Blog

Welcome to Week 7 of the Big Ocean Sew Along, our final week! Now that we have a quilt top put together, we need to decide how to finish it. This week I’ll share with you my process for deciding how to quilt each of the Big Ocean quilts I’ve made, and give you some tips for quilting yours. Be sure to join us tonight at 4pm on Zoom at the Big Ocean Sew Along Wrap Up Party! We’ll show off our quilt tops and other progress, and troubleshoot quilting plans if anyone needs help!  There are so many options...

It’s hard to believe it is already week 6 of the Big Ocean Sew Along! We have done all of the design work. All that’s left is to sew our blocks together, and finish our quilts! These last steps are about using whatever small tips and tricks you have for using precision and sewing accuracy to influence the final look of your Big Ocean quilt. Today, I’ll be sharing a few techniques I use for that.  Now that your design is final, you are ready to start sewing our blocks together. At this point in the process, take a picture...

Welcome to Big Ocean Week 5! We are more than halfway through making our quilt and the end is in sight. Be sure to join us at our Zoom progress party tonight! You can share your Big Ocean quilt progress, and ask the group if you have any questions about colors, HSTs, or any other Big Ocean quilt questions. Check your emails for the link. It feels like I’ve been making HSTs for days and days, but with the foreground designed, all we have left to do is design and sew the background HSTs, then sew our blocks together next week! I...

Welcome to Week 4 of the Big Ocean Sew Along! This week we’ll be designing our quilt. Over the last week, I have finished sewing most of my foreground HSTs. There were some colors that I removed for now since I never really reached for those colors. If you edit any colors out, set them aside in case you decide to add them back in later.   Before you start designing, make piles of blocks with similar color combinations if you want to go with a "color theme" for each block. You might have blocks with variations of aqua and...

We’re in week 3 of the Big Ocean Sew Along, and we’re ready to start sewing. All of your fabrics should be cut. Maybe you made a few edits along the way. I edited a few colors out of my pull and added others. Let’s sew some squares!    The Big Ocean quilt is all about design. When we sew our HSTs, we want to be sure to give ourselves a lot of color combinations to choose from when building our foreground and background designs. You can cut your squares on the diagonal and put them up on the design...

Welcome to Week 2 of the Big Ocean Sew Along! I hope you enjoyed choosing your colors, checking the value breakdown of your fabrics, and getting into a good space to be creative and play with your fabulous fabrics! I am excited to start cutting it all up! This week, we are going to learn some tips for accurate cutting, talk about why I like to cut my HST squares as big as I do, and get ready to start designing our quilts in Week 3.   The Big Ocean quilt can be made with any cut of fabric – fat...