Quilting Tutorials Archives - Page 4 of 5 - The Little Mushroom Cap: A Quilting Blog

In Quilt

5 reasons why you should bring your handmade quilt when you travel

February 21, 2017 9 Comments

It may sound a little weird to some people as to why we should bring one possibly heavy quilt to travel! But, as a quilter – I think it is necessary! ….unless you want to spare room for fabrics, of course 😛

Here are 5 reasons why you should always bring a handmade quilt to travel:

If you are looking for a retreat, try airbnb and search for farmstay. I booked mine through airbnb and totally recommend it. If you have never used airbnb before, use my links to get $40 off your first booking. That is a lot of saving!!

#1 Bringing the feel of home and coziness

The minute you reach the hotel room, laying down those quilt on the white hotel bed suddenly looks much cozier and feels much more like home. Your quilt might even look better in the hotel setting too. I take the opportunity to enjoy the quilt on hotel beds as there is less clutter in the hotel room as compared to our room back at home.

#2 Conversation starter

Someone might be interested in your quilt and it can be a great conversation starter.

#3 Warmth inside car / plane

The standard reason and need for a quilt. I don’t normally bring big quilts. Only lap size ones – perfect for putting on laps on those long car journey or plane.

#4 They double duty as picnic mats

I use my quilts for sitting/relaxing on, when on the beach – or the park. They wash easily in the washing machine so I don’t worry much. They are so much beautiful than those regular picnic mats. There are many times that I forgot to bring any quilts or mat to travel that I simply regret not having a quilt in the car boot somehow.

#5 Great opportunity for amazing photos

This is the main reason why I bring my quilt! I love taking photo of them in the wild – in the beautiful nature. The perfect lighting. The perfect background. I love outdoor quilt photos, so whenever we travel, I almost always bring a quilt!

This quilt is the rainbow wash Medallion Quilt I made sometimes ago, and I had the most wonderful farm stay at Kangaroo Valley, NSW and was so pleased to have some photo of the quilt there!

Have you brought your quilt travelling before? Let me know and share a photo if you have – tag me on instagram!

If you are looking for a retreat, try airbnb and search for farmstay. I booked mine through airbnb and totally recommend it. If you have never used airbnb before, use my links to get $40 off your first booking. That is a lot of saving!!

In Quilt

How to Make a Double Wedding Ring Quilt

January 26, 2016 23 Comments

In this post, I am sharing with you the progress of my double wedding ring quilt in this post plus……. a video too!

I have been posting the progress of my double wedding ring quilt on Instagram and have been asked a lot about what template I use, what pattern I use and etc, so I decided to make a video to just quickly answer that.

In the video, I sew a couple of pieces together too and hopefully you will get some points if you plan to sew your own double wedding ring quilt too!

There are affiliate link within this post that I may earn commission from. You can read my full disclosure HERE>

In Free Printable

Quilting Tutorial: How to make lots of half square triangles quickly, easy and accurate

July 17, 2015 18 Comments

I love making HST and I know there are a lot of ways to make them, but if a block pattern calls for repeated ones like the example above, I love making the half square triangle with triangle rolls or printable sheets. Triangles on a roll, are rolls of ready printed template similar to the one you can print today but in a form of a continuous roll, which means you can make as many as you want without getting it off your machine. If you have never tried this method before, you might want to give it a try especially if you have to make lots of small HSTs.

You can get the ready printed template – the triangle rolls here if you wish to. I tend to be savvy whenever I can, so I normally would print off printable template on a 60gsm paper or any recycled paper.

So, for today, I am going to show you how to make 16 2.5″ HST the quick way using a printable template that you can download here :

Free Printable Half Square Triangles (HST) Templates and How to use them:

You can watch the following video for the tutorial, though I am still figuring out video recording – and was really frustrated with the quality of the video – but I will for surely try to improve from time to time. Bear with me. I would just love to share so, here it is :

Now, you want to pin this image so you can come back to this post whenever you need to make HST!

