This one is not to be missed…the biggest challenge ever at Harry Potter Paper Piecing with an unbelievably awesome prize! Click on the above image for full details.
New Challenge at Harry Potter Paper Piecing
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Tag Archives: paper piecing
Batiks On Black Deadline!
This is it! The deadline for Batiks On Black is next week!
Blocks have been coming in and they are all gorgeous! For a small sampling, check out the BoB Flickr Group.
If you’re participating and haven’t yet sent your blocks in, please get them in the mail and email me the number you’re entering so your name can be included in the drawing!
Click here for more details!
Have a sewhooked little Christmas
A little Christmas Cheer from the sewhooked flickr group!
by sewtobed on flickr
by ramblequeen on flickr
by Jennifer T.
by liljabs on flickr
Lots more great quilts in the flickr Christmas quilts group!
More Christmas cheer from sewhooked:
If you make a Sew Awesome Craft or any pattern, craft or recipe from sewhooked, I’d love to see a photo. Email me or add it to the sewhooked flickr group.
vlog: TTMT – Hats, Blocks & Sue
In which I share lots of hats, Christmas Cottage Swap blocks, a few ornaments and an update on Operation Save Sue!
- Batiks On Black – Deadline Extended!
- Candy Corn Crochet Hat
- CD Canister Yarn Ball Cozy
- Operation Save Sue
- All About Paper Piecing
If you make a Sew Awesome Craft or any pattern, craft or recipe from sewhooked, I’d love to see a photo. Email me or add it to the sewhooked flickr group.
vlog #33 – Talking Turkey & Tim Tams
In which I discuss turkey crafties, Tim Tams and quilts made of underpants
- sewhooked
- sewhooked blog
- Shae’s Y-Front Quilt
- quilting by (Shannon)
- Crochet Turkey
- Linus
- Linus Blog
- Tim Tams Australia
- Tim Tams U.S.A.
If you make a Sew Awesome Craft or any pattern, craft or recipe from sewhooked, I’d love to see a photo. Email me or add it to the sewhooked flickr group.
Quilting: Sweet Honey Bee
Dianne Ferguson, owner of Honey Bee Quilt Store with her Harry Potter blocks
Since the summer of this year, I have had the great pleasure of being the Paper Piecing instructor for Honey Bee Quilt Store in Austin, Texas.
What I didn’t expect was that not would Honey Bee embrace me and my paper piecing classes (which several of the employees have taken!), but both the store owner (Dianne, shown above) and Kerry (who I will get a photo of with her blocks!) would both work on Harry Potter quilts using both my patterns and Guest Designer patterns from sewhooked! Every time one of them shows me their quilty progress, I get more excited about their future quilts. They’re both using gorgeous fabrics for their blocks and their stacks get a little taller each time I visit.
Tomorrow, I’m teaching Intro to Paper Piecing at Honey Bee to a full house!
Stop by the shop on December 6, 2009 at 1:00 pm for Open House to meet next session’s instructors, get a peek at the classes and sign up early before they fill up. I’ll be there along with other instructors for questions and just to hang out and meet potential students!
My intro technique class and a new class, Paper Piecing + Curves (New York Beauty block) will be offered in the Spring. Many of the wonderful kits and projects offered at Honey Bee include paper piecing, so if you haven’t learned yet and are anywhere near the Austin area, join me for a fun technique class in the spring.
Intro to Paper Piecing, February 20, 2009
Paper Piecing + Curves (New York Beauty Block) – Date TBA
For those of you that didn’t catch it earlier in the week, one of sewhooked’s own Guest Designers, Cat Magraith, was featured on the Honey Bee Blog after her visit here to the U.S. and some seriously quilty shopping at Honey Bee!
vlog: TTMT – Candy Corn On My Mind
In this week’s TTMT:
- sewhooked
- sewhooked blog
- Harry Potter Paper Piecing LJ community
- Twilight Crafts LJ community Black/Red Swap
- paperpieced LJ community
- The Linus Connection
- Linus Comments!
- Monk’s Bag
- Oh Wavy Baby Crochet Blanket Pattern
- About The Secret World
If you make a Sew Awesome Craft or any pattern, craft or recipe from sewhooked, I’d love to see a photo. Email me or add it to the sewhooked flickr group.
Give Paper Piecing A Chance
Wingless Wyrm available in the sewhooked shop
Hello, my name is Jennifer, and I am a paper piecer.
And a paper pieced designer.
And I teach paper piecing online and in real life.
And I talk about it on my blog, vlog, and to anyone that will listen.
And I run several paper piecing communities and belong to several others.
Okay, how about a paper piecing addict?
It’s true, it’s true, I love paper piecing. LOVE. Capital, bold and highlighted, burn-your-eyeballs-out-huge-flashing font love!
