supplies set out and have our next Wednesday Scrapbooking group meeting out in the room! Photos will follow I can assure you!

So can you see my dilemma? I could turn Stampin Up into a business and work it from home. But do I want to turn my hobby into my work? Will I still enjoy scrapbooking as much or will it become less interesting because it will be my job?

I have a decision to make and I have to make it before the end of September.

The latest family news is that I have spent today at hospital with C5. She got her Gall Bladder out as it was causing her all sorts of problems and the doctors advice was to get it out so she would be more healthy. I have taken tomorrow off work to pick her up and be her nurse for the day. Me nursing a second year trainee nurse! It is going to be a interesting day. She was looking much better when we left her tonight so hopefully she will be able to just have a restful day reco-operating..and I can just spoil her 🙂

I have also had 2 weeks in Sydney seeing the family there. C1 and D1 went to Singapore for 5 days, so I drove G1 to the bus stop and G3 to school each day. Driving in Sydney isn’t as bad as I though it would be. Once in the car, it was just like driving around home, only the lanes felt a lot narrower! I have taken heaps of photos and will be busy scrapbooking them very soon. I managed to do some scrapbooking while there as well. So in my next post I will try to upload some of my latest pages to share with you.

Until then

Pam P 🙂