Thanks to CotSG, I’ve actually tried some hybrid piecing, though on the hunters star first. I love the idea of being able to use both machine and hand piecing, BUT I have a preference for hand sewing. I love its precision and portability. I like watching TV while sewing quietly. On the other hand (haha!), machine piecing can be very quick.
I’ve machine pieced on my old Bernina before, but using rotary cut pieces, so no lines to watch, just edges. With Inklingo, I don’t have to be so exact with my cutting, but it means that I can’t rely on the edges while sewing on the machine. I blamed the machine for my mismatched lines and borrowed my friend’s Pfaff (it has the walking foot feature). I also bought an open-toed foot so that I could see the sewing line. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a way to pin the fabric so that the bottom doesn’t move. Is this normal?

So the patches are done and now I’m at this stage. I really can’t decide on how I want to put the blocks together and it’s really frustrating. What do you guys think? Are any of these combos working? Any other suggested layouts?

I used to subscribe to Australian Patchwork and Quilting and buy any other quilting magazines and books that caught my eye and had patterns I loved. I stopped after a few years and accumulating several binders of “favourites.”

When I decided to make another baby quilt, I pulled out the binders and sifted through them, looking for ideas that would make a charming and fast baby quilt. And hopefully, Inklingo-able. Imagine my delight when I saw this hunters star pattern, not long after Linda released her collections!

Okay, so small and fast, I decided, so I must get the largest hunters star collection. Once I knew which size patch (6″ making a 12″ block), I grabbed the EQ file from Linda’s blog (so handy!) and started drawing the quilt. This was my original design idea.

These were the fabrics I selected after a trip to spotlight without a copy of this idea.

Turns out, they don’t quite match the original idea. I took this photo as color reference to test in EQ7. I considered making each ofthe blocks out of four colors but ultimately decided to keep it bold and simple. I have these two similar plans to lay out when the blocks are finished.

I think I’ll end up going with the second idea but I won’t know for sure until I have the blocks in front of me.

I’m still finishing the binding on the first baby quilt, but couldn’t resist making a start on the next one. It’s going to use the Hunter’s Star 12″ Inklingo collection and in rainbow colors since I don’t know the gender of the forthcoming child. I spent the evening doing all the printing and here’s the pile ready to cut!

Cutting out my shapes.

After some feedback, I think I’m settled on this combination. I tried it with the reds, but I think the complementary colors of yellow and oranges provide a nicer and greater contrasting accent.

This is how the combo works with the red option:

So Linda is doing a mystery quilt! I’m quite excited and the first clue sends us to find fabric in the following format: light, medium, dark and accent. I don’t have the yardage, so I went through my stash (it’s meager compared to other stashes I’ve seen and some of these fabrics were bought a decade ago!) and pulled out these choices.

I’m still undecided on my medium values, so I may go through my blues and purples for another option.

What do you think? Too disparate on the colour wheel? Not sure which one is the accent?

I just realized that I never posted the photo of the completed rug! Looking at this awful phone photo, a few thoughts come to mind:

• The binding looks terrible. I hand-sewed it on and it is so wrinkled!
• I didn’t sew the patches using a scant quarter-inch and on the smaller patches, I should have gone further out. The block size was smaller and the whole rug much less than straight.
• My quilting doesn’t look particularly good. Perhaps I needed to stabilize it in a frame after all.