Thank you and your Super Penguin Blocks!

First off, thank you SO MUCH for your super thoughtful and encouraging comments and emails about my book! It was quite nerve-wracking to spill the beans. Your sweet words touched my heart so much I don't know how many times I found myself teary. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you! Inside the book is a collection of projects I had wanted to make for a long time. I love the projects in it and my fingers are tightly crossed that you will like them too! A Sew-Along for the book? I had never thought about that until several friends suggested, but I love what I hear!

The slide show above is a collection of your creations with super penguin QAL blocks that have been posted in this flickr pool! I don't think I am the only one drooling over those lovely blocks!! Thank you for everyone who is quilting along and is sharing your photos there. I love them so much!! I am now working on blocks for October now. (It will be a bit late again!) Can't wait to share them with you!

Tomorrow, September 29th is when the lovely Kelly of suprbuzzy holds a paper-piecing class at superbuzzy's store in Ventura, California from 1pm to 4pm! If you have been itching to learn paper-piecing those super penguin blocks and happen to be a neighbor to her shop, I would love to invite you to take the class with her! It will be a great opportunity to meet up with crafy friends ;) More details here!

I'll be back with October blocks!

Have a lovely weekend!

I lost patience! I can't keep it a secret anymore!

Super Penguin QAL ~ September Blocks ~

I'm so excited (and very nervous!) to tell you that Super Penguin QAL's September blocks are up on superbuzzy!! This month, we have a chef, a waitress and a cafe to go with popsicles (July block available here) and dishy treats (August block available here)!

I am so sorry I was SO late to get them ready! I had a week or two that I was completely stuck and anything I was trying to work out didn't seem to want to corporate with me. Ya, one of those moments we all go through every once a while. I am so happy with the results though! These blocks may look a bit complicated, but I promise they aren't as bad as they look! They are all free of any difficult techniques. As long as you know how to paper-piece a simple block like a log cabin, you are ready to sew these up ;)

This chef may not have the coolest hair style in the world, but could he have your forgiveness? Looking good is not his priority. His focus is all about making sure all sweets coming out of his kitchen are excellent and are up to his customers standards. He made those popsicles, dishy treats and of course this baked cake on his hand! He is such a great chef!

And this waitress is now on her way to deliver this piece of the cake that the chef just got out of the oven. She so enjoys being a part of this popular cafe. She may have a moment when she is air-headed, but her lovely and carefree personality is another factor this cafe is getting such a terrific review in the town.

So here it is. This is the cafe they work at! Even when it's rainy out, they are busy running the business! There is one technique I used which isn't hard but was not introduced in popsicles or dishy treats so I'd like to cover it here.

Basically, you'll begin with the upper part of the window. You'll sew two cakes and the piece that comes above the cakes together. This paper-pieced block, will be treated like one piece of fabric in the next section you work on. This is the way I found it easiest!

Here the cakes and the above piece is sewn. You could use the pattern in the PDF to neatly cut the fabric before sewing the top part, but if you want to save time, this is the way I recommend.

I glued on the paper on the wrong side of the above piece. (I cut off the seam allowance from the bottom edge from the paper template.)

Then I used a rotary cutter and a ruler to cut off the excess.

Bye! to the top piece template.

With the paper still attached on the back of the cakes, I stuck pins like this.

Then I stuck the pins on the back side of the paper template where indicated with red tick marks.

The important part is here. These pins need to be up completely straight, which ensures that the cakes are just at the perfect spot.

Then I glued all over the back of the paper template to temporarily attach the cakes at the right spot.

I then removed the pins carefully and went on to start paper-piecing this template. I treated the cake section like one piece of fabric. It still has paper attached on back, so it's a little thick, but you can remove both paper pieces later. I hope this is clear. If you think this is tedious and have any fabric with any sweets design, you may just cheat and use one fabric instead! Oh and if you happen to have pink and white stripe fabric, you can go ahead and use that instead of paper-piecing the roof. Lots of ways to save your time ;)

If you have any questions about this QAL or about any particular fabrics for any blocks for your blocks for SP QAL, please do feel free to let me know!! Kelly's superbuzzy is always the BEST place to look for great Japanese fabrics! I've got a little bit of small print fabrics in my little shop too. (If you ever have any particular fabrics that you've seen in my blocks that you'd like to use but can't find online, please do let me know in the note to the seller. I may have extras that I can share! For example, I have a lot of the solid skin color fabric which I bet is hard to find!)

Thank you so much Kelly for making this QAL blocks available at superbuzzy and, thank you so much for all of you who might make any of these blocks. I hope you'll have lots of fun with these blocks and consider adding your pictures of your progress to this flickr group ;)!!!

Have a great rest of the week! I'm off to stop by a little quilt show!