In this episode, Lynn and Pam chat about tips and tricks for quilting large quilts on a domestic machine, and whether size matters (when it comes to quilts). This episode is brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop!

The quilt hanging behind us is our pattern Little Pink Houses; it’s a jelly roll friendly quilt pattern. Check it out on our shop!

Helpful links and tips from this episode:

• Our podcast episodes on Just Wanna Quilt with Dr. Elizabeth Townsend Gard; just scroll down to see our episodes.
• Helpful products for quilting large quilts on a domestic sewing machine:
  • Dog grooming arms  with muslin clamps like photographers use can be helpful for supporting the weight of large quilts
  • Weighted hoops, like the Quilt Halo from Purple Daisies Quilting
  • Grippy gloves, like Machingers (or get them from the dollar or discount store!)

• Today’s episode was brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop! Your source for quilt patterns, notions, and show merchandise.

• Come chat in our What’s Up Stitches? group on Facebook!
• Thanks to our production partners 77peaches enterprises and Big Think Productions.
• Audio only versions of the show are available in the Hip to be a Square quilting podcast feed.
• Our next Virtual Stitch-In is Friday October 12 at 7pm US Eastern.
• Our next Book Club is Friday October 27 at 7pm US Eastern!
• If you enjoyed it, help spread the word on your blog, or share on social media and tag us with #TheStitchTVShow!

In this episode, Lynn and Pam chat about thread painting and thread sketching, and the basics of fusible applique. This episode is brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop!

The quilt hanging behind us is our pattern Nifty Christmas; it’s a charm pack (or 5″ square) friendly quilt. Get a copy of the digital pattern at our shop, or even check out the pre-fused applique kit for ready-made fun!

Helpful links and tips from this episode:

• Karen Stone has an iquilt class on her English Paper Piecing by Machine technique
• Thread Painting
  • Fabri-Solvy for thread painting:
  • Hot knife for cutting the thread painting piece
• Fusible applique:
  • Lightboxes are helpful for fusible applique
  • The Sewing pre-fused applique kit is also available from our shop!

• Today’s episode was brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop! Your source for quilt patterns, notions, and show merchandise.

• Come chat in our What’s Up Stitches? group on Facebook!
• Thanks to our production partners 77peaches enterprises and Big Think Productions.
• Audio only versions of the show are available in the Hip to be a Square quilting podcast feed.
• Our next Virtual Stitch-In is Friday December 14 at 7pm US Eastern.
• Our next Book Club is Friday October 27 at 7pm US Eastern!
• If you enjoyed it, help spread the word on your blog, or share on social media and tag us with #TheStitchTVShow!

We’ve got some scheduled and some unscheduled time where you can find us at Quilt Market and International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX from Nov 3-9, 2018!

During Quilt Market:

• Friday, Nov 2 Schoolhouse at 11:00am in 352B: “Build Local Quilting Community with Online Content” by Pam and Lynn
• Friday, Nov 2 Schoolhouse at 11:30am in 352B: “Swipe Right for Quilts: Craft a Shop Social Media Brand” by Pam
• Saturday Nov 3- Monday Nov 5: Find us at our booth #107 on the show floor!

During International Quilt Festival:

• Thursday Nov 8, 10am – 2pm in the Connecting Threads Demo Area, Lynn is presenting “Scraptastic Fabric Postcards”
• Thursday Nov 8, 4pm – 6pm in the Connecting Threads Demo Area, Lynn is presenting “Rope Vases from Furl to Finish”
• Friday Nov 9, 10am – 12pm in the Connecting Threads Demo Area, Lynn is presenting “Crazy Modern Quilting”
• Friday Nov 9, at 2pm, meet Lynn and Pam in front of their quilt “Transform”!

In this episode, Pam and Lynn chat about hand-stitching and the color theory behind three-color quilts. This episode is brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop!

The quilt hanging behind us is our pattern Islands in the Stream; it’s been updated from the original magazine release to include both a lap and full-sized bed quilt! Get a copy of the digital pattern at our shop.

Helpful links and tips from this episode:

• Modern Patchwork Home (the book in which Pam has a quilt): https://amzn.to/2CJFS00
• Silicon mats for small irons: https://amzn.to/2D8v8JA
• Chenille needles: https://amzn.to/2CM289R
• Color wheel/matching tool: https://amzn.to/2EKwjRm
• Picture of Pam’s piece referenced in the show:

• Today’s episode was brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop! Your source for quilt patterns, notions, and show merchandise.

