New program to learn!

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The past 18 months have been a huge learning curve for me as I started my fabric business in 2019. Setting up and designing my own website, starting business Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest pages, learning EVERYTHING to do with Google analytics, My Business and Google ads, with loads of help from Hazel A Patterns (check out her new website!!), this blog and working on a business plan, it's been a lot, but extremely enjoyable and rewarding!

So this leads me to the subject of this post. I've recently been considering expanding my products in my online shop to offer a Block of The Month quilt program. But first I need to design the quilt! 

I've recently learnt Foundation Paper Piecing which I absolutely love! This was my first attempt.

Some of the piecing isn't that accurate, but hey starting a new hobby is always a learning curve! After extensive searching on the web I found two sites which I thought I could start with to learn the process of designing, Prequilt and Quilt Assistant. I'm particularly interested in using FPP, applique and hand embroidery in my design. Not too much to consider!

These are 4 blocks I designed in Prequilt to see what it does and doesn't do. 

I enjoyed creating them but you can't transfer them into FPP patterns using this program so I found Quilt Assistant to help me do that. It's a very old program from 2009 but it's free and a fabulous way to start out.

The block below is the first block above with suggested FPP order which I numbered. You can print each section out which I did but a lot of the points weren't accurate, but it was great to see it in print.

So where am I at now?! I loved designing this so much that I've just invested in Electric Quilt 8 to enable me to design! I will be documenting my learning process on my blog, so if you want to see how I get on then sign up for my blog alerts.

Happy sewing!

Vicky