Sew Fresh Quilts: shoe

Welcome to the Let's Bee Social!

This is a tale of two shoes.

At last week's Let's Bee Social I explained that I love it when I see people using their imaginations. It excites me to see when you take something I designed and "tweak it" to make it suit your needs. And this is another example.

The work above was sent to me by Dianne. Dianne wrote to me following my post about The Tutorial and said, "Hi Lorna, After reading about your recent "problem" I got wondering if what I have done is going to be my "problem". When I was doing the shop hop this summer I stopped at the quilt shop "Quilting by Design" in New Hamburg and got your row for the Row by Row there. I have had an orphan block that I needle punched and painted at least 30 years! ago and wanted to make it into a wallhanging. I thought your shoe pattern would be perfect for it as it was a lady's head wearing a fancy hat. I also planned on paper-piecing a couple of dresses to go into as well. Unfortunately, your shoe pattern turned out waaaaaaaaaaaay too big so I reduced it by 50% and figured out how to make a paper-piecing pattern for it. I do not have a blog and certainly do not intend to do anything else with it. It is just for my personal use. The only thing I was going to do is take to my quilt guild meeting this month for show and share but felt I should contact you to make sure it's okay. If not, I will just leave it at home."

Now that broke my heart.

I replied, "Oh Dianne! Please don't feel like you have done anything wrong. I think it's great that you found a way to use the shoe design and cleverly went about figuring how to reduce the size and paper piece it. Really, I would be proud for you to share your wallhanging and if you mentioned that I designed the shoe pattern, but you worked out how to make it work for your purpose, that would be great! It makes me so happy to see people take any of my designs and to be inspired to make them work for their purposes. As you did! I would love to be able to share a photo of your wallhanging on my blog for the Let's Bee Social, with your permission. Thank you so much for writing to share how this confessional post of mine got you to thinking. Obviously what I did was a more clear cut case of what not to do. But like with what you have explained, there are a lot of not so clear cut issues out there that we aren't always sure what to do. You did the right thing by just contacting me to raise your concerns. And I commend you for doing so! Wishing you Happy Stitching!"

So Dianne wrote back and explained how she went about making the shoe blocks for her wallhanging, "Hopefully, attached is the picture of my wallhanging, tentatively called "Decisions, decisions". As you can see, I pinned the shoe from your row-by-row so that you could see the difference in size. To make it smaller, I took the small picture in the instructions and folded it in half horizontally and then in thirds vertically to give me the sections I needed to draft a new size. Then I just printed out copies on my printer until I got the size I thought worked best."

And that is the tale of two shoes.

Let's Bee Social!

Click to visit the Tablerunner Bliss bloggers who are quilting along this week:

Greg (Grey Dogwood Studio)
Melanie (A Bit of Scrap Stuff)

Want to quilt along?

Tablerunners a great for a quick make for gift giving... Even if you end up wanting to keep it for yourself! Tablerunner Bliss by Sherri Falls is the perfect book for inspiring you to create.

You can order your own copy of this super cute book here at Fat Quarter Shop.

Now... It's your turn for Show and Tell!!!

What have you been working on?