You’ll also hear from Jennifer Chiaverini, author of the popular Elm Creek Quilts books and have an all-around enjoyable quilty adventure and getaway! Won’t you join us in Historic Williamsburg August 2-4, 2012 for the best Block Party ever?!

Registration opens this evening at 6 pm Eastern at quiltmaker.com.

Block Party Teachers

Bonnie Hunter

Bonnie Hunter: Widely known and universally loved for her amazing scrappy quilts, spellbinding classes and entertaining presentation, Bonnie brings an energy like no other! You’ll be inspired by the fun approach in her workshops. Bonnie will also be a keynote speaker at the Block Party.

Nancy Mahoney

Nancy Mahoney: This author, teacher, fabric designer and award-winning quiltmaker has enjoyed making quilts for more than 20 years. Her work has been featured in publications around the world (including Quiltmaker!). She has created more than 75 quilt patterns and has authored 11 books. You may own some of the six fabric collections she has designed for P&B Textiles.

Debbie Caffrey

Debbie Caffrey: A self-published author of 13 books and dozens of patterns, Debbie has designed and published more than 150 patterns in an ever-changing line of mystery quilts. Debbie has taught many energy-filled workshops nationwide for guilds and shops nationally and internationally. She has appeared on Simply Quilts and on QNNTV.com’s Quilter’s Coffee.

Jennifer Chiaverini

Jennifer Chiaverini: You’ve no doubt heard of the Elm Creek Quilts series of novels by Jennifer Chiaverini, who will be a keynote speaker at QM’s Block Party. Come and meet Jennifer and hear “Patchwork Stories: Jennifer Chiaverini and
the World of Elm Creek Quilts.”

And that’s just the beginning of what we have planned! There will also be classes with Lynda Howell, Monique Dillard and Carolyn McCormick. Carolyn Beam and I will be teaching, too. More on all of that later…there’s so much to look forward to!

We’ll be talking about the Block Party often in the months to come. We’d sure love to have you join us August 2–4 in Historic Williamsburg!

Registration opens this evening at 6 pm Eastern at quiltmaker.com.

Bonnie Hunter's Lady of Lake Erie appears in the May/June Quiltmaker.

In the May/June issue of Quiltmaker, you’ll find Lady of Lake Erie, a quilt by Bonnie Hunter. It’s a classic design, awash in scraps of blue and white. To celebrate, we’re having a giveaway of five autographed copies of Bonnie’s newest book, Scraps & Shirttails II. If you’ve yet to discover Bonnie and the great scrap quilts she makes, you’ll want to visit quiltville.com and Bonnie’s blog. See some of the quilts from this book here.

Leave a comment for your chance to win an autographed copy!

Leave a comment here by midnight, Monday, June 6 for your chance to win (wasn’t it nice of Kansas City Star Quilts and Bonnie to donate them?). You never know—we might sneak in some fabric to use in your next scrap quilt! (Yes, that’s a very long giveaway, but newsstand readers need a chance, too.) The winners have been chosen and notified. They are Lori Morton, Sherril McGann, Joanna Perry, Diana Simpson and Annaleena Horning. Congratulations and thanks to everyone who commented!

Good-Natured Warning: Making These Little Blocks is Like Eating M&Ms…Hard to Stop!

I started making these blocks about five years ago as “Leaders & Enders” a la Bonnie Hunter at quiltville.com, but I had so much fun making them–they soon took over my Brain-Free Sewing Zone. Darlene Zimmerman used this block in her Bloomin’ 30s design for Quiltmaker’s Small Quilts last summer.

Little Christmas Windmills

Here is one little 4″ block:

There is only one patch size in this block: 1.5″ x 2.5″

Each block takes 4 patches of Color #1 and 4 patches of Color #2.

Join each Color #1 patch to a Color #2 patch.

Arranging the patches like they are in the next photo will help you begin to see the block design.

Join these into pairs like so:

You can also look at it this way—you sew both pairs together in the same exact way. In the picture above, one is rotated to show the block design. In the picture below, they are oriented identically. This is how I sew them together—it’s easier for me to make them match than to try and visualize the block design and sew them as shown above.

Rotate one and sew the sections together to complete the block.

