OK, OK, I Get It!

Leader/Ender......what the heck? My longtime internet pal Bonnie Hunter has been extolling the virtues of leader/ender for years and I had the hardest time understanding this concept, much less putting it into use. Since much of my piecing is one-project-at-a-time ( which is not to say that I don't have many, many UFOs, PIGs, WISPs, etc), I couldn't get why leader/ender sewing was of any use to me.

Enter Pepper Cory and the class I took from her at Quilt Festival in Long Beach last summer. The Swartz Creek Quilt (scroll down to near the bottom), with its endless numbers of half square triangles and four patches seemed like the perfect way to try this technique. So, sitting beside my machine are stacks of 3" squares for the HSTs and 2 1/2 " squares for the 4 patches. As I was putting together the flimsy from the previous post, I used the heck out of my stacks and was amazed at how much easier it is to not have to clip endless pieces of thread!!!!!

Yesterday, to celebrate the New Year, I watched my favorite chick flick of all time, Bridget Jones's Diary and cut a ton of squares from the $1.00 fat quarters I got at PIQF to add to the project. What a great way to start the year!

The image is a shameless plug for Bonnie's article in the new issue of Quiltmaker--check it out!!