Monday, January 4, 2021

Progress with Leaders and Enders

Hello Happy Quilters!  Come on in and join me in doing a little happy dance.  I can't tell you how happy it makes me to have finally mastered the leaders and enders method.  This method of piecing 2 quilts at once has been around for many years but Bonnie Hunter is the one who brought it to life.  She has written 2 books just for this method.  You can find them here in her shop.  


 I was hoping to share a video made by Bonnie about this method but she hasn't made a short video tutorial about leaders and enders.  I know she has shown it in some of her quilt cam videos but those are a hour long and you would need to watch or search the entire video to find the moment when she actually shows the process.  So Bonnie if your reading you might want to make a quick YouTube video about leaders and enders.  Of course YouTube has many videos about this process so I chose one that gave Bonnie the credit she deserves.  The video can be found here.

My current project is On Ringo Lake by Bonnie Hunter (the red and green seen below). A previous post showing the quilt pattern can be found here.   In the picture below you can see I've already cut the green and red pieces off of my blue ender(long arrow at the bottom).  Looking back behind my sewing machine at the short yellow arrow is the other blue. This process of using leaders and enders takes a little bit of prep time but once you get them cut and make a mindful decision to do the process it quickly becomes habit.  I've been trying for years to make this a habit and it has finally worked.  At first it seemed to slow me down but somewhere in day 2 and 3 the process became so much of a habit I didn't even notice and it actually seems now to make the piecing process faster for my main red and green quilt.


I'm flying through the finicky little units 20 at a time as I binge watch "The Affair" on Showtime.  It's a good series.  Word of warning, there's a ton of S-E-X scenes and full nudity of both sexes. I know the title and the channel should have tipped me off about the almost porn-ish parts of the series.  I guess I'm a little old fashion and think a lot could have been left to our imagination.  Thank goodness for fast forward.


Anyway back to quilting.  Just a few more red and green units and I'll be ready to start the next clue.  Crossing my fingers for a quilt top finish by next Monday.







I bought a new dog toy call Kong Rewards Ball.  Mr. Podunk says it's the best money I've spent on her in two years.  It keeps her occupied for quite awhile.   Purchased at Meijer but can be found on Amazon here.  I get nothing for you clicking, just a happy customer sharing ideas. 


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3 comments:

  1. I love the beautiful colors you use here.

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  2. Leaders/Enders can be what ever you want them to be. They do not have to be "blocks" for another project. I sew 2-patches into 4-patches into 16-patches, etc. as my Leaders/Enders. I cannot count the number of quilts I have made out of them. Best part is you get to decide what size--2", 2 1/2", 3", etc. Whatever size your scraps are.

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  3. I am trying to get where you are...just doing random blocks for leaders and enders has left me with a lot of random blocks sort of without an intention and has not thrilled me at all. I finally got one of Bonnie’s books and see what you’re talking about...Go ahead and do the cutting for the quilt I WANT to make, and use those pieces for the leaders and enders. Duh. Now I just need to decide and get to cutting. Thanks for addressing, and loved the dog treat video! (:))

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