The quilt as you go technique has been one that I have wanted to try out now for a while. A couple of months ago I purchased a lovely jelly roll of green and blue batiks, with the intention of making a table runner from them using the quilt as you go technique. Before I jumped in with both feet I thought it might be wise to do a practice run with some scrapes. I spoke to a master quilter yesterday who lives out here in Western Massachusetts, who uses quilt as you go exclusively in her work to see what words of wisdom she would pass on. She told me to press a lot and press often. Some quilt as you go directions suggest than you finger press you stripes as you go along but she said I would not be happy with the result if I did so I was glad that I spoke to her.
I have noticed that I enjoying working with the color red this time of year. It gives me the illusion of heat, especially when one gets up to a temperature in the single digits outside. Fortunately, we haven't run out of wood YET, so the wood stove is working double time keeping us warm I have also noticed that I am have been particularly fond of the combination of red with black and yellow lately. This is no doubt why I pulled out this cozy cat fabric out of my stash to work with.. I had made an apron out of it a few years back but had enough left to make another tricolored apron, almost. There was only enough of the red fabric I was going to use for the flip side to make that side...no scrapes to work into the tri-colored side but I did find this other red fabric that also matched the cozy cat fabric that even had some black and gold in it so it was a no brainer to use it on the tri-colored side.
Back when I was working with Wichita Webmasters on my website design, one of the things I had to decide was the name of the site. One of the names I came up with was "a stitch in time..." Of course that name was already taken but it doesn't prohibit me from using it here as the title for this blog entry so that I can do an update of the Dancing Horses wall hanging.
Once the decision was made on how I would border this fabulous panel (went with a triple border with crazy quilt blocks in the corners), the next decision is...how should I quilt this. All machine quilting using metallic gold thread? A combination of the metallic thread with black thread? Outlining around the blocks in the panel? Outlining the horses? The first decision was an easy one, I would machine quilt around the blocks in the panel using gold metallic thread. If you have even sewn with metallic thread, you know that patience is required. About half way through it, and about the 12th time the metallic thread had either broken off or started unraveling right in the sewing machine, I was beginning to question this decision. I persevered, taking many breaks so as not to get COMPLETELY frustrated.
My next project.....making a wall hanging from this glorious Dancing Horses panel by Laurel Burch. I found myself in a quandary on how to border it. I immediately attached a small 1" border using a black tone on tone striped fabric but then I couldn't decide; do I make a crazy quilt border or use the other dancing horses fabric that has the burgundy background.? This is a very strong panel with a lot going on so I needed to be careful not to make the border too busy, I posed this question to my friend Margaret after I posted the photo on the right on facebook with both borders and the panel that I had put up on my design wall.
Do you remember back in elementary school making hand made Valentines? It was one of my favorite activities. The paper lace doilies, the red and pick construction paper and of course...the glitter! This year, just for fun, I decided to make so hand made valentines to sell. I have some 8 1/2 X 11" card stock and envelopes that will lit the card once you fold it in half so now all I needed was a design. First I made a propotype using up some fabric I had left over from making a heart shaped bowl.. The idea was to completely cover up the card stock with fabric and then decorate it with a heart. The people I showed it to for feedback really like it, especially the idea of adhereing fabric to the entire card.
What better time to take on a new project than the New Year. Back in the Spring I started making coiled fabric bowls which I learned how to make by a tutorial a friend suggested that she found on the CraftStylish website. I blogged about making my first bowl on April 2, 2013 which can be accessed through my blog archive. I later found out that Susan Breier had written a book called "it's a Wrap" about making clothline bowls. I recently purchased the second book where she discsses how to make differently shaped bowls which included square and heart-shaped. This past week I made my first heart-shaped bowl.
One of the items on the materials list is a glue stick. This was something new to me but since I was going to follow the directions in the book, I thought best to do as suggested. I dug out of my stash what I thought would make an intersting heart shaped bowl and with with glue stick in hand, I began cutting stripes and wrapping them around the clothesline. WOW, LOVE the glue stick! The most difficult part of making a clothesline bowl in getting is started, incorporating the next strip and also ending the bowl. The glue COMPLETELY streamlined this process.
WOW, it has been two weeks since I have made a blog entry. There has been plenty of activity, just not much sewing. Like everyone else, life and living, getting ready for Christmas and keeping the rest of my life going has taken up a lot of time. A few days before Christmas I had sold some bibs and realized I didn't have any in inventory to replace them so time to get out all of that fun baby bib fabric and design a bunch of bibs, so I have been visiting baby bibville here for awhile.
There are some wonderful changes to report.....my DH pulled up the carpeting in the sewing room and replaced it with a click together laminate flooring which has made keeping the sewing area much easier to maintain. I LOVE IT! He also hung up some shelves in the closet so I no longer have to use the floor for storage so I am feeling that I am starting out 2014 in a good way. But, back to the bibs.