Quilty hugs,

Amira

In Completed Projects

Tutorial : Oakshott Modern Log Cabin

February 23, 2015 4 Comments

Welcome to my turn for the fabulous Oakshott ColourShott Bloghop hosted by Lynne over at lily’s quilt. Hop on there if you haven’t seen the others. If you are new here, I most welcome you to browse around my blog too.

In Quilt

Effective crafting time : 5 tips on how to sew more in short time

December 29, 2014 10 Comments

NOTE : I no longer promote Craftsy/Bluprint as I used to due to the way the subscription is currently being carried out. I had the issue of cancelling my subscription when the company changed hand and I find that cancelling through calls is inconvenient. However, I do still stand behind these classes I promote and if you are subscribed, you can surely check these classes I recommend on the platform. If you are looking for another online platform to learn craft such as quilting, do check out CreativeBug. It is much cheaper in subscription (subscribe now 3 months for only $5). Thank you.

If you are like me, working everyday on weekdays from 8-5 and have a family to take care of, you probably want to make sure you are making the most of your free time.

First off, I love to craft and I make sure I have time to do so. Whenever people ask me, where do I get the time to do so, I shall say – I make time to do so. I schedule in Sewing time. Even if it is only 5 minutes for that day.

So before I go onto the tips, I would advice you to:

Make time for your crafting/sewing even 5 minutes a day. Put in your schedule, or even take time sew when you wait for that dinner to bake out. Just make sure you put a timer on. 😛

Then in that limited times, here are my 5 tips to make the most of it:

5 tips to sew efficiently in limited time

There are affiliate links within this post. Please find my full disclosure here.

Read the instruction or plan the steps to do

Whenever you start a new project, first please read the instruction or plan the steps to do if you are not following any pattern – write it down so you can refer to it.

This will save a lot of time later, and will also save you from having to spend time with Mr Seam Ripper.

Do all the cutting, batch it!

Do all the cutting required first, put them in a dedicated box/ tray

This way you can sew anytime, I have very limited space too, so I cut elsewhere and having cut pieces ready to sew means I can save time taking out my cutting board etc.

It also makes easier to clean up and to carry around.

Products from Amazon.com

Chain piece

chain piece whenever you can.

I love chain piecing. It can save you a lot of time cutting or re-threading believe me! See chain piecing video here.

If your machine does not have an auto thread cutter, this is definitely a must! You can also save threads. You can even sew pieces of scraps in between blocks to mark it. This method of using scraps can also be a thread saver. See more of this thread saving tip here.

Portable design boards

Use portable design boards to place the cut pieces – especially for patchwork! Use this tutorial to make some cute portable design boards.

I also use this boards to place my pieces for making wallets. And they can be stacked on top of each other, which is perfect for small space and for stacking various blocks or parts

Use labels

I label my pieces if I’m sewing bags and my rows for chain piecing quilts. They save me time looking for them. I can leave them anytime when my sewing time is up, knowing that I won’t be lost next time I come back to it.

You can buy these alphabetic labels to help or just print out alphabets and cut them in small squares.

Well, hope you get more sewing done with these tips I learned!

Small chunks of time saved can save you a ton of time and make you more productive! Last but not least, be happy and enjoy your sewing time even for a small 5 minutes!

Products from Amazon.com

In Quilt

Quilt Binding Tip

December 16, 2014 9 Comments

Are you always frustrated with failure to get the right exact closure while you join the binding in the round?

Doesn’t it seems to be so hard to estimate?

Well, don’t estimate no longer, I have a binding tip that will solve that very problem.

Here is a tip which I use all the time for joining the binding tape in a round.

Perfect Binding Joint

I find it easier when I leave about 5″ free binding tape at the beginning and leave a gap of about 10″ unstitched at the end of the round.
I place the binding tape so that it overlaps (like the first photo above) and cut the the extra binding tape so that the overlap only measures about 2.5″ — which is equal to the width of the binding in the first place. If you use a 2.25″ then the overlap is 2.25″.
Then I place the binding tape perpendicular and right side together merely leaving any excess on both ends. Just make sure it is not twisted.

Trim the triangular excess seams and lay it back flat on the quilt. Finish the binding as you normally would. I personally love machine binding but sometime I do sit and blind stitch my binding.