Make as many blocks as you want and sew them together into rows. The little quilt shown is set 6 x 7 for a total of 42 blocks. I cut strips 2″ wide for the borders.

In the Brain-Free Sewing Zone, I make lots of these little blocks. Whenever I’m cutting strips for anything, I always cut a 2.5″ strip too and throw it into my pile. So I have lots of 2.5″ strips ready.

This is a very small portion of the 2.5" strips I have cut.

When I need Brain-Free Activity, I cut the strips at 1.5″ intervals to give me the patches I need for this block. I have thousands of these patches, 1.5″ x 2.5″.

I have made them into hundreds of these Little Windmill blocks.

When I want a Brain-Free Project, I think of a color scheme and pull blocks in those colors. It always seems to work! Here I pulled fabrics while thinking “yellow and orange.”

For this group, I pulled blocks while thinking “blue and green.”

Here’s a completed quilt I did a while back, thinking “blue, green and purple.”

Have some fun making Little Windmills of your own. If you think “bright holiday colors,” maybe your quilt will come out something like this one. It’s next to be quilted, so I can hang it up in the next few days—because the Countdown to Christmas continues!

Diane's Little Christmas Windmills quilt top

Today’s Featured Designers

1. Sarah Maxwell/Dolores Smith: homesteadhearth.blogspot.com

2. Lynda Milligan/Nancy Smith: greatamericanquilt.blogspot.com

3. Bonnie Hunter: quiltville.blogspot.com

4. Carrie Nelson: lavieenrosie.typepad.com

5. Celine Perkins: perkinsdrygoods.com/blog

6. Heidi Pridemore: heidipridemore.blogspot.com

7. Jane Quinn: quiltinginthecountry.com/newsletter

8. Kari Ramsay: freshcutquilts.blogspot.com

9. Gerri Robinson: plantedseeddesigns.com

10. Scarlett Rose: scarlettrose.com

11. Benita Skinner: victorianaquiltdesigns.com

12. Anita Grossman Solomon: makeitsimpler.blogspot.com

13. Monica Solorio-Snow: thehappyzombie.com/blog

14. Angie Hodapp, Susan Geddes and Dana Jones, Quilters Newsletter (our sister publication): quiltersnewsletter.com/blogs

Today’s Featured Sponsors:
(we’ve got prizes from all of them and look for giveaways on the first three sites as well)

1. Blackberry Quilts

2. Fat Quarter Shop

3. Hoffman California Fabric (giveaway on Twitter)

4. Martingale & Company

Be sure to scroll down for other active giveaways! An asterisk (*) in the title means there’s still time to play along.

Here are a few more blocks for you to enjoy.

Love Apple by Jo Morton

Holiday Tea by Melissa Harris and Arlene Stamper

Wool Crazy Crow by JoAnn Mullaly

For a chance to win your own copy of Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks, please leave a comment mentioning a blog/website you visited from today’s featured designers. We’ll pick winners on Friday.

Be sure to come back tomorrow (Friday) and look for both the Day 5 post and for your chance to win in our Big Bundle Giveaway! Loads of fabric, books, patterns, thread and of course, copies of 100 Blocks will be making their way to some very lucky quiltmakers. You could be one of them!

The front of Snuggle Sampler is the May/June ’10 cover quilt. Plus you can view detail photos of the blocks in our gallery.

Quiltmaker May/June '10

Quiltmaker July/Aug '10

Part 1 of the series can be found in May/June ’10 with Part 2 to finish the quilt appearing in July/Aug ’10. You can buy those issues at QuiltAndSewShop.com.

On to another backing. In this case Theresa Eisinger didn’t piece anything extra for the back of her Pinwheel Pirouette quilt. She used muslin for the back, but you can see below how she kept changing the bobbin thread to match the top so that none of her quilting threads from the bottom show up on the top.

Pinwheel Pirouette--Front

Pinwheel Pirouette--Back

Pinwheel Pirouette--Detail, Front

Pinwheel Pirouette--Detail, Back

Bonnie Hunter, who gives a great scrappy block idea in the Addicted to Scraps column inside every issue of QM, has a backing plan that’s part of her Scrap User’s System.

Bonnie Hunter's backing for Ocean Waves. (Used with permission.)

