Latest Quilt

Now that Christmas has been here and the presents are opened, I can now share my latest quilt project that I made for my son Steve. Steve is 6'2" I believe, so the quilt had to be pretty large to fit over him. I made it approximately 7' x 5'. I used plenty of scraps in it that were already pre-cut in the 4 and 2" squares and the 4x2" rectangles that I have mentioned before. See what a help that can be to have those cut out ahead of time? Some of the scraps in this quilt are from Ron and Savannah's wedding tablecloths that I snitched with permission, and also scraps from just about every special person I have made a quilt for including an old boyfriend that remains a friend to this day. Steve may not know all the memories, but they are there. I put this quilt together in a quilt as you go technique that I keep trying to improve on (at least my technique) so that it doesn't kill me with my arthritis to make a large quilt, but at this point, I think I am going to cry 'uncle'. Even with doing the quilt in sections, when I finally put the last two together (which was the whole bulk of the quilt) the muscles in my neck, shoulders and hands were cramping up like crazy. One thing I did do that was a huge help was binding the long edges and mitering the corners before putting all the sections together so I wasn't having to manipulate all that fabric and batting. It was just quick work to finish the binding on the top and bottom when I put all the sections together. I even MITERED the corners! A first for me thanks to a Nancy Zieman video that I watched enough times that dyslexic me could figure out which way to bend the binding strips.

 

 

I reference Sharon Pedersons' Reversible Quilts books each time I do a quilt as you go quilt and they are a big help. Until just a few minutes ago I didn't realize that she had a DVD out, but I bet it would be a really big help. The back of each of the blocks in Steve's quilt is a different fabric so he can use it either direction. It is such a bright quilt, I called it Steve's Happy Quilt, becuase how can you wake up sad after sleeping under it? this quilt was made entirely on my Janome 7700 Horizon sewing machine.

 

 

 

 



 

Couture Techniques for a Better Fitting Waistband - Threads

Couture Techniques for a Better Fitting Waistband - Threads  Check out this interesting article from Threads magazine!

Make a Snowflake for the Students of Sandy Hook

Make a Snowflake for the Students of Sandy Hook  Following the tragedy AT Sandy Hook School the PTA is wanting to decorate the school as a winter wonderland for when the students come back by decorating it with snowflakes. If you have access to an embroidery machine, Embroidery Library is giving away a free lace snowflake design in three sizes that you can make. They would like to have all the snowflakes arrive at there office by January 12, 2013. Please visit the link to Embroidery Library for full instructions and the download to the snowflakes. If you can't machine embroider, I'm sure that they are taking any sort of pretty snowflake. Let's all do what we can to help these children return to some sort of normalcy in their lives and show the parents we care!

Embroidered Pillowcases

Year's ago I was given a big box of Work Basket Magazines. I didn't really want to keep all of them, but before disposing of them, I did go through them first and removed all the embroidery transfers that were in them. When I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to embroider some pillowcases, I went through the transfers and found one that I liked and used them to put the design on the pillowcases. The nice thing about using these transfers is you don't have any concept of what colors to use or what stitches to use. You get to be as creative as you want. I pulled out my copy of The Embroiderer's Handbook which I have found to be the BEST embroidery stitch guide I have ever seen and started sewing. I used several stitches that I had never used before and also some variegated threads, especially for the birds. For the bird I used the Fishbone Stitch found on page 73 of the book. For the green leaves I used Lattice Couching found on page 99 (I do need a bit more practice with that stitch), I also used a long stitch with a French Knot on the end for the pistils of the flowers. I enjoyed my time sitting and stitching. I also found when stitching I tend to not much which has it's own benefits!