Sew in the Know Newsletter!

It has been a busy month for me - and here I thought I was going to "hunker down" for the winter! If you were watching facebook you know we got a LOT of snow - and it is still beautiful. I received snow shoes for my birthday and skates for Valentine's day. We shovelled off part of our wet lands and there is now a skating rink bigger than an arena.

With all the beautiful scenery it's hard to stay focused on work lol. So out I went to skate, and snowshoe and just enjoy the scenery. Next month we will be collecting sap and making maple syrup - so standby to hear about that sticky, sweet tomfoolery!

There is a lot of NEWS in this newsletter - so I''ll keep my chatter short. Be sure to read to the end - there is a lot of great things happening.. and more to come.

Keep on quilting!

Mandie (the quilter) Located in Limerick (Near Bancroft) Ontario, she travels hither, thither and yon to spread quilting merriment!

TYPOS are my nemesis! This content is NOT AI generated - and therefore there may be the odd typo - but that's how you know I wrote it!

February 19 2024

Happy Family Day to my quilting family!

Patterns and Kits - BIG Savings

I now am offering patterns and kits for sale. You can read more about the kits and patterns here. They are designed to save you time and money.

Last minute pick up and deliveries in Hamilton, Peterborough and Apsley - tomorrow February 20th.

February 27th I will be in Aurora and King.

Request pick-ups here

FINALLY..

I kind of stumbled on this concept while thinking about a quilt I wanted to make quickly. Starting wth strips - I ended up with a really nice throw sized quilt top in about 4 hours - but there was a lot of waste. I realized that if I re-designed the sizes of the strips and squares that there would be NO waste at all. (Except for the selvedges) I made three more quilts and realized I was on to something. You can read more here:https://www.janestreetquilts.com/no-waste-quick-finish.html. My First Waltz is the result - and I have made about 5 different combinations. I now am able to sell the pattern and have it ready for purchase. Canadiana Fireside quitl is also a "No waste Quick Finish" quilt - so check them both out.

"My First Waltz" is a great quilt for showing off fabric that is too beautiful to leave in the store and then too beautiful to cut into little pieces....



AS PROMISED - as a subscriber you can have My First Walz pattern at no cost this month only. Simply email me and I will send it to you. Please though, do not share it. It took me hours to perfect and add photos and drawings - so it is available to the public for $15.

We have a winner - and a late submission that I HAVE to share...

The Challenge was to send me photos of a recent STASH Buster only quilt and the details of why you made it and where you will use it or who you gifted it to.

The WINNER is Danielle E! Her quilt is pictured to the right. Here was her explanation:

"Every year when we used to head south to Florida, I would bring a big tote of scraps for my elderly quilter neighbor, but since we sold our place my bins have been overflowing. I finally decided to ‘just do it’ since I didn’t have the heart to toss it all. I’m usually not one for abstract quilts, but love how this turned out. Still have an outer black sashing to finish. Luckily I had a bolt of plain black to tie it all together. 

Once I put all the blocks together and added a piano border, I realized I wanted it bigger, so back to the bins and made some flying geese. Now it’s queen size. 

Such a fun quilt for mindless sewing!  Hope it inspires some sewers who enjoy no-pattern projects."

LATE ENTRY - Jacquie G

Have you ever been away and when you get home you find that you missed the best fabric sale of the year? And then you head into the store and plead your case but your supplication falls on deaf ears? Well that's not how I do things here....

Jacquie was away when the newsletter came out and called me to tell me that the last quilt I had quilted for her was a Stash-Buster. I had a photo because it was such a lovely quilt... so here it is to the right. She did a fabulous job - and it also ended up to be a queen size quilt. It's the largest she has ever done - and all from scraps!

Danielle won a $50 certificate and Jacquie was awarded a $25 certificate.

Danielle is a longarmer - so she will be using hers to upload 3 quilts for sale to the new site that will be up and running in March. It has NOT been published but you can peek here.

Danielle's Stash Buster Quilt

Here is our late entry from Jacquie that I have to share. A beauty from scraps!

It's tough get to all my ideas launched and still fold last week's laundry I left in the dryer, but I have managed to make some strides forward.

I ran my first mini workshop here in my studio. I'm not sure if we talked more than we sewed - but we did get all the squares in the quilt top made and had one full quadrant completed.

I have also been asked to run a workshop by two separate guilds. I will announce them next month. In the meantime you can read about workshops available here.

Special KITS - YES - I have news about these.

Read about them here: https://www.janestreetquilts.com/no-waste-quick-finish.html

Custom Quilts for sale: I have the site half completed and you can take a sneek peek here.

If youhave quilts you would like to sell - Contact me for more information.

RETREATS - still working on this. If I can get that laundry folded - maybe I'll get it finished...insert loud laughter here.

I have uploaded a few new resources and a couple more videos for you.

HST (Half square triangles) Tutorial can be viewed here. HSTs can be made 2, 4, 8 or more at a time in short order. No fiddling with small bias edges and corners getting eaten by feed dogs! I have a page up and have also created the instructions in a download-able document.

I LOVE HSTs - and you can make almost ANYTHING from triangles.

There are also a couple new videos on my video page.

Be sure to watch the "Mighty Miter" and the "Blasphemous Binding" videos as refreshers!

Wait! Isn't that backwards? Don't we make lemonade out of lemons?  

I remember a new quilter telling me that her husband could not understand why she bought perfectly good fabric, cut it up into little pieces and then spent hours putting it back together again. "Why not just do a puzzle?" he asked.

When you think about it logically he may have had a point. But a craft like quilting defies logic - and under the maker's hands, becomes a work of art.

Lemons, as we all know, have many health benefits. One lemon contains over 50% of the vitamin C we need for one day. Lemons are also known to reduce high blood pressure, aid in digestion and have numerous other health benefits. Unfortunately lemons can be a little bitter all by themselves. So once cut up and mixed with a sweetener and water, we really have no desire to put them back together again. 

A quilt however, contains little bits of fabric - that may in the beginning, look a little like the pieces of a cut up lemon.....

Read more here:https://www.janestreetquilts.com/offmyrack/making-lemons-out-of-lemonade

Yes. Pre-cuts save time.

And they are colour co-ordinated.

And using the right patterns they also cut down on waste. In addition to this - they often have the full line of fabric - and that is very hard to find anymore. Many stores carry only a few fabrics within a line of 20 or so co-ordination fabrics.

But the niceset part is that I do not have to do much cutting and a 2-1/2 inchs strip is exacty that. 2 1/2 inches wide.

I was in a store one day when within 10 minutes two separate women came in looking for a jelly roll of one line of fabric. She was told it was not available. The next issue was that the store did not have the entire line of fabric. So she ended up buying .1 meter of 22 different fabrics and it took her 45 minutes to find 22 colours that were complimentary to each other. The sad part is that after doing that- she has to trim all the fabrics - and she may never use the scraps - or they are simply thrown out.

A jelly roll would have solved that without the wastage and offers many fabrics that are all comapatible and from the same line.

I currently have a few left from my last wholesale purchase and they are all priced at least $10 below retail cost. Let me know if you are interested. Many have sold before I could even announce that I had them! https://www.janestreetquilts.com/quilters-precuts.html

Thanks for reading to the end!

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Have questions or comments - please be sure to let me know. Email me at info@janestreetquilts.com