Snowflake QAL: Week Nine

Joan Cumming has been working ahead on her Blizzard quilt! Isn't it spectacular?!?! She added even more stars to make the whole top bigger. Beautiful!!

Welcome to Week Nine of the QAL!

Snowflake Sampler: two 36" Fierce Feathered Stars

Star Flurries: one 20" No Y Seam Feathered Stars or Fierce Feathered Stars (your choice of construction method)

Feathered Star Blizzard: two 16" AND two 8" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

Can you believe there is only one week left? Time flies when you're piecing one million tiny bits of fabric together... isn't that how the saying goes? ;)

Congratulations if you are caught up! Congratulations if you're still hanging in there! Congratulations if you're waiting for the right timing to dig in! The point is, you've challenged yourself to do a difficult thing and I admire that. It's so worthwhile to push yourself and learn new skills, I salute you!

Sampler folks: I have a video tutorial series now on how to construct the Fierce Feathered Star. If you feel safe and cozy within the confines of paper piecing (no shame in that) and are nervous about tackling the non-paper piecing star, watch the videos! They'll give you the boost you need to begin.

Next week, we'll sew our tops together! If you want to get yourself prepped, make sure all of your papers are removed. You could also begin cutting out any sashing strips if you have them (Sampler and Blizzard) and sewing them to the appropriate stars. Again, not part of the challenge this week, but if you're looking for ways to get ready, those are good places to start.

I cannot tell you how satisfying this is to seam together! FUN! This was my Sampler top from the first QAL I hosted last summer.

Hop on over to my closed Facebook group to join the discussion, share pictures, ask questions, get encouragement. We are a community and we'd love to help you out!

Snowflake QAL: Week Eight

Cara (@sew_colorado_quilting) is making beautiful progress on her Star Flurries quilt!

Welcome to Week Eight! 

Snowflake Sampler: two 20" No Y Seam Feathered Stars or Fierce Feathered Stars (your choice of construction method)

Star Flurries: one 20" No Y Seam Feathered Stars or Fierce Feathered Stars (your choice of construction method)

Feathered Star Blizzard: four 20" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

**NOTE** Last week I had originally challenged the Star Flurries participants to make two 20" blocks. I should have only had you make one. There are only 13 star blocks total, nine 20" stars and four 12" stars. Please adjust accordingly if you made 2 last week!

The 20" stars will be NEW this week for both the Sampler and the Blizzard folks. Those sewing the Sampler quilt will have the choice of whether or not to use paper piecing templates as per usual OR... maybe they'll will want to take a break from paper piecing and try the Fierce Feathered Star construction??? 

Stacy (@sgarrett0871) has all her Blizzard blocks neatly lined up and ready for action!

If you do plan to go "Fierce", try to be as exact as possible with cutting and with your 1/4" seam allowance. We've been paper piecing for so long that it might take an extra-focused effort to do conventional piecing again! :)

Other Fierce Feathered Star notes:

• It's very easy to get "turned around" when sewing the block components together, especially when it comes to the direction of the half-square triangle units. For as many times as I've made the blocks, I STILL match up my pieces to the pattern photos EVERY TIME to make sure I'm sewing them correctly.

• Pin a lot! I'm okay with being a broken record on this point, it's really important for matching points.

• I have a new instructional video series about how to make the Fierce Feathered Star! In the video, I demo making the 36", but the methods and steps are the same.

• Don't forget to take one step at a time. This isn't fast sewing, each block takes several hours to complete. Enjoy the process - you can do it!

Hop on over to my closed Facebook group to join the discussion, share pictures, ask questions, get encouragement. We are a community and we'd love to help you out!

Snowflake QAL: Week Seven

Lisa's progress! @duhquilts on Instagram.

Welcome to Week Seven! 

Snowflake Sampler: two 8" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

Star Flurries: one (this is a correction) 20" No Y Seam Feathered Stars or Fierce Feathered Stars (your choice of construction method)

Feathered Star Blizzard: three 8" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

I'm continually inspired by all of the progress photos I see! I say to myself "That's my favorite one!"... for every single star or group of stars I see! :) haha

What I LOVE is the diversity of color palettes. This group is making the patterns their very own!

JessicaQuilter made her own layout design using the 20" feathered stars. Look at her beautiful quilting!

Lisa @shiraz_and_sewing is using soft pink and blue tones (see her Instagram feed for more) and they are fabulous!

YOU CAN DO IT! Keep going, I promise it'll be worth it in the end!

Hop on over to my closed Facebook group to join the discussion, share pictures, ask questions, get encouragement. We are a community and we'd love to help you out!

In the Facebook group last week, I posted an option of adding a flying geese border which increases the size of the Sampler & Blizzard quilts to 90" square. Check it out if you are interested!

Snowflake QAL: Week Six

I hope you enjoyed the break from the QAL last week. We're back at it today with Week Six!

Here are the specifics:

Snowflake Sampler: two 8" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

Star Flurries: two 20" No Y Seam Feathered Stars or Fierce Feathered Stars (your choice of construction method)

Feathered Star Blizzard: three 8" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

The 8" blocks can be found starting on p.39 of both the Snowflake Sampler and the Feathered Star Blizzard patterns.

