On-Demand Paper Piecing with Freezer Paper Workshop

If you're like me, you love the weird angles and the precision that paper piecing makes possible, but you hate ripping out the bits of paper after you finish making a block. I switched to using freezer paper years ago after discovering that using freezer paper means I'd never have to rip out those bits of paper again. Cue the angel chorus! Removing the freezer paper is like peeling the back off a sticker 🎉 It's so much less hassle and so much faster.

If you've been around here for a while, you may know that I periodically teach a workshop called Paper Piecing with Freezer Paper. I love teaching other quilters how to paper piece with freezer paper so they can skip ripping out bits of paper, too.

Teaching live workshops is lots of fun, but it also has its limitations...I can only host so many workshops, and you can only sign up if you're going to be free at the time the workshop is happening. That's why I'm excited to tell you about my on-demand Paper Piecing with Freezer Paper workshop!

Included in the workshop

With the on-demand workshop, you'll learn:

• what tools you need for paper piecing with freezer paper (you probably already own most of them)
• how to prepare the reusable freezer paper template. Yes, each template can be reused many times, so no more printing a template for each block.
• how to paper piece your blocks using freezer paper
• how to remove the freezer paper template. Well, really you know how to do that already, since it's like peeling the back off a sticker 😆

Along with the video lessons, when you enroll in the workshop, you'll receive:

• the Burst quilt pattern. Burst is scrappy and beginner-friendly and the pattern includes instructions for three sizes.

• the Storm quilt block pattern. Storm is a 12" block that creates a great secondary pattern when multiple blocks are sewn together.

• a discount code for my pattern shop, so you can save on other paper piecing patterns.

Enroll today

To learn the game-changing magic that is paper piecing with freezer paper, enroll in the on-demand workshop today! You won't miss ripping out the bits of paper at all 😂

Ombre Twirl Pattern Release

After releasing the Stripe Shuffle pattern on Saturday, I'm starting off the week with another pattern release! Ombre Twirl was last year's Stash Artists pattern for May and it is now available in my shop 😊

Ombre Twirl lets you turn your small light, medium, and dark scrap squares into a fun and vibrant quilt.

The pattern includes instructions for the 60" x 72" throw size I made, plus 48" square baby and 96" square queen sizes. 

As with any scrappy quilt, delving into the scraps to find the perfect lights, mediums, and darks is one of the best parts of making an Ombre Twirl quilt! Which colours do you know for sure you have enough of all three values to make multiple blocks? Which colours do you think you may not have all the values? I knew I'd have lights, mediums, and darks in blue and green no problem. I was surprised to find all my reds are the same medium or dark value, so there's no red block in my Ombre Twirl quilt. I couldn't get the ombre effect at all!

As a nice bonus, there are no points to match up in Ombre Twirl 😊 

If your scraps are calling you and asking to become an Ombre Twirl quilt, pick up your copy of the pattern today!

Stripe Shuffle Pattern Release

Do you have a list of things you want to do 'someday'? Things that don't have a deadline and so keep getting put off while you take care of the things that have the extra urgency given by someone else's expectation that you'll do them? My 'someday' list is either impressive or scary, depending on how you look at it, but it is ever so slightly shorter today as I get to cross off adding this pattern to my shop.

This pattern release has been a looooooong time coming! Back in 2018 I made the quilt top and shared the free pattern for it as my 5th blogging anniversary celebration. Last year, during WIPS-B-GONE, I finally finished that quilt and now I have updated the pattern to include instructions for baby and queen sizes along with the throw size. After spending years on my 'someday' list, the Stripe Shuffle pattern is now available!

The Stripe Shuffle block is stash-friendly and super-quick to piece. If you're looking for a last-minute graduation or wedding gift idea, this would work perfectly. It would look great in so many different colours, too! I couldn't resist mocking it up in a few variations. Of course, I love how it looks in all blues.

Spring colours are so pretty, too.

And the fall colours version makes me want a drink of hot apple cider.

What colours would you use? Or what should I mockup next? It's so fun seeing how a pattern would look in different colours.

Zach was my quilt holder the day I went out to get pictures for the cover of the pattern and for this post. It was windier than I was expecting, so it wasn't as quick as he might have liked. Quilts don't like to hang flat and straight when the wind is blowing even a little! 

Thankfully Zach humoured me long enough to get what I needed. I so appreciate my guys who go along with my quilt holding requests!

