LMS

Hey Folks!–Today we are enjoying day #2 of Spring Break–we kicked it off with a fun bit of snow yesterday–lots of snow & Spring Break, both events are equally as much fun for me now as they were when I was a kid.

Anyhoo, today I’m sharing my Petals Runner.

It’s in the current issue of Fons & Porters Easy Quilts.  This was another fun collaboration with RJR fabrics using fabrics from their line of Cotton Supreme Solids.

Love these colors!–And I think the back of the runner is just as cool as the front!

This is a great project if you are interested in trying out machine applique.  Gentle curves & a symmetrical template make this a breeze for a beginner.  I finished it off with a bit of straight line quilting–and voila!–a great spring project.

Happy Quilting!

Yay!–I finally get to share my Garden District pillow with you all!  I designed and made this pillow almost two years ago!  Yikes, I can’t believe it’s really been that long.

I designed Garden District for Heather Bostic’s book Pillow Pop–a book featuring fun pillow designs from over 20 different designers/bloggers.

The fabrics I used are from Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks voile collection and a tan linen.  The combo of the two weights of fabric was a little bit tricky to work with but the end product is so striking.

One of my fave parts of the pillow is the colorful hand quilting using perle cotton.  I’ve been asked often what type of needle I prefer for quilting with perle.  I use an embroidery needle–the larger eye and longer needle are perfect for working with the heavier weight thread (I usually use 8 wt. perle).

I finished off the pillow with a simple envelope enclosure but I added a fun little strip of pieced fabric to spice the back up a bit.

I’m happy to have my pillow back home after it’s long absence!–It’s happily living on my couch. =)

BTW, in case you missed the scrap basket update in my last post, they were spoken for in just a couple minutes after my post.  They’ve been mailed off and received into their new home where they will hopefully be made into something fabulous.

I do still have scraps that I will need to unload again sometime and judging by all you scrap lovers (myself included!) a scrappy giveaway may be in order at some point in time.

Happy Sewing!

I, very spur of the moment, decided to enter in this round of the Modern Quilted Pillow Swap over on flickr.  This swap runs a little bit differently than traditional swaps in that everyone makes whatever pillow design they would like, everyone votes on their favorites & based on the number of votes your pillow receives is how the pillow recipients are decided.

I made a 14″ appliqued United States of America pillow.  I free motion quilted across the USA part and hand quilted the background fabric.  It will soon be making it’s way to it’s new owner. =)

And now, the winner of the Stitch Craft Create Magazine giveaway….

Congrats Wendi!–I just sent you an email. =)

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend–filled with lots of productivity–or relaxation–or both!

Thanks so much for your input in regard to my last post!–It definitely gives me some things to think about. =)  Today, I do have something I can share with you…from start to finish–pretty exciting. =p

The family and I got back yesterday from a weekend of camping.  I had taken along my boring old composition book which I have taken to using for writing notes, inspiration, patterns etc. in order to wrap up a few projects.  But the notebook was so dreary, it definitely needed some jazzing up–yesterday afternoon, jazzing up became my Sunday project.

I swapped some fabrics with Aneela awhile back and in with the fabrics she sent she included some Liberty of London fabrics.  I decided to use those and I added some Liberty prints from my stash in with the mix.  Then I threw in some Anna Maria Horner prints that worked well with the Liberty prints.  AMH’s voile prints are similiar in weight to Liberty fabrics.

I decided to use the same Linen that I had used in my Stitch Magazine pillow—a great chocolatey color.

I new the basic design idea that I wanted to use…Perle Cotton stitching with a cute little Dresden.  I found this free pattern on craftsy.com which provided a mini dresden template so I didn’t even have to draft my own pattern.

The stitching on my journal cover is all done using 8 wt. Perle Cotton on my sewing machine(regular weight thread in my bobbin).

I used a fun blue flower print to finish the edges on the inside of my journal cover.  And a perfect stripe for the binding on the top and bottom.

The back of the journal features the straight line stitching.

If I had more time, I would have added a little pen pocket or an oversized pocket to store a calculator/cell phone.  But, since I was after a quick finish project, no pockets were added.

All in all, so much better!  And the nice thing is, is that the journal cover can easily be removed and used for my next journal once this one is used up.  Perfect!