• Come chat in our What’s Up Stitches? group on Facebook!
• Thanks to our production partners 77peaches enterprises and Big Think Productions.
• Audio only versions of the show are available in the Hip to be a Square quilting podcast feed.
• Our next Virtual Stitch-In is Friday December 14 at 7pm US Eastern.
• Our next Book Club is Friday November 30 at 7pm US Eastern!
• If you enjoyed it, help spread the word on your blog, or share on social media and tag us with #TheStitchTVShow!

We wanted to share a few of the new items we debuted at Fall Market this year!

First, our newest pattern, A Star is Born is now available!  It is layer cake friendly for those 10″ precut squares, and features the Abstract Garden line from our pal Christa Watson for Benartex.  You’ll see another version of the quilt in an upcoming talk show.

We’re also pleased to preview our first block of the month program for shops: The Filmore Quilt!

While this is a program for quilt shops right now, this is also the class series that Lynn and I have been filming for the last few months for quilters to take directly.  The fabrics themselves are available for shops to order from QT Fabrics based on their re-orderable fabric lines.  The program is available exclusively from our new wholesale site at shop.thestitchtvshow.com.

If you’d like to order this program for your shop, please create a wholesale account with us and get in touch with us!

And because we’re a little crazy, we’re also previewing our second block of the month program, the Quilt Lit 101 program! This is a combination BOM and book club program, with quilty-themed discussion questions  for each of the 12 books represented in the quilt.  More details will be coming about this quilt and program (and yes, will also be produced as a video class for quilters wanting to play along at home, releasing in early 2019!).

In this episode, Pam and Lynn chat about our binding preferences, and go-to quilt patterns.

Note: At 35:19 Pam lets slip a short curse word. Apologies!

This episode is brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop!

The quilt hanging behind us is our pattern A Star is Born, perfect for layer cakes or 10″ square precut assortments! Get a copy of the digital pattern at our shop, and enter to win a copy of the pattern AND fabric to make the top from Christa Watson’s newest line Abstract Garden!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Helpful links and tips from this episode:

• Here is a better look at Christa’s new fabric line
• Learn more about Binding Babies
• We reference Spaceballs a lot in this episode: https://amzn.to/2FodSlF
• Lynn referenced Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: https://amzn.to/2TeZO0y
• Four-at-a-time Flying Geese on YouTube
• Fabric Cafe has quick and easy 3 yard quilt patterns
• Jelly Roll Race quilts
• Quick and easy quilts we’ve designed include You Spin Me Right Round and A Star is Born
• Turning Twenty quilts: https://amzn.to/2OOalMO
• Tandem Quilting makes t-shirt quilts, helping to employ refugees to create beautiful keepsakes: https://www.tandemquiltingco.com/

• Today’s episode was brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop! Your source for quilt patterns, notions, and show merchandise.

• Come chat in our What’s Up Stitches? group on Facebook!
• Thanks to our production partners 77peaches enterprises and Big Think Productions.
• Audio only versions of the show are available in the Hip to be a Square quilting podcast feed.
• Our next Virtual Stitch-In is Friday December 14 at 7pm US Eastern.
• Our next Book Club is Friday November 30 at 7pm US Eastern!
• If you enjoyed it, help spread the word on your blog, or share on social media and tag us with #TheStitchTVShow!

As we go into the holiday season, we wanted to give a quick update on what to expect for a posting schedule from us here at The Stitch TV Show! There are only a couple minor modifications but worth updating the community.

• Saturday Nov 24, 7-8:30pm – Virtual Stitch-In with special guest HollyAnne Knight of String & Story. (one day later than the normal Book Club that would happen on the 4th Friday)
• Friday Nov 30, 7-8pm – a special live Fifth Friday Virtual Stitch-In!
• Friday Dec 7 – Normal posting a talk show episode from The Stitch TV Show at 8am
• Friday Dec 14 – The normal Live Virtual Stitch-In from 7-8:30pm
• Friday Dec 21 – Normal posting a talk show episode from The Stitch TV Show at 8am
• Friday Dec 28 – The normal Live Book Club from 7 – 8pm

Note: all times are US Eastern.

We’ll also be dropping some shorter tips and behind-the-scenes videos on Tuesdays to get you a quick fix of The Stitch during the week. To get reminders, subscribe to our channel on YouTube! Just “hit the bell” to get notifications when a new video drops.

If you like the quilt in the header image, get a copy of the digital pattern to make your own 2 1/2″ strip-friendly Lucky Star quilt!

In case you missed the livestream on Friday night, the recap of our trip to Houston for the Quilt Market and Festival is now available!  The video and podcast are both available; please visit the usual feed for Hip to be a Square quilting podcast or listen direct on the website.