The quilting on my Stripe Shuffle was started in 2018 on my Kenmore machine, then finished last year on my Janome 6700. I quilted a daisy chain in the middle white stripes and wishbones in the outer white stripes. When I finished that, I felt like it still needed something more, so I added a string of large pebbles down the center of each of the wide teal, black, and grey stripes. The narrow coloured stripes aren't quilted.

For the quilting thread, I used white, black, a couple of greys, and a couple of teals to try to match the fabrics as much as possible. The colours don't show up well in this picture of the back, but the texture sure does!

It has been a while since I did such dense custom quilting on something that wasn't a mini or baby quilt and at times I felt like the quilting was never going to be finished! At the same time, it was nice to take my time and work through quilting each individual design. I love that there are many ways to make a quilt, so we can do what we feel like in the moment. Dense custom quilting? Go for it! A quick, all-over meander with some flowers thrown in? Perfect choice! Hand quilting? It'll be gorgeous!

If what you feel like making in this moment is your own Stripe Shuffle quilt, you can pick up a copy of the pattern in my shop!

My First Quilt with Sarah Ruiz

Welcome to another My First Quilt interview! Today we get to learn about Sarah Ruiz's first quilt.

Sarah is a quilter and aerospace engineer living in Houston, Texas. She is also a quilting teacher, a pattern designer, and a tech editor.

You can connect with Sarah at her website and on Instagram.

Here's Sarah and her first quilt!

What year did you make your first quilt? What prompted you to make it?

I have 2 answers to this question. I made my first quilt *top* in 2003 -- it was a t-shirt quilt that I made with shirts from several 5K and 10K races I had run over the preceding few years. I worked on it at my parents' house using my mom's 1970s-era sewing machine. I never finished it, so it remains my longest-running WIP! Here's a post about it.

A more appropriate answer is that I made my first *finished* quilt in early 2012. At this point I had made a couple simple sewing projects like a pillowcase and tote bag, and decided to make a quilt for a friend's baby. Here's a post about that one.

What techniques were used in that first quilt? Did you quilt it yourself?

It was simple patchwork squares -- very beginner friendly! I quilted it myself on my $100 sewing machine by stitching in the ditch. At the time, I didn't know anything about longarms or that quilting was something you could have someone else do.

Who taught you to make the quilt?

Blog tutorials plus a class on binding that I took at my local Joann store! I did not have anyone in my immediate family who sewed or quilted, and I consider myself self-taught. Each time I wanted to do something new, I'd look up an internet tutorial or simply learn by trial and error.

Are the colours you chose for your first quilt ones you would still choose today?

Yes and no. I still think the color palette -- which I pulled directly from the white fabric print -- is nice, but if I were making this quilt today I would look for different prints and/or more variation in tone and value.

Did you fall in love with quilting right away? Or was there a gap between making the first quilt and the next one?

There was an 8-year gap between my "first" first quilt (the t-shirt top) and my "second" first quilt (the baby quilt). I didn't have a sewing machine, and was occupied with other creative pursuits plus working part-time on a master's degree. But after finally buying my own sewing machine in 2011 and making that baby quilt in early 2012, I was off to the races and haven't stopped since.

Where is the quilt now?

I gifted it to my friend who was having her first child. As far as I know, they still have it! Looking back, the quilt is somewhat wonky, and the fabrics aren't the same quality that I would use today -- but my friend has assured me that she enjoys being the owner of my very first quilt, flaws and all.

Is there anything you wish you could go back and tell yourself as you made that first quilt?

Just to have fun and buckle up for more! I love the quilting journey I've been on since making that quilt. Thirteen years later, my skills are significantly more developed and I have many new tools and notions. I have a much nicer sewing machine, a longarm, several bins of fabric, a dedicated sewing space, and all sorts of associated paraphernalia. But that first quilt is still a perfectly lovely quilt - and it was made without all of the bells and whistles. There are a lot of different ways to make a quilt you love.

Thanks, Sarah, for sharing the story of your first quilt(s)!

Shoo Fly Garden Quilt Tutorial

Months before I finished the EPP portion of my Hexie Rainbow quilt, I started thinking about what would be my next EPP project. I knew I didn't want to be without one, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do next. I considered buying a pattern from Jodi at Tales of Cloth (she has some beautiful ones!), but ultimately I decided I wanted to stick with hexies, but play with ones that were smaller than the 1" size I used for the Hexie Rainbow. 

I have to say, ½" hexies are so cute!

Once I settled on the ½" hexies, I needed a plan for them. I remembered the Flowers for Eleni quilt Jodi created with donated hexie flowers back in 2015 (including two flowers from me). There was something about the hexie flowers appliquéd to a background square that I loved, and I've wanted to do something similar ever since. 

