One Piece at a Time

Gathering Inspiration

One of the biggest jokes I share with my husband and family is that I am quite possibly the world’s worst gardener. I only have green things in my yard due to them, seriously. I can kill any plant with relative ease. I think this is why I applique flowers..I cannot seem to actually grow them.But I still love gardens, so I take advantage of the many garden tours that crop up this time of year.

A few weeks ago I dragged my incredibly patient husband around Boulder, CO to see the Eccentric Artists Garden Tour. It was really quite fun actually except the fact that I developed a nice case of “house envy” and had to stop after about four gardens. I was completely restored by my favorite summer treat of a frozen coffee shake. It seems I can get my husband to do anything with me if it involves a frozen coffee.

Here are some views…

Check out this link for some much better views!

http://www.eccentricartistsgardens.com/index.html

A Tale of Two Irons

I have always been a two iron kind of girl which for me makes perfect sense. I have one iron for actually pressing fabric (not clothes! Duh!) I have another iron for preparing my appliqué shapes. A couple of years ago my super fancy iron started leaking like a sieve. I thought I would be economical and replace it with an inexpensive iron. This worked great for a few months but I found that the starch from my appliqué pressing started to build up and then the fabric would start sticking and thing would get really dodgy unless I cleaned it off. Then I noticed that I could see the circles from pressing my circle shapes. These wouldn’t go away no matter how much I tried to clean them off. It finally got so frustrating that I stopped using the evil thing all together. Luckily I still have my trusty Rowenta iron (formerly the fabric pressing iron). NOTHING ever sticks to this thing! The really remarkable thing is that I have actually had it for 17 years and it’s soleplate still looks new. I think I will be a little more carefull with my iron purchases in the future.

An Applique Must Have

I have been very intrigued lately by embellishing and dimensional techniques as many of you know from my dimensional flower post. Recently I was on amazon.com looking at some new quilting books when this one by Janice Vaine caught my eye. I must admit, I have no self control sometimes and I think the people at Amazon know this! I am particularly susceptible to books that are loaded with fantastic techniques and not just patterns. Well this one fits the bill. There are literally pages upon pages of really thorough and well illustrated techniques for dimensional appliqué and embroidery. Here are a few shots of some of the pages. One of the best parts is that this book has a inner spiral binding so it lays flat while you are learning the techniques.

the WINNER is

Michelle, who wrote

"I always have a project on the go that is small enough to go with me. :) Scissors, thread, thimble and I am ready. :) Love Vera Bradley...bought the rolling overnight bag just for my sewing machine!"

 

Thanks for playng along!

I’ve Been HEXED

A couple of weeks ago I did a yo-yo maker give-away and Sherri from the lovely blog

http://lazyquilter.blogspot.com/

Left the following comment:

“Oh, be EVER-SO careful with yo-yos! They are like little hexagons that you make and make and make and all of a sudden you have a giant over-king-size quilt top!!! Lol”

Of course I instantly went looking for Hexagon quilts. I figured something like that would make a good “traveling” project and I am about to go on a trip. Well, you guessed it, I think I am hooked. It didn’t help that I found this video on Michele Foster’s Facebook page. Melanie Sullivan has an absolutely awesome blog and has done a Hexagon Quilt-a-Long.You can check it out here. Lord help me!

Don’t worry, appliqué is still my first love but my appliqués don’t travel well due to my preference for super white backgrounds.

Back later with the WINNER!

Free Patterns from Accuquilt...what's not to like?

 

You can receive 22 free patterns from Accuquilt just by signing up for their mailing list. Click here for more information.

Look for more Accuquilt sweetness later this summer!

500th Blog Post GIVE-AWAY

I’m sitting here slightly dazed by the fact that I am typing my 500^th blog post. I really can’t believe it. I have been at this for almost two years and have actually found enough to say to fill 500 posts. The even weirder thing is… the more I write the more ideas I have.

To celebrate I wanted to do something really special. So, I thought I would include you in one of my other obsessions. Nice of me isn’t it? As if I haven’t already turned you into appliqué addicts.

Here is my true confession…I am a Vera Bradley addict as well. Well, at least a mild one. I was turned on to these bags back in the day when my kiddos were in diapers and I was in serious need of a bag I could carry all that stuff in that was also cute. The fact that these were washable made them even better because all of us who have had kids know, washable is awesome! Anyway, it didn’t take me very long to figure out that these make really great bags for hauling my sewing around in. I even have a picture of one on my Applique Block Carrier pattern.

Recently, in my quest for transportable sewing paraphernalia I have discovered the Hanging Organizer….swoon! It’s a great sewing stuff organizer! It fits perfectly in my Vera bag with my Applique Block Carrier.

Here are some views :

(I’m trying very hard to not notice how chubby my arms are in that last picture…I’m sure the camera was malfunctioning!)

And the BEST news of all. This is the one I am giving away ! (the brown flower organizer not the yellow bag...that's my favorite) Just my little way of saying THANK YOU!

To enter, just leave a comment telling whether or not you take your sewing with you when you travel.

It’s BACK!!!!!!

Well, I finally received Ambrosia back from McCall’s last week. I’m happy to say that they took really good care of it and it didn’t get lost in the mail on the way home.

A couple of months ago I saw this post on one of my favorite blogs Happy Zombie. I showed it to my kids and they laughed themselves silly. They said this was something I just HAD to do.

So I did. Here is a picture of me on my favorite trail with Ambrosia. I’ve been trying to find some way to e-mail it to Happy Zombie but I’m apparently being a little brain dead today…uh oh…maybe it’s the zombies!

Just an aside, the reason this is my favorite trail is that I can do it without getting really out of breath and grumpy…notice that there is almost no elevation gain. Yep, that’s how I like ‘em…FLAT.

Dimensional Daffodil

This spring we had a terrific crop of daffodils come out in our front yard. I wanted to do a little dimensional flower block of these since they make me so happy. They make me remember my student days in upstate New York. Once you saw the daffodils you knew spring was coming soon…something that really helped because I was a California transplant and I couldn’t feel my toes due to the cold.

Anyway, here we go.

First, appliqué down all the non-dimensional pieces.

For each dimensional petal cut two pieces of fabric slightly larger than the shape and place them right sides together.

Make a template and trace it onto on side of this little sandwich.

Sew around the petal, right on the tracing line.

Cut your petal out, I’m cutting slightly less than ¼” here.

Turn right side out.

Along the open side, sew a line of gathering stitches.

Pull tight to gather.

Tie a knot.

Pin the dimensional petals in place and appliqué around the outer petal.

I was going to finish these with yo-yo’s but I found the gathers competed with the gathers in the petals. Lucky for me I found these totally cute buttons at Hobby Lobby!

Here is a copy of the pattern for you to try.

Download Daffodil Drawing

This is BUGGING me…

Well now that I have six blocks of My Tweets done something is just really bugging me about them. Can you tell what it is?

 

It’s these birds. They are BALD !

I didn’t think this would bug me back in February but now that I have all these other, non-bald, birds it really is bugging me. So, sometime in the next couple of weeks these babies are getting hair transplants…well maybe top-knot transplants. A good friend of mine always said that if something bugged you in your sewing you HAD to re-do it…so here I go…feel free to do transplants on your birds too.