Beautiful Beauty!

Greetings from Portland, Oregon!

You may recall that Carol McLeod (Aunties Two) and I are traveling from the East Coast to participate in Spring Quilt Market in Portland, Oregon.

With still lots to do, I simply must take a short break to tell you about my first experience using Inklingo! Have you tried it?

My friend and quilt pattern designer Kris Poor of Poorhouse Quilt Design had an idea to plan a booth hop featuring a handful of East Coast Designers who traveled all the way to Portland for the show.

Twelve East Coast Designers are participating. If you are attending the show, look for our ad in the Buyers Guide or stop by the Special Schoolhouse Session (if you are new to that term, that's okay--Schoolhouse is a day-long series of live "info-mercials" for Quilt Market attendees who get a preview of products to look for once the trade show opens). Each designer in the hop has created an incredible prize package for hoppers who complete their passport. So, it's just like a regular Shop Hop, without the cars.

Kris chose the New York Beauty Block as our Booth Hop Logo.

To help hoppers find us, I thought it might be a good idea to have an actual New York Beauty Quilt block to display in each booth to match our logo. But that block can be pretty complex.

Enter Inklingo.

I've always liked hand pieced quilt blocks, but the prep can be boring.

Inklingo allows you to keep the best part of hand piecing and eliminates the boring parts. Throw in improved accuracy and a lot more fun, and this process makes a whole lot of sense.

Linda (and Monkey) have thought of all the details, creating instructions and tips at every step of the way.

Basically you choose your fabric. Fuse some regular freezer paper to the right side of the fabric. Trim it to 8-1/2 by 11" and feed it into your regular inkjet printer so the pieces print on the wrong side of the fabric.

Cut the pieces apart on the solid lines. (These still need some trimming.)

Then sew them together on the dotted lines.

I made one single 6" block for each member of the Booth Hop (12 designers). Then, I finished off each block with a solid fabric backing, sewn pillow-case style. This one is ready to be a Booth Hop Mascot! Ain't she a 'beauty?'

Next time I'm turning my blocks into a quilt!

But that will be after Quilt Market is over.

Are you following our progress on the CraftStylish blog? We're having too much fun not to share. Check out the Hummingbird Highway Facebook page and Twitter for some of the real-time skinny.


Happy Stitching!
joan