I played in EQ8 with some different options. Sashing or no sashing? Offset blocks or straight set or on point? Eventually I settled on this, with shoo fly blocks formed by the stitch-and-flip corners and the cornerstones of the sashing. Ignore the one corner of the block that was added a little wonky and then repeated across the whole quilt; I haven't bothered to go back and fix it, but all the corners will be straight in the quilt. 

My quilt will finish at 54" x 69" and will require 154 hexie flowers. That's 1,078 hexies hand stitched into flowers, then hand stitched to their background squares, so I think I'm good for a travel project for a while 😊 I love having a project to take with me when we're driving around the province or traveling anywhere else, and I don't want to have to keep coming up with a new one, so a multi-year hand stitching project suits me just fine.

I have a few rules for myself as I make the blocks:

1. All the flowers will have yellow centers, and those fabrics will be repeated.

2. That means no yellow flowers.

3. No black flowers, since the shoo fly 'blocks' will be solid black. All other colours are fair game.

4. Flowers can be prints or solids.

5. All the hexies for a flower's petals are made from the same fabric.

6. I'm trying not to repeat fabrics for the flower petals, though it's possible I'll lose track of what I've already used and I'm not going to stress about it if something sneaks in for a second flower.

7. The backgrounds will be solid white and white-on-white prints.

I've been stitching flowers for a few months now and I have 31 made. 

I've also stitched some to their background squares and added the black stitch-and-flip corners so I could get an idea how they'd look together. Even without the sashing, I like where this is going!

For now, they're all hanging out on the side of my design wall, keeping my Kitchen Party blocks company. I love watching the collection grow!

Want to make a Shoo Fly Garden quilt of your own? Here's how!

For each block, you'll need:

• scraps for the flower petal hexies and the flower center hexie
• ½" hexie papers (see below for mine)
• 4 ½" square of white solid or tone-on-tone print
• 4 1 ½" squares of black solid
• thread to match your hexies
• thread or glue for basting the hexies
• small pins (optional, but very helpful)

Make a block

1. Print and cut out the hexie papers. Be sure to print at 'actual size' or '100% scaling'. The sides of the hexies should measure exactly ½".

2. Pin the hexie papers to the wrong side of your fabric scraps, leaving enough room between them for the seam allowance. A ¼" seam allowance looks huge compared to the ½" hexie paper, but you still need that full ¼" seam allowance. I love these tiny Clover applique pins for this, especially with the ½" hexies.

3. Cut out the fabric hexies. This doesn't need to be precise, as long as you have a good seam allowance. Because they're so small, they're easy to cut with scissors, which is what I've been doing. You need 6 for the flower petals and 1 for the flower center.

4. Thread baste or glue baste the hexies. I prefer to thread baste, only going through the fabric, not the papers. I have a tutorial on how to prepare shapes for English Paper Piecing you can check out if you've never done it before.

5. Once your hexies are all basted, stitch the flower together using a thread that blends with your fabric. I prefer to use a whip stitch, but you can also try the flat back method of stitching EPP to see what you prefer. Once the flower is stitched, remove the papers.

6. Fold the background square in half horizontally and vertically and finger press it to create creases. Using the creases to help, center the flower on the background square and pin it in place.

7. Again using a thread that blends with the fabric of your flower, stitch the flower to the background. I love the ladder stitch for this because it's almost completely invisible. You could also stitch them by machine if you prefer.

8. For the stitch-and-flip corners, you can draw a diagonal line from corner to corner on the wrong side of the black 1 ½" squares or you can eyeball it, which is what I've been doing. Normally I draw the lines, but these squares are small enough I'm comfortable winging it. Place a black square on the corner of the background square as shown and stitch from corner to corner.

9. Repeat for the other three corners.

10. Trim off the excess, leaving a ¼" seam allowance. 

11. Press the black triangles open. You have a finished block! Now go make a whole bunch more 😂

To make a quilt top

I don't have any pictures of this part because it's going to be quite a while yet before I get there!

1. Once you have all your blocks made, lay them out in whatever size layout you planned. Mine will be 11 x 14 (eventually). Here's how it would look for a 9 x 9 (44" square) baby quilt.

2. Cut your sashing and cornerstones.

• Sashing - 1 ½" x 4 ½" rectangles
• Cornerstones 1 ½" squares

3. Stitch the blocks, sashing, and cornerstones together into rows. Press the seams either open or towards the sashing.

4. Stitch the rows together to complete the quilt top.

If you make a Shoo Fly Garden block (or blocks), I'd love to see! Please tag me if you share it on social media or you can send me an email at devotedquilter@gmail.com.

