The Icicles quilt top is done, quilted, and being bound as I type. (It’s nice to have a mom who enjoys binding.) Photos tomorrow, hopefully. I struggled with this one for far too long, trying to come up with an easy way to make it without foundation piecing. Silly me! Foundation piecing is easy, especially this pattern, and I should have looked at it as an opportunity to spread the foundation piecing joy. Mom went to the quilt shop that first expressed interest in the quilt, and took the top with her. Kathy (the owner) was very happy with it, and offered to quilt it on her longarm for free if she could have the quilt for an indefinite period as a display. Of course I said yes! They used an overall snowflake pattern, which I think compliments the icicles theme very well. Mom’s going to finish the binding today and take it to the shop tomorrow. I sent my preliminary pattern to Kathy so she can start her own Icicles quilt. She is considering using it in her retreat in a few weeks, and needs to make the quilt herself so she can teach it. How cool is that?!

As part of the pattern, I put together a one page PDF Freezer Paper Piecing Tutorial. I really think it’s the easiest way to foundation piece, and it wastes much less paper. Check out the tutorial and let me know what you think – do I need to go into more detail, or does that cover everything? I tried to keep it to one page, for the sake of printing costs, but I could expand it and post it here. Also, do PDF tutorials work for you, or do you prefer to see tutorials in the body of a blog entry? I chose to do PDFs because when I find a useful tutorial I want to be able to save it on my computer for future reference. Is that just me, or do others like PDFs, too?