WOW, it's been over a week since I posted anything! Last Sunday we went up over the border to New Hampshire to a tree farm and got this years Christmas tree. We thought 4 days after Thanksgiving, no problem, they will have plenty left. We were told they were practically sold out. Since I LOVE their fragrance, and people seem to like that fragrance in balsam gift, I have been procuring fraser firs the last few years. OMG, there were only about 6 of them left that had not been either tagged (someone has bought it) or completely cut down...LOTS OF STUMPS! They bale the tree up for you so it is basically tied up. Since we got home after dark, it spent last week out in the car port.
It is no secret that I love working in jewel tones. They are my absolute favorite. Recently, my friend Katrina gave me an order for an earth-toned coiled bowl and I soon realized I had nothing to show her! Last week before the construction project started in the sewing room, I sorted through my stash and came up with some nice earth-toned fabrics that I thought would make nice bowls. The first fabric was a chocolate brown that had large flowers on it (dark red and orange) with sage green leaves. I also found a dark red in my stash and a sage green fabric take matched the anchor print so wha-la. I made them part of the design. It always amazes me how different the fabric looks once it gets wrapped and sewn. This particular fabric did not let me down on that count.
The carpeting in the sewing room will be getting ripped up tomorrow to ready things for the new laminate floor. Of course, I wanted to finish this last hot pad since I will not be able to sew for a few days, unle
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The quilt as you go technique has been one that I have wanted to try out now for a while. A couple of months ago I purchased a lovely jelly roll of green and blue batiks, with the intention of making a table runner from them using the quilt as you go technique. Before I jumped in with both feet I thought it might be wise to do a practice run with some scrapes. I spoke to a master quilter yesterday who lives out here in Western Massachusetts, who uses quilt as you go exclusively in her work to see what words of wisdom she would pass on. She told me to press a lot and press often. Some quilt as you go directions suggest than you finger press you stripes as you go along but she said I would not be happy with the result if I did so I was glad that I spoke to her.
I have noticed that I enjoying working with the color red this time of year. It gives me the illusion of heat, especially when one gets up to a temperature in the single digits outside. Fortunately, we haven't run out of wood YET, so the wood stove is working double time keeping us warm I have also noticed that I am have been particularly fond of the combination of red with black and yellow lately. This is no doubt why I pulled out this cozy cat fabric out of my stash to work with.. I had made an apron out of it a few years back but had enough left to make another tricolored apron, almost. There was only enough of the red fabric I was going to use for the flip side to make that side...no scrapes to work into the tri-colored side but I did find this other red fabric that also matched the cozy cat fabric that even had some black and gold in it so it was a no brainer to use it on the tri-colored side.
Back when I was working with Wichita Webmasters on my website design, one of the things I had to decide was the name of the site. One of the names I came up with was "a stitch in time..." Of course that name was already taken but it doesn't prohibit me from using it here as the title for this blog entry so that I can do an update of the Dancing Horses wall hanging. 
My next project.....making a wall hanging from this glorious Dancing Horses panel by Laurel Burch. I found myself in a quandary on how to border it. I immediately attached a small 1" border using a black tone on tone striped fabric but then I couldn't decide; do I make a crazy quilt border or use the other dancing horses fabric that has the burgundy background.? This is a very strong panel with a lot going on so I needed to be careful not to make the border too busy, I posed this question to my friend Margaret after I posted the photo on the right on facebook with both borders and the panel that I had put up on my design wall.
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has been two weeks since I have made a blog entry. There has been plenty of activity, just not much sewing. Like everyone else, life and living, getting ready for Christmas and keeping the rest of my life going has taken up a lot of time. A few days before Christmas I had sold some bibs and realized I didn't have any in inventory to replace them so time to get out all of that fun baby bib fabric and design a bunch of bibs, so I have been visiting baby bibville here for awhile. 
WOW, it's been over a week since I posted anything! Last Sunday we went up over the border to New Hampshire to a tree farm and got this years Christmas tree. We thought 4 days after Thanksgiving, no problem, they will have plenty left. We were told they were practically sold out. Since I LOVE their fragrance, and people seem to like that fragrance in balsam gift, I have been procuring fraser firs the last few years. OMG, there were only about 6 of them left that had not been either tagged (someone has bought it) or completely cut down...LOTS OF STUMPS! They bale the tree up for you so it is basically tied up. Since we got home after dark, it spent last week out in the car port. 
It is no secret that I love working in jewel tones. They are my absolute favorite. 
Recently, my friend Katrina gave me an order for an earth-toned coiled bowl and I soon realized I had nothing to show her! Last week before the construction project started in the sewing room, I sorted through my stash and came up with some nice earth-toned fabrics that I thought would make nice bowls. The first fabric was a chocolate brown that had large flowers on it (dark red and orange) with sage green leaves. I also found a dark red in my stash and a sage green fabric take matched the anchor print so wha-la. I made them part of the design. It always amazes me how different the fabric looks once it gets wrapped and sewn. This particular fabric did not let me down on that count. 
The carpeting in the sewing room will be getting ripped up tomorrow to ready things for the new laminate floor. Of course, I wanted to finish this last hot pad since I will not be able to sew for a few days, unle