70's Geese Giveaway!

Do you follow Kelly of KelbySews on Instagram? If not, you should. I've been following her closely the last day or two as she was making a mini using my 70's Geese pattern. Let's just say she blew this pattern out of the water! I love how it turned out! and a lot of other people did too. But who can blame them?!

Photo courtesy of Kelly

She blogged about it here. When she first started making it, she pointed out to me that I had numbered the 18" pattern backwards. Oops. When I went to fix it, I decided to revamp the pattern and add some updates to it. I made this original pattern quite a while ago, and it was kind of fun to see how much I've improved with Illustrator. I did a lot of clean up on the pattern and decided to add cutting templates as well. (a feature I've started adding to all my patterns.)

Cutting templates are nice because they help minimize fabric waste, make it a synch to fussy cut, and save a TON of time. When I am working on a paper piecing project that calls for a lot of the same pieces over and over again, like this pattern (or like my Liberty Pillow), the entire process goes a lot quicker when I have all my fabric precut. If I'm not fussy cutting, it's also quicker to stack up all my fabrics for each piece and cut them all at once. After reading Kelly's blog post, I wish I had updated the pattern before she began, so she could have tried out the templates.

One more edit to note: Kelly commented in her post, how difficult it was to align the pieces together. In a lot of my patterns I have trimmed to corners so when you align them to sew the pieces together, there isn't any guess work for getting the points to meet in the right place. I already had this feature on my 12" pattern, but not the 18" pattern. I have fixed that as well. Hopefully it won't be so difficult now!

This will make more sense when you try it, but see how the corner is clipped? When you fold this pattern over the adjacent pattern, RS together, to join them, this clipped corner will line up perfectly with the adjacent pattern piece. There won't be any guess work as to how far the otherwise pointy corner should hang over. (I love shortcuts for perfect blocks!!)

I also decided to try a new approach with this pattern, and created it in Adobe InDesign. I am starting to get a little more comfortable with the program, as well as using it side-by-side with Adobe Illustrator. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and look forward to how much quicker and easier it will be to make updates to the pattern in the future, if needed. I really want to convert all of my patterns over to this format. One day right?! I'll just say that it took way too long today, and my family had a lazy Saturday of roaming around the house all day. Bless their hearts. I know that it will go faster in the future, now that I have it figured out, thank goodness.


I made all the same updates to the 12" pattern as well. (Which previously was a 1 page pattern. It now also has a coloring page, and template pieces.)


If you previously purchased either of these patterns on Craftsy, you will be able to go to the pattern page and download the new updated pattern. I'm not sure how it works on Etsy though. I just realized I never listed this pattern on Etsy. I will in the next few days.


After all this work, and the fun of trying something new, I think the only thing left to do is have a

GIVEAWAY!!!

I am offering a copy of each size, the 12" and the 18" pattern, to two lucky readers.

Do you wonder why you would want both sizes? Why not just change the scale on your printer, right?! Well, because the 18" finished pattern pieces are so much larger, they don't fit on one piece of paper. I have broken them up and added marks to help you align the pieces perfectly, so you can still get that perfect block without all the trouble. The 12" pattern can easily be sized down, and you can easily size up the 18" pattern even more, but I think the gap between the two makes it a bit more difficult. Anyway, that is my take on it anyway. :)

Just enter the rafflecopter for your chance to win! I'll pick a winner in a week!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You can find this pattern on Craftsy (12" size, 18" size).
and Etsy (12" size, 18" size)

Thank you Kelly for the push to get this pattern perfected!! (or at least getting there.) 

Sorry I didn't have it updated before you started.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!! :)