What is it about paper piecing? I can’t speak for others, but I can speak for me.
Paper piecing is, as you may or may not know, a quilting technique that produces a perfect mirror image in fabric of whatever pattern you may be attempting.
When I say perfect, I mean perfect. Whatever you see on the pattern is what your fabric will be when it’s done.
I love the intricacies of paper piecing, the way I can choose to make my design appear any way I want, how I can tweak this line or that to make the appearance of the finished pieced express whatever it is I want to express.
Mostly, I just love the control I have over the art I’m creating. Traditional patterns are great, but I loved to be tested, pushed and challenged. I love to be different and to bring all my friends, old, new and not-yet-met along for the quilty ride.
For years, I worked on Harry Potter Paper Piecing as a fan of J.K. Rowling’s work. I cut my teeth on those patterns. They have been a gift to me as much as they have been my gift back to the fandom that has given me so very much. These days, I feel a bit like the Mother of HP Paper Piecing, beaming with pride every time I get an email saying “I’m learing to paper piece just to make your patterns!” or there is a new designer that starts creating their own patterns after trying mine. There’s no way to express how amazing that feels!
Since 2007, I’ve been working on a book of original, never-before-published designs. The manuscript is in rough draft stage and every block and sample piece is completed. I’m insanely proud of the work as being not only fun and whimsical, but original and interesting, too. I was briefly contracted for my book, and then the recession hit and ripped my contract right from under my feet. Since then, I’ve been sending my proposal to an increasingly longer list of publishers, with one negative after another.
It has, in a word, been frustrating. Paper piecing is what I do. I love other crafts, but it owns me. I make it, teach it and share it. It’s the one craft that I could not live without.
Will I give up? Heck no! I’m exploring other options as I continue to plow through the list of publishers until I find one that fits and sees my work as new and exciting instead of “not mainstream.”
crafty reminders!
Just a friendly reminder that if you’re participating in the Happy Halloween Challenge or the Black & Red swap, you’ve got just about two weeks left to finish your crafty goodness in order to participate.
Please click on each banner for more details.
paper piecing: The sewhooked Sampler
Occasionally, when testing patterns I’ve designed, and whenever it’sappropriate, I piece sets of blocks in the same fabrics. My intention in this is to eventually have not only tested the patterns, but to have samples to scan and eventually a set of blocks that can be pieced together and donated to The Linus Connection.
Earlier this year, I did have enough blocks for a 3×3 quilt, but decided that wasn’t quite what I wanted. I love Cat Magraith’s chicken patterns, available through the sewhooked Guest Designer page, so I decided to make a few of those, too.
Not all the blocks were exactly the same size, so I added borders in coordinating colors, then squared them all up to, if memory serves, 10 1/2″.
If you like trying out paper pieced blocks, or are maybe just learning, and don’t have a project in mind, consider piecing together a sampler and donating it to a local blanket-making charity. There are charities all over the world that take handmade quilts and yarn blankets and usually finding the one near you is one Google search away!
Included in the sewhooked sampler:
Row 1: Sasha’s Tree, Jar v.2, and Star of My Heart (available only in my etsy store)
Row 2: Scrappy Heart, Scrappy Heart II, and Wonky Log Cabin #1
Row 3: Wonky Log Cabin #2, unposted heart pattern (from a Demo I did for Linus), Jar v.3
Row 4: Hen with Chick, Rooster, and Chicks (all by Cat Magraith)
Like Star of My Heart, listed above, I’ve recently started posting new patterns for sale in my etsy store. Part of the purpose of this is to help fund sewhooked. I don’t currently have advertising or sponsors and I pay all the fees for the website and blog out of my own pocket. Now, I do love sharing free patterns and doing so has given me the ability to hone my skills to the point where designing is becoming my work-from-home career. I briefly considered a paypal donation button, but what would you get from that? I’m not a charity, I’m just one woman who loves to share, teach and inspire and I have done my best to do just that, for free, for many years now.
If you enjoy sewhooked and all it has to offer, consider purchasing a pattern or other item from the etsy store now or in the future. If not from etsy, I also have a number of items available through zazzle. All proceeds go right back into sewhooked and keeping all it’s free content online.
- What you’d be supporting: sewhooked dot org – Free patterns, crochet & crafts by Jennifer Ofenstein
- Etsy – ofenjen is sewhooked – handcrafts and original designs by Jennifer Ofenstein
- Zazzle – Sewhooked – made to share – t-shirts, totes and buttons, designed by Jennifer Ofenstein
If you make a Sew Awesome Craft or any pattern, craft or recipe from sewhooked, I’d love to see a photo. Email me or add it to the sewhooked flickr group.
Sewhooked 