By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador You may have heard about improvisational quilting, or improv for short. This kind of freeform construction is fun and easy, and it keeps piecing interesting because every block is a new adventure. You don't know exactly how it will look until it's sewn together. Improvisational star I think [...]
I spent time with two of my great-nieces recently and they made their first quilts. The HQ Stitch 210 turned out to be perfect for a first-time sewing experience. Based on their excitement, I think it's safe to say I converted them! My nieces are 9 and 12 and they're delightful little people. They are [...]
By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador I hosted a quilt retreat in Colorado last week. Today I'm sharing a few highlights of our time together. A colorful ombré jelly roll became this colorful quilt top. I had never seen an ombré jelly roll made into something so lovely as this quilt top. Now I [...]
By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador We've gone through all the steps to make a Dresden Plate. Let's talk about a few ways to troubleshoot common problems. Troubleshoot Dresden Plate Problems The most common problem my students face is fullness at the center of the Dresden. When they make the plate and go to [...]
By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador We're well on our way to making a Dresden Plate. Today we'll join the blades we made in Part 3. If you missed them, see Part 1 and Part 2. Use a stitch length of 2mm or about 13 stitches per inch. This is a normal stitch length [...]
By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador So far we've covered some Dresden Plate math and we've seen how to cut blades from strips. The fun starts here—making the blades into plates! Let me say up front that if this seems detailed or fussy, it's because these little things make it work. I've learned these [...]
By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador I have an ongoing love affair with the Dresden Plate. It began about 10 years ago when I made this quilt from vintage blocks. All Drezzed Up by Diane Harris I’d purchased 20 blocks for 20 dollars (my kind of bargain!) and I made 32 smaller [...]
by Diane Harris I’m always poking around the web for new ideas, and at the end of last year I stumbled on “temperature blankets.” But since quilters hate it when people call the things they make blankets, I’m going to call this a “climate quilt” instead. I first heard about this with people who knit [...]
For the first few decades of making quilts, I never thought about how I stored them—which generally meant that I folded them in the middle, and then in the middle again and so on before putting them on a closet shelf or in a plastic tote. Permanent creases down the center in both directions, [...]
I'm making the Quiltville Mystery Quilt by Bonnie Hunter this year, along with tens of thousands of other quilters. I've done it twice before and I enjoyed it each time. This year's quilt is called Good Fortune, and it has some string pieced units. My HQ Stitch 510 made short work of them. I needed [...]