I also signed up for Cheryl Sleboda’s daily blogging challenge. I’ve been out of practice on writing for a bit and need to get back into the swing of things as we tend to rely on video to update you on what’s going on with us. Not every day will be a masterpiece, and this one is squeaked in with 53 minutes to spare, but you have to start somewhere!

In case you don’t know, we sell a variety of items on our online shop!  Digital quilt patterns are sold as PDFs and available at any time, so there aren’t any holiday shipping deadlines for those items.  In case you were interested in something else, however, here’s a helpful guide for shipping deadlines to get things in time for the Christmas holiday.

T-Shirts and Mugs

These items are printed on demand by our fulfillment partner, and the table below is the shipping deadline for the United States to get your items by December 21. Alas, the Economy shipping deadline has passed, but you’ve still got time for Standard shipping.

Laser-Cut Applique Kits

These are actually fulfilled by us/our production team.  They go out via USPS or FedEx, depending on the lowest rate, so the best date to order by is December 10 to be sure to get it by December 21.

Now whether you can get that project done by Christmas is out of hands, so get stitching!

I’ve been doing the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilts since 2012. Truth be told, I waffled on doing it this year; we have had a lot going on this year with the pattern business and talk show and t-shirt line and Market and…. yeah. A lot. We declared November and December “us time” to work on what we wanted, and it seems like we each took 2 weeks off and now we’re back in the thick of it, which I assume is because we both love doing it.

So, when I put two and two together, that Mystery Season was coming, and that we have a nephew getting married sometime next year, well, the stars aligned and I’m in on Good Fortune! This nephew loves Halloween, but I did not want to assume that his new bride would be amenable to a potentially spooky quilt for their bed. I pulled her aside and asked at Thanksgiving, and lo and behold she gave me the go-ahead on Halloween colors!

As such, my “neutrals” are black, and the rest of the colors are somewhat close in value to Bonnie’s original palette. Orange, green, purple, gray, and black! I even found a wideback on sale on Black Friday to use.  I’ll end up adding a border or two to make it the right size, but it should be fun! I’m done with clue 1 and partway through clue 2, and trying to leader-and-ender other projects as I complete these units. As a result I’m almost done with the quilt top for a pattern I submitted to magazine.

If you want to see some of our talk show coverage of mystery quilts, check out episode 308 (which also includes fabric scrap storage tips)! Check out other quilting progress in Bonnie’s linkup.

One of the requests that Lynn and I get frequently when we ask for topic suggestions is more video how-to content on quilting. We’re amazed at this because when we started the talk show, it was because we felt there were already so many other tutorial videos and we wanted to stand out from the crowd. The good news is, the talk show isn’t going anywhere, and if you aren’t subscribed to the channel, you might miss the Tuesday episodes that drop on how-to’s and projects.

I recently make a low-volume baby quilt for a co-worker that used several different quilting designs in it: filling in an applique bird, quilting the outline and bark texture of a tree, and wavy lines to fill in the background.  In case you missed it when it dropped back in September, you can see the first one above! The series starts with how I used a projector to mark the quilt design, and then the next 3 videos show the quilting designs and techniques.

If you watch our show for any length of time, you’ll see that Lynn and I approach things very differently. I don’t usually start a quilt until I’ve mapped out what it will look like at the end; really it’s incredible that I’ll participate in a mystery quilt-along at all! Lynn will grab a bunch of fabrics and just start cutting and sewing and it will turn out amazing. Neither of us is quite sure how the magic happens for the other.

Occasionally, however, one of tries to do things the other’s way. In this case, I just started cutting and sewing a bevvy of prints from my stash; mixing up the prints is not something I’m quite sure I can do well yet (I still dress in mostly solid colors). The results turned out well enough, even if I overshot my mark a bit.  Check out the video to see what I mean!

As I like to say when something unexpected happens, “we’re on a journey of discovery”. I had no idea that of all the videos we’ve posted, our most popular one is the tour of my sewing room! Since then, I’ve done a brief update on how I hacked / modified / enhanced an IKEA MOPPE drawer unit with some cute drawer pulls, and how I made it easier to access my scrap storage. Check it out!

In this episode, Pam and Lynn chat about our “bucket list” quilts and some tips for walking foot quilting.

This episode is brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop!

The quilt hanging behind us is one of the layouts from our new Filmore Quilt video class! Filmore is a modern sampler quilt with 12 blocks and 3 layouts. Learn more over at our video course site learn.thestitchtvshow.com.

