The Winners of my Anniversary Giveaways and my second Godstone Grannies (GG) block

It is time to announce the winners of  giveaways. The prizes are a $30 gift certificate from Superior Threads and 2 yards of fabric from me!

I want to once again thank Bob Purcell and Superior Threads for very generously donating this gift certificate. I love and use Superior products, threads and needles, because I get good results and in my opinion they are very good value for the money spent. I don't have any paid advertising on my blog and I don't get paid to promote products so when I blog about a product it is because I like it and use it.

So here we go.....INSERT DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!!!!

The winner of the $30 Superior gift certificate is Lorraine. She wrote "Congratulations Karen on your one year anniversary. Judging from your photos it ha been a busy and productive one. Looking forward to seeing what the next year brings".  Congratulations Lorriane!

The winner of 2 yards of fabric is Donna W. She wrote "Happy Anniversary!!! Thanks for your wonderful blog. I enjoy reading it". Congratulations Donna W.

I finished my second block for Godstone Grannies (GG) and I love it! Wouldn't an entire quilt made of this block be fabulous? It would be great made in bright prints. If a 1" hexagon were used you would need less blocks to make a quilt. There will be 31 diamonds in my quit which used 3/4" hexagons. No doubt as I go along I will fall in love with other blocks in my GG quilt but for now, this is my favourite child! Also I'm linking up with Angie's A Quilting Readers Garden for Hexie Weekend where you can find oodles of hexie inspiration!

I wanted to respond to a question posed in one of the comments. Penny asked me to recommend what size of stencil would be the most useful and what would I recommend. What I told her was that I've purchased some stencils but I rarely use them because I dislike having to mark the entire quilt. However the stencils that I have purchase are usually a wreath design and they are generally about 8" square. The size you will need really depends on the size of block that you want to fill. I purchased a book Dream Feathers by Peggy Holt and it opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.

The book is on my Cherry Blossom quilt and the feathers were constructed using many of the techniques discussed in that book.  I also use them to quilt Nine Patches and Baskets.

I used Superior's The Bottom Line to quilt. The colour Statue was used throughout with the exception of the pebbles which were quilted with Gold which I wrote about in the past. It was a colour recommended by Cindy Needham in her Craftsy class. It is a neutral with a little pizzazz and I love it! You can see that a different colour thread has been used but it is subtle and elegant! It really adds some richness to the quliting.

So I've been using what I learned in large part from Dream Feathers and have combined it with my practice doodles and that is how I ended up with quilting designs like those in my Lazy Girl quilt.  I used Superior Monopoly to stitch in the ditch first and then the feather and background fill were worked with Superior So Fine!

So Penny my advice is that if you want to buy stencils by all means do so. Buy designs that are versatile so that you can use the entire design or just parts of the design. But also try experimenting with your own designs. Feathers look difficult but honestly with a little practice you will be amazed at how easy they are and best of all, each plume does not have to be identical. The eye sees the whole an not the individual components. Echo the feathers and then fill in the background with any kind of craziness and you'll have something special. The secret is to use a good thread that is fine and that blends so that what you see is the quilting design rather than the stitches.

Thanks to each and every one of you for reading my blog and to those of you who were able to find the time to comment, an extra big thanks! Right, gotta run! I've got stuff to do today!

Until I post again, happy sewing!
Karen H