My Hexie Rainbow quilt top took 8 years to make. I wonder how long my Shoo Fly Garden top will take! 

Use That Stash!

How many quilts do you think you could make with the fabric in your stash? If you're like me, it's probably quite a few! If you want to start using the fabric you already own, come join us inside the Stash Artists membership!

What's included in Stash Artists?

• 6 exclusive patterns each year

Stash Artists patterns are designed to be scrappy and stash-friendly. That means they use lots of different fabrics, rather than large amounts of just a few fabrics. The patterns are available only to members for at least a year from their release date.

• instant access to the Spin & Sparkle pattern

When you join Stash Artists, you'll be able to download the brand new Spin & Sparkle pattern. This giant scrappy pinwheel can be made in baby, throw, or queen sizes, and all sizes use the same number of HSTs.

• Instant access to the Reverberate baby quilt pattern

You'll also be able to download the Reverberate baby quilt pattern. This paper pieced pattern creates a fun secondary design between blocks.

• Sew Together Sessions

Quilty friends are the best, so let's sew together! Monthly Sew Together Sessions over Zoom allow us to stitch while we share about our favourite books, our travel plans, our families, and more. 

• Kitchen Party BOM

The Stash Artists 2025 block-of-the-month is Kitchen Party. It includes blocks that are traditionally pieced, paper pieced, and applique. Don't worry if any of those are new to you! There are video lessons in the membership to help you learn new techniques.

If you like what you see here, come join dozens of quilters making beautiful, scrappy quilts inside the Stash Artists membership! Don't delay, the doors are open for new members only through May 20th.

Join Stash Artists now!

Spin & Sparkle

I love pinwheel quilts, scrappy quilts, and the colour blue, so this new quilt checks all the boxes! Meet Spin & Sparkle 😍

Spin & Sparkle is the Stash Artists pattern for May (We're not talking about the fact that I still haven't blogged about the March pattern, Summer Dreamin' 😆 I'll get it posted eventually) The Spin & Sparkle pattern has baby, throw, and queen size instructions, all of them made with the same number of HSTs, just in different sizes. I made the baby size, since I'm still on a mission to use batting offcuts. Zach was thrilled to be hiding all 6'1" of himself behind the 48" quilt for these pictures!

To write a new pattern, I start by figuring out all the quilt math, so I know how many blocks I need, how many units, etc. Then I figure out the cutting instructions for the size I'm going to make (the other sizes usually get figured out later), then I make the sample quilt. When it comes to figuring out how many pieces to cut, HSTs are among the simplest blocks - you need 1 square of each fabric for every 2 HSTs. I know that. And yet somehow I still managed to cut, sew, and trim twice as many dark blue/light blue HSTs as I needed. I take that as incontrovertible proof that I am right to always send my patterns to a technical editor before they're released! Having someone else check my math will never be a bad idea.

When I was planning this quilt, I figured I would quilt it with the double-loop design that always makes me think of wind. That seemed appropriate for a giant pinwheel quilt, but the quilt had a different idea. Once the HSTs were all up on the design wall, the quilt started whispering that it wanted to be quilted with a big spiral. I resisted. I really don't enjoy walking foot quilting. I think it looks great, but it's incredibly boring to do, so I avoid it like the plague. The quilt insisted, though, and by the time the top was pieced I knew I'd have to quilt that spiral.

The quilt, of course, was right. The spiral was boring to do, but it does look fantastic!

I love how it looks from the back, too. It was a bit windy while we were at the beach, so getting straight pictures of the quilts was tough. You'll have to believe me when I say my Spin & Sparkle is not a parallelogram!

When I quilted the spiral for my Burst quilt, I got myself stitching in the wrong direction, so that the part of the quilt already quilted went to the right of the needle. That meant as I got closer to the edges of the quilt, more and more had to pass through the throat space. When I was getting ready to start this spiral, I was very aware of that, but I still started going in the wrong direction! Yes, this quilt did feel like a comedy of errors at times. Thankfully I realized it as soon as I started making the second pass of the spiral, so I stopped, ripped out the stitches, and started again in the right direction.

I used Aurifil 2600 to quilt the spiral. It's visible against the blue fabrics up close, but it's not distracting at all, and it's not noticeable from a distance. All you see from a distance is the lovely texture.

