Dream Big with Peter Byrne

Hello folks, for those who haven’t meet me, my name is Peter Byrne. 

I am an international award-winning, published modern quilter and teacher with a deep passion for innovation and design. My strength is maintaining a fresh approach to quilting, with original designs and technical mastery. 

My goal is innovation, my passion is creativity and I am thrilled to have opportunities to share new techniques within the quilting community. 

While attending QuiltCon 2020, my quilt titled ‘Starring You’ won Best in Show and my quilt titled ‘Cityscape” won Best Machine Quilting Frameless.

I started making quilts in 2009 and to further my quilting experience, in January of 2017, I joined the Toronto Modern Quilting Guild, and when I walked into that first guild meeting, I had never quilted a quilt. 

It was at this time, I became a full time student of the craft and 2 years later, I designed and made Starring You.

New virtual cityscape improv workshop

Make a mini version of the cityscape quilt pictured above in this new workshop taught by Peter Byrne. You can find out more information on his instagram posts @petersquilts. To register for this workshop, email Peter direct at Petersquilts@gmail.com

Face mask wire update

These are the face masks I made from Liberty Tana Lawn fabric. The Tana lawn fabric is lightweight like tissue weight, so a third “interlining” layer works great without making the mask too thick and hard to breathe. This layer is in the middle between the front and back fabrics.

The wire is zig zag sewn to the interlining layer (3/8” from raw edge) and I place a piece of tear away stabilizer behind the fabric. The stabilizer makes stitching this wire soooooo easy. No puckers in the fabric, and it doesn’t pull up and make the seam allowance uneven and short.

This is how I stitched the wire in a quilt cotton fabric mask. Regular quilt cotton and batiks are too thick to add more full layers, so I used the same size 1” x 6” strip that I use to make the pipe cleaner sleeve for the “interlining” piece. You can see the tear away stabilizer. It really makes a huge difference in the ease of stitching the wire onto the fabric.

I stitch it the same way as I did the Tana lawn, with the tear away stabilizer behind the fabric strip. The strip is then centered on top of the wrong side of the back fabric - raw edges together at top. It is sewn together with the top seam. The bottom of the strip does not need to be stitched onto the back because it gets folded up in the first pleat.

I made a cute baby bonnet!

This is the baby bonnet I have been talking about. The fabric is from Spoonflower. I chose two fabric patterns that were printed on a single yard of fabric - 2 half yards. The pattern is by Oh Me Oh My

I love quick make projects like this one. I usually do not cut the fabric and sew the pattern on the same day, but this one could be done in a day including cutting the fabric pieces. I will make another one in a larger size because you know how quickly babies grow out of things!

Gardening

So, the weather has not warmed up enough to plant my flowers, but I thing by this time next week, it will be full on planting extravaganza! I have some flower seeds I want to plant in the back yard - this year I got a huge variety of sun flowers! I also got a variety of poppy flower seeds and some of those can be planted in containers.

Have you ever hear of a pink dandelion? I saw these seeds and had to have them. I’m not sure if it is too late to plant those, but I am going to give it a go anyways.