Selecting the Fabric
First things first, the fabric selection. If any of you have been to
my studio you know that I have a very large stash – well huge
in fact, so lots of fabrics to choose from. My criteria is that the
fabric had to be something fun, bright and summery.
I decided on this dragonfly fabric seeing how dragonflies are
only here in the summer. I had purchased it a couple of years
ago from one of my local quilt shops and the fabric has been
waiting to be used in that perfect project. It has a lovely shimmer to it and I thought I need shimmery fabric to go with it. I
had also purchased a whole stack of fat quarters that were shimmery from another shop and figured they would go perfectly
with the dragonfly fabric.
And they do, don’t you think?
My fabric selection
Easy Quilt Pattern Blocks
With so many shimmery fat quarters in awesome colors I
decided to create some blocks with them for the center of the
placemats. Nothing elaborate, just some fun playing with strips
and squares and curves. Since I hadn’t done a lot of piecing with
the Quilt Expression 4.2 I figured why not make a few blocks.
Strip Blocks
I used the green and yellow-green fabrics to create a set of
strips. Each fabric was cut a different width to give some variation in the block. Using the IDT system with the quarter inch
foot on the Quilt Expression 4.2 makes for nice straight seams
and even feed of the fabric.
A good idea when sewing strips of fabric together, especially
longer ones, is to sew one set of strips in one direction and the
next set in the opposite direction. For example, if the one end )