One of my favourite things about scrappy quilts is remembering where all the different fabrics came from or which projects they were previously used for. That floral binding the corner above? I made a skirt with that years ago. A bunch of the fabrics, both blues and low volumes, come from the years I was an Island Batik ambassador. They were so generous with their boxes of fabric that I may always have some in my stash! There are a couple of blues that I bought at a quilt shop in Canmore, Alberta, when Paul and I were on our 25th anniversary trip last summer. A scrap quilt is like a fabric collection of memories.

If you love scrappy quilts as much as I do, you'll love the Stash Artists membership. Doors will be opening for new members next week, so get on the waitlist to be sure you don't miss that. New members will get access to the Spin & Sparkle pattern as soon as they join, along with our current BOM, Kitchen Party.

I love designing and making these Stash Artists patterns and quilts! As I type this, background fabric for the next one is in the dryer, and I'm excited to start cutting into my stash of pink fabrics for it this week. And even though I haven't cut a single piece for that July quilt yet, I've been working on the design for the September quilt over the past few days, and I think I've settled on the colours for it. There's no chance I'll ever be bored, so long as I can make quilts!

Time For a Change

Today's post is a bit different. I've been thinking about this for months, and it's time to make a big change here at Devoted Quilter.

I've been struggling with writing the devotions for a long time. Not because of a change in my faith or anything like that, I just find I'm putting off the actual writing more and more. Or sometimes it's that I don't have anything I want to write about and I'm frantically searching for ideas. 

Any time I thought about stopping them, though, I felt anxious about it, without being able to put into words why I felt that way. One day I realized I worried that by not writing devotions, I'd be letting God down. As soon as I thought that, a line from the song Jireh, by Maverick City Music, went through my head: "I'll never be more loved than I am right now. Wasn't holding You up So there's nothing I can do to let You down." I actually laughed out loud! It felt like the sweetest reassurance from Him that it was okay to stop.

I've taken summer breaks the last few years, when I'd stop writing new devotions at the end of June and plan to start writing them again in September. This time I'm not setting an end date. I'm looking forward to reading my Bible each day without having the thought, 'How could I use this for a devotion?' in the back of my mind.

I don't feel like I'm finished writing for God, but I have no idea what that might look like in the future. To be honest, I'm kind of excited to see what He's planning. I've told Him the ball is in His court now, and asked Him to show me the way forward when the time is right.

Thank you for all the encouraging comments you've left on devotions over the years, and for emails you've sent telling me how they impacted you. That has always meant so much to me! Knowing God was using my words to speak to you amazed me every time.

Quilting content will continue as usual. The Devoted Quilter blog isn't going anywhere! In fact, I'll be back tomorrow with a new quilt finish to share 😊

Kitchen Party BOM - Blocks 3 and 4

I had every intention of not falling behind on my Stash Artists Kitchen Party BOM blocks this year...and yet here I am already playing catch up 😂

In March I went to Nova Scotia for almost a week for my Nanny's funeral, which meant I wasn't home sewing or doing the behind-the-scenes work that goes into a quilt pattern design business. I was also running the Roman Adventure QAL and Devotional Journey at the same time, which really increases the amount of computer work that needs to be done. Between those two things, I didn't get the March blocks made.

April just felt busy the whole month. I was still running the QAL, Nathan had a sports tournament, we went to pick Zach up from university, I wrote two quilt patterns, and fulfilled a huge wholesale pattern order (yay!). Phew! With all that, I didn't get the April blocks made, either.

I was determined not to keep falling behind, though, so on Wednesday, the last day of April, I pulled everything out, put blocks 1 and 2 back up on the design wall, and cut the fabrics for the March blocks (block 3). Then on Thursday I sewed all eight of them.

Block 3 is paper pieced, so of course I used freezer paper to make mine. I always hated ripping out the bits of paper after finishing a paper pieced block, so freezer paper is the only way to go for me! Did you know I have an on-demand Paper Piecing with Freezer Paper workshop? You can learn this game changing technique anytime that fits your schedule and then you'll never have to rip out the bits of paper again either. Seriously, it's like magic!

Block 4 (for April) is an applique block, which was perfect for working on while chatting with my mom on the phone and then listening to a podcast. Sam Hunter and Kitty Wilkin kept me company while I cut out and fused the shapes for the two blocks.

I'm calling them finished for now. I still haven't decided if I'm going to stitch around the applique shapes for blocks 1, 4, and eventually 11, before assembling the quilt top or if I'll stitch around them with the quilting. I still have a few months to decide 😊

This isn't anywhere close to the intended arrangement, but I love seeing the blocks all on the design wall together.

So now I'm all caught up...until the May blocks release on Monday 😆