You may remember me waxing poetic about the premier issue of Stitch Craft Create last fall.  I was(and still am) so in love with this magazine.  The projects are so doable and there is such a great range of ideas–I think anyone could find at least one(if not more) projects that they would want to try.

I am so excited that my “Chirp” pillow is featured in the issue hitting newstands tommorrow!

I love this little shabby pillow…it has a little bit of stitchy applique, some straight line machine quilting, some stippling, some embroidery, and is chock full of fun shabby fabrics.

The new Lecien fabrics that just came out would be perfect for making one of your own!

All you’d need is a little bit of Linen and you’d be on your way.

Happy Monday!

I have finished up the quilting on my reindeer pillow and the binding has been sewn down.  Has anyone had any luck machine sewing down binding?  I have tried several different popular machine sewing binding tutorials and I am never happy with the way it turns out.  Unless, the front and the back stitching line up perfectly I am just not happy with it.  Any tips or tutorials that worked for you?  Until then I will be hand sewing my binding…plodding along… =p

For the quilting on this pillow, I did an all over stipple, not over Mr. Reindeer, and then I did something a little bit different(for me).  Aurifil sent me a fantastic package of thread to try out several weeks ago.  One of the things that I have been playing with since receiving my fun thread package  is using the heavier 12 weight thread to straight line machine quilt.  I had planned to hand quilt the straight lines over the stippling but instead, I machine quilted them.  I used a longer stitch length for the straight lines but other than that I didn’t make any changes to my machine/needle.  I am so pleased with the way that it turned out.  Totally makes me want to try doing a white whole cloth quilt using straight line quilting and a rainbow of 12 weight Aurifil thread–how pretty would that be!–and since Aurifil thread comes in 100s of colors it would be a breeze to choose some pretty ones.

The folks over at Aurifil were also kind enough to send over 5 thread samplers for me to give away to 5 of my readers.  So, If you’d like to try out some fun thread leave me a comment.  If you aren’t into machine quilting, the 50 weight thread is perfect for piecing–some threads mess with your seam allowance just a bit which doesn’t seem like a big deal until you start putting together all the blocks.  Even 1/16 inch adds up over the piecing of a whole quilt.  US entries only please for this giveaway.

This month in the Ringo Pie Bee, Lynne requested blocks based on British Design Classics & gave us this image to use as inspiration:

I’ve been a bit stumped as to what to make–luckily Lynne said we could use applique if we’d like to which really saved my butt. =p  We do a lot of paper piecing in this bee and paper piecing some of these images is just way over my head….applique, now I can handle that.

I decided to use this image as my inspiration:

I was a little bit concerned my block was gonna look like some wonky VW Bug–but, after I got going on it I was happy with the end result.  The hubster could identify the car after I was finished so I called it a success.

Oh and by the way, I’m sure that Lynne would love if you’d pop on over to her blog to check out some of her fancy dance moves here. =P

Oh and by the way again, if you haven’t entered to win the Go! Baby cutter pop on over here and enter!

My niece, Ashley, turned one on Friday–I only have one neice, and one nephew, Ashley’s big brother Blake so, they are pretty special to me.  Today we are celebrating Ashley’s 1st b-day along with my brother who had a birthday yesterday.  My sister was somewhat specifically vague about gift ideas for Ashley–”she doesn’t really need any toys & we don’t really have a lot of extra room for things….”—hmmmm…kinda left me wondering what might be the perfect gift.  I’ve talked about my niece before—lovingly called “potsy” because of her cute little pot belly (and pot cheeks as Chloe calls them)—the girl loves her food…seriously….she ate half a sandwich on our picnic last week(and not just a sandwich she ate other stuff too—I was just amazed she ate a sandwich)—my girls couldn’t even finish a couple crackers and cheese.  And no way were they downing sandwiches before a year….she’s really quite amazing. =)

The hubster and I talked about giving her a gift card to my sis’s fave grocery shopping spot….we figured she goes thru quite a bit of food….but, you know how sisters are, I’m not sure she would have exactly appreciated that gift. =p  So, I decided to make little miss Ashley a cute little appliqued top.

I think it’ll work nicely. =p