Star Flurries folks, the 20" stars are nothing new to you. ;) You have SIX total left! Maybe you'll want to batch sew them? Maybe you'll want to enjoy the leisurely pace right up to the end of the QAL? The choice is yours!

These sweet blocks have stolen my heart! I just love the soft palette that @sarai_hobbies has made. (She's a great Instagram follow!)

This week of the QAL is sponsored by Lindsey Neill of Pen + Paper Patterns!  Before I kicked off this QAL, Lindsey helped me get the word out by making her own 36" Fierce Feathered Star. It's one of my favorite to date! 

Photo courtesy of Lindsey Neill.

Lindsey is a wonderful designer and has lots of cute patterns! Check out her Etsy shop for her beautiful work.

Lindsey's Sewology quilt made it onto this beautiful V-neck tee made by Patchwork Threads! She'll be gifting the winner of this week's drawing with a gift card to Patchwork Threads so that you can order it in your size.

Image from Patchwork Threads. Sorry, this shirt is no longer available.

Follow @penandpaperpatterns on Instagram to keep up with all of the inspiring things she does, and thank you so much, Lindsey!

Hop on over to my closed Facebook group to join the discussion, share pictures, ask questions, get encouragement. We are a community and we'd love to help you out!

Snowflake QAL: Week Four

Hellllllllllllo, Club 129! How is it going?

Just joining our adventure? Catch up on the first three weeks here:

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

As for this week, here are the specifics:

Snowflake Sampler: Boders & Bonus Stars

Star Flurries: two 12" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

Feathered Star Blizzard: Borders & Bonus Stars

Star Flurries participants: You know what to do! By now, you're an expert!

Snowflake and Blizzard patterns:

Go ahead and cut everything in the Putting it all together cutting section toward the end of your pattern, even though we will not use all of the pieces this week. 

As for the first sewing assignment, complete the instructions on the bottom of p. 64 (Sampler) or p. 46 (Blizzard) under the Inner borders section. Don't worry, it's two tiny seams and some trimming. Piece of cake!

The bulk of this week's work will be completing pp. 65 & 66 (Sampler) or pp. 47-49 (Blizzard).

We will be using the Magic 8 method for making half-square triangles as detailed in the pattern. I just wanted to mention here that the HSTs are intended to be a little oversized and trimmed down to exact specifications.

As you're sewing the larger squares together, try to align the outer edges as best as possible, but don't worry if they end up like the next photo. I don't pin the squares together or go to any other heroic measures, the trimming step will make them perfect!

I set my stitch length is a little shorter (2.2) than what I normally use to discourage unraveling after all the cuts are made.

Stacks on stacks!

This week of the QAL is sponsored by Tara Curtis of WEFTY!  If you have not seen a WEFTY needle before, you neeeeeed to check it out! There are crazy-amazing designs that can be accomplished with these small but mighty tools!

Tara is generously awarding a prize pack of WEFTY needles, her Woven Stars variation pattern, an EZMiter AND the EZMiter baby quilt pattern! Basically, she's spoiling us! Thanks, Tara!

Follow her on Instagram for innovative and inspiring projects!

Would you believe that we've had our first top finish?!?! I know!!! Donna Barrieau shared this in our Facebook group! Isn't it incredible? And not to mention that she got this accomplished during Week Three! Beautiful work, Donna! Thank you for inspiring us... and making us envious at the same time! :) HA!

Wishing you a productive week! Don't forget to join our Facebook group to connect with other QAL participants!

Snowflake QAL: Week Three

12" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

Here we are! Week Three is already here! Your challenge this week:

Snowflake Sampler: two 12" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

Star Flurries: two 12" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

Feathered Star Blizzard: four 12" No Y Seam Feathered Stars

Let's talk totals for each quilt. The Sampler & Blizzard folks will be tackling all of their 12" blocks this week. The Flurries people will do two 12" blocks this week and two 12" blocks next week. If you are printing templates and cutting fabric this week, you might want to do all that prep at once.

By now, you are a PRO at constructing the No Y Seam Feathered Star blocks! The 12" blocks go together in the same way as the 16" or 20" NYSFS blocks (depending on what you completed in the previous weeks). 

Remember to remove papers as you complete your blocks! I got into the habit of sewing by day and then removing papers by night in front of the tv. It makes the job more bearable, I think. Paper removal is not my favorite part of the process! ;)

I hope you're all experiencing the excitement of having the 129 fabric pieces come together to form each star! I'll leave you with this fanstastic 16" star made by Julie McLane!  What a great example of coordination and contrast! I love how all of our quilts will look so amazingly different and special when we're done!

This week of the QAL is sponsored by Kate Basti of Quilt with Kate.  Kate is a graphic designer tuned quilter extraordinaire and is the author of some pretty great paper piecing patterns! She will be emailing a bundle of THREE pattern PDFs to the winner. Please refer to the weekly QAL email for specifics with how to enter this drawing. Make sure to check Kate out on Instagram, too: @katebasti.

Have a great week! Don't forget to join our Facebook group here: Friends of Threaded Quilting Studio.