Bonnie cuts her large scraps into 10.5″ squares and pieces them together for a great scrappy backing. Read more about why she cuts 10.5″ squares at the bottom of her Scrap User’s System and see more pieced backs from Bonnie.

What about you? Got any fun pictures of how you’ve made an interesting backing?

We’re kicking off 2010 with a  new column, Addicted to Scraps, by one of my favorite scrap quilters, Bonnie Hunter. Bonnie sent me a funny screen capture recently after her son posted about his “famous” quilting mom on Facebook:

Have you seen French General’s fabric line Rouenneries for Moda? It got a lot of buzz at Spring Market ’09 and now it’s showing up in quilts and stores. Carolyn Beam, QM’s Creative Editor, designed a fantastic pair of quilts with a twin size and bonus doll quilt. (QM Kits of Duette will be available in early December.)

Our 11th pattern designed with Project Linus in mind will be flying high in this issue with Kite ‘n Kaboodle, designed by me with fabric from P&B Textiles.

Leave a comment and tell me what quiltmaking skill you’re looking forward to improving in 2010 by 3 pm MST on Tuesday and I’ll give away this color option + binding fabric from Courtyard made from Maywood Studio fabric in Quiltmaker’s Favorites, Spring ’09 issue.

And the winner is #24, Sarah Vee! Congratulations!

So the giveaway is over, but we’re finding these answers fascinating as we plan content for 2010. I’d love to see more answers–who knows you may influence what goes into Quiltmaker next year!

1. Share the projects you make using a block from 100 Blocks at www.flickr.com/groups/100blocks2009/
2. Share your Christmas Lights Mystery quilts (or tops) at www.flickr.com/groups/christmaslightsmysteryquilt/ (Christmas Lights is a 3-part mystery series from Bonnie Hunter in Quiltmaker’s July/August ’09, September/October ’09 and November/December ’09 issues.)

I don’t know what yet, but I’ll give a prize to someone (randomly selected) who posts a Christmas Lights photo by 2 pm MST on  Friday, November 13 (it could be your lucky Friday the 13th)! I’ll do flickr prizes for 100 blocks when more people have had a chance to get the magazine.

Claudianne is the winner of 100 Blocks and some scrumptious batiks from Hoffman for posting her Christmas Lights Mystery quilt in our flickr group. Congratulations!

(Updated to answer Bingo Bonnie–post tops or quilts in the Christmas Lights Mystery flickr group–if  you’ve got your blocks sewn together, you’re much further along than me!)

The problem was that I couldn’t remember what they were for. A mystery quilt seemed to ring a bell, so after poking around the web, I decided maybe they’d been intended for a Bonnie Hunter mystery, probably the first one, called Orange Crush. I’m not sure why I would have completed Step 2, when it seems I didn’t complete any of the other steps. I guess that’s part of the mystery.

So I looked through Bonnie’s steps and decided on a color scheme of sorts and started sewing. I made these:

And I made these:

I wanted to incorporate these yummy poison greens:

The blocks started coming together. There are two sets of blocks. One set looks like this on point:

Up to now, I’ve been happy. I love the way the indigo blues play with the poison greens, and I love the accent of bubblegum pink.

The other set of blocks looks like this on point:

I don’t like these quite as much, but I have high hopes for putting them all together. Except that when I put them together, I didn’t like the effect at all!

So what would happen if I set the blue/green blocks straight?

Or what would happen if I set the yellow blocks straight?

At this point I’m letting it all percolate. I’m not sure they’re exciting enough when separated, but I don’t like them all together either. So in a fit of creative rebellion, I put them all aside and made these funky doodads.

They’re cut freehand and they’re weird but I think they have potential. Or maybe they’ll become part of a guild program called “Miserable Failures.” I’ll keep you posted on both fronts. If you have suggestions for any of these projects, I’d love to hear them.

So the five winners of Scraps & Shirttails are:

92: Ginny Worden

136: Heather

176: Maureen S

119: Robyn

72: Marian Sayers

Congratulations! You should have an email from me asking for your mailing address.

Don’t forget our Bonnie Hunter Special on sale now. You get 4 issues that feature Bonnie’s articles and patterns, including July/August ‘09 to start the Mystery series all for $10.99.

New: Are you making Christmas Lights? Copy the button below to add to your website or blog and link back to quiltmaker.com!