Helpful links and tips from this episode:

• New York Beauty Quilts: https://amzn.to/2rmYHzl
• Glam Clam Quilts: https://amzn.to/2SqG7Sq
• Walking Foot Quilting from Leah Day: https://amzn.to/2Qh6Hkc
• The heroin callback is from episode 106

• Today’s episode was brought to you by The Stitch TV Show shop! Your source for quilt patterns, notions, and show merchandise.

• Come chat in our What’s Up Stitches? group on Facebook!
• Thanks to our production partners 77peaches enterprises and Big Think Productions.
• Audio only versions of the show are available in the Hip to be a Square quilting podcast feed.
• Our next Virtual Stitch-In is Friday December 14 at 7pm US Eastern.
• Our next Book Club is January 25 at 7pm US Eastern!
• If you enjoyed it, help spread the word on your blog, or share on social media and tag us with #TheStitchTVShow!

We are raffling off a quilt of ours, designed by me and made by Lynn, to raise money for an amazing family. Jesse just had her third child at the end of October, and 3 weeks later was diagnosed with stage 2 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. All the money raised will go to her family and their needs.

To get a change to win this Christmas version of the Lucky Star quilt (76 x 76″), go to: Neveralone.org:

• Click on Donate Financially
• Click Donate Now
• Make a Donation and tag “The Jesse Sims Family”
• For every $5 donated, you get 1 raffle ticket
• For $20, you get 5 raffle tickets

Of course, if you want to make your own version of this quilt, you can get the digital pattern in our shop.

We are so pleased to introduce our first video class! If you remember back at Quilt Market, we announced our first two block of the month programs for local quilt shops.  We’ve now converted the first one into a video course for those of you not near one of the shops running the program! The Filmore Quilt is a modern sampler quilt, with the blocks designed in pairs for a traditional and modern version of each block.

While local shops will run this as a monthly block program, the video class releases the 12 blocks one a week, with a 13th week for assembly and quilting guidance. Lynn gives the instructions for cutting, piecing, and pressing for each block with tips for all skill levels. I come in at the end for some assembly instruction and quilting design suggestion.

We designed the quilt using the Pixie Dots line and other basics from QT Fabrics for the two colorways. To keep it simple for beginning quilters and preserve the clean design associated with modern quilts, we stuck to just five fabrics. Check out the basics at Fat Quarter Shop for help coloring your own version of the quilt!

You can find the course on our new learning website at learn.TheStitchTVShow.com. The first lesson with a video introduction for the class is free, along with the fabric requirements (just five fabrics!), so check it out.

I had one of the weekends where we didn’t have a ton planned, which is so glorious because I can work on whatever was needed. And of course, what was needed was some quilting! I filmed a couple short tutorial/tips videos for the channel, but was mostly excited to finish up step 2 of the Good Fortune mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter, and got step 3 properly wrangled as well.

There are times when I’m still questioning my color choices because of the value contrast (or lack there of) but it’s a bit too late now! I think it’ll turn out okay, but part of the excitement of a mystery quilt is not knowing how it’s all gonna turn out.

Check out the other quilters in Bonnie’s link up!

It never fails to amaze me, the reaction to posting a photo of a game of #bobbinchicken or even #bindingchicken. If you’ve not heard of either game in sewing or quilting, it’s when you are sewing merrily along and manage to finish your seam with less than 12 inches of thread left on the bobbin, which you notice before starting the next seam. Binding Chicken is similar in that it refers to the amount of binding needed to finish the quilt rather than the bobbin thread.

Admittedly, it is possible to loose both Bobbin Chicken and Binding Chicken on the same quilt in the span of five minutes. At that point your best course of action is to stand up, calmly walk away, and maybe eat some chocolate, or take some deep breaths, or pet something soft or pretty like your fabric stash or a pet.

Yes, there are machines fancy enough to have low bobbin sensors, but a game of bobbin chicken really comes to life in the stitching of long borders to quilt tops, or attaching binding. It’s particularly painful to chain piece 20 units, only to discover the bobbin gave it up on unit three.

We took the liberty of documenting the rules for bobbin chicken on the back of a t-shirt, and it’s proven to be popular on our shop site. Click through to see all the colors available!

Well I finally got my internet upgraded so I’m good to live stream from my own house again! Join Lynn and I for a live stream from our sewing rooms for our December Virtual Stitch-In starting at 7pm US Eastern on December 14.

I was able to really get off easy this week with latest step from the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, Good Fortune. Rather than do string piecing (of which I am not really a fan), I just did the cop out method and cut some rectangles! Easy peasy.

This frees me up to actually finish a quilt, or two, this weekend, so I’ll take it!