This method is definitely my go to and never has failed on me yet. Give it a try!

Hugs

Amira

In Quilt

Liberty Courthouse Quilt

November 15, 2014 1 Comment

NOTE : I no longer promote Craftsy/Bluprint as I used to due to the way the subscription is currently being carried out. I had the issue of cancelling my subscription when the company changed hand and I find that cancelling through calls is inconvenient. However, I do still stand behind these classes I promote and if you are subscribed, you can surely check these classes I recommend on the platform. If you are looking for another online platform to learn craft such as quilting, do check out CreativeBug. It is much cheaper in subscription (subscribe now 3 months for only $5). Thank you.

I am working on several work-in-progress projects at the moment, and I am sharing one of them today with you: the courthouse quilt. It is so hard to concentrate on one as I really do get bored easily. Currently I am still quilting my swoon quilt (seems like it never ends!) and sewing few small items in between to get that feeling of satisfaction and a finish!

In between those, the only patchwork/quilt piecing I am into these days is the Liberty Courthouse Quilt. Partly because these were easy enough to chain piece and I had cut and organize them well to just pick up from where I left whenever I want.

I am loving it so far. I love the soft feel of of the Liberty fabrics and the Organic Voile Cotton from Robert Kaufman. My liberty stash is from Polka Dot Tea Fabrics Liberty Club and Alice Caroline supply shop. The voile I bought matches perfectly well with the soft Liberty.

The texture of the voile makes the whole quilt soft and flowy. This quilt is surely going to be loved!

The scrappy look and the busy prints of Liberty aginst those soft white voile is just perfect. Just the way I had it in mind.

I am not sure how big this quilt shall be, I am just going with the flow.

So far, I am loving it. I may play around with the layout as my blocks continue to grow.

Courthouse Quilt Block Measurements

Here are the measurements I used for a 7.5″ square block, so you can make one too!

1 (printed centre)	1.5 x 1.5”
2 (printed)	3.5 x 1.5”
2 (printed)	5.5 x 1.5”
2 (printed)	7.5 x 1.5”
2 (solid)	1.5 x 1.5”
2 (solid)	3.5 x 1.5”
2 (solid)	5.5 x 1.5”

In my mind, I may finish this early next year, and maybe… MAYBE …. I want to hand quilt it. But am sure the quilt won’t be done anytime soon if I were to handquilt it.. what do you reckon? Handquilt it or not?

Here is the Craftsy class where I learned to do applique and hand quilt. I have fallen in love with the hand quilting Sarah does that I really want to try it!

NOTE : I no longer promote Craftsy/Bluprint as I used to due to the way the subscription is currently being carried out. I had the issue of cancelling my subscription when the company changed hand and I find that cancelling through calls is inconvenient. However, I do still stand behind these classes I promote and if you are subscribed, you can surely check these classes I recommend on the platform. If you are looking for another online platform to learn craft such as quilting, do check out CreativeBug. It is much cheaper in subscription (subscribe now 3 months for only $5). Thank you.

Pin this image, so you can reference it next time!

In Baby Quilt

Jelly Roll Jam Quilt : Jelly Roll Jam II Free Pattern

September 10, 2014 9 Comments

The quilt was made using just one single jelly roll following the wonderful tutorial by Fat Quarter Shop for this quilt. The pattern is called the Jelly Roll Jam Quilt II which you can download from HERE.

A baby quilt made for a special baby just born last two week. She is still in the hospital in the incubator, but she is strong and healthy. Hopefully, she’ll gain enough weight and would be ready for the outside world very soon.

The process was very quick and it is definitely the perfect way to use up some of the jelly rolls I have. This one is by Riley blake, Seaside by October Afternoon. I love a lot of the fabrics in this line. So many basics and love the colours in this line.

In Completed Projects

FREE Tutorial : Improv Pieced Hexagon, for a modern quilt

May 15, 2014 24 Comments

I have recently finished 6 quilted placemats which I adore very much. I will be sending it off to my Modern She Made Swap Partner soon so I plan to make two more in Black and white for me and hub.

Here they are, all bright and cheery.. hope my partner will love it.