Laurieshifrindesigns.wordpress

While her quilt blocks are beautiful I found the instructions to be confusing. I tried to assemble one and found it quite challenging because she doesn't use traditional quilting techniques nor traditional block assembly. She uses odd methods of assembling and cutting strips of fabrics that are not economy friendly. Instead of saying make"x" number of flying geese blocks in various block sizes she has you slice and dice various squares, rectangles and triangles until you assemble it. I've done various angled blocks before and she uses an odd way to assemble them that is not economy friendly. I have tried a couple patterns of hers and felt like I over spent on the fabric. I would not deem her projects economy friendly. I severely over purchased the amount of fabric I needed for these projects and felt I could have saved $50-$100. I find my self having a quarter yard, half a yard or more of left over fabric. Now I like quilting but I hate having a scrap pile because I'll never touch it again. I'm probably one of the few quilters that refuse to have a scrap pile. I suggest going home reading the pattern, calculating how much you actually need then go purchase it. After spending a month or two working on her patterns I am quite pleased with the finished results but I will probably never purchase another one of her patterns again. Two reasons: 1) confusing instructions 2) not economy friendly. While her patterns get very good reviews I would rate her patterns advanced intermediate skill levels. I do thank you for the fun time spend quilting but maybe not again.___________________________ I finally finished this block three months later. Beautiful yes but hell if I'll ever do one again. It is up to the challenger to decide weather or not to make one. * Her math is not all that accurate. When reviewing her math skills I noticed she made simple calculation errors for basic multiplication problems. I found my self frequently cutting additional blocks because her math was not all that accurate. * The zero waist flying geese block method would have been more economically friendly. And a lot easier to follow and understand. I had to throw out so much fabric because of the triangles you get when left over. The principle would have been the same in the long run. I could have made a whole baby blanket with how much I threw out. *I am probably the only quilter out there that hates a scrap pile. I have been collecting a scrap pile for years and threw out a ton of it recently because none of it really clashed for a big enough project and I got tired of hanging onto it. If it's not a quarter yard or more I won't keep it. If it's less than that I toss it and boy did I toss out a lot of triangles, short strips and tiny pieces. If the blocks were cut economically I could of saved some money. * Pattern is not economy cost effective. When I was finished I threw out a lot of unusable scraps and extra fabric that could have been avoided if she utilized the economy method of these blocks. I felt like I severely over spent on this project. Next time I buy one of these lovely booklets I am taking it home, reading it, calculating how much I truly need then going back to buy the fabric. * She missed a couple instructions and a lot of instructions were confusing. I am an intermediate quilter and noticed she skipped several steps and anticipated that you sort of already knew the how to's and the basic techniques. She completely missed the steps to cut step for blocks "S" and "T" so when I come to the end to assemble the border I ran short on fabric. I do enjoy these little patterns I find in quilt stores but buyer be ware: Read the instructions first, fine tune them, double check your measurements then buy the fabric. That's the only thing I wish I did differently. Otherwise the block pattern was beautiful upon completion.