Grace - The Fashion Designer

When Grace and her sister and brother were here on Friday, Grace came to me quietly and asked if I had a busy week ahead. I said it was going to be so so, and so I asked, "What's up Grace?" She told me she was invited to a birthday party on May 15th and was asked to wear her favorite outfit. There will be a fashion show at the party. She's been thinking about it all week and decided she wanted to make a party dress and needed my help.


After we finished our teacher appreciation gifts, Grace dug out my great crayola twistie markers and paper and started to draw a number of dress styles. She wanted my opinion. She said she has a design in her head but none of these dresses was it. She was having trouble.

So, we went up in my sewing room, and reviewed the dress patterns that I had. She found a nice sundress that she liked. This afternoon, we went shopping for the perfect fabric at Fabricville. After looking through many racks of floral fabrics, we found this one. And Grace knew it was speaking to her. A beautiful pink and purple on black fabric with whimsical flowers. The pink fabric will be a sash/belt that goes around the middle and ties into a bow in the back.

I'll cut this out this sundress and make it by Wednesday afternoon when she'll come over for a fitting. Stay tuned on Wednesday for Part II = The fashion shoot.

I'm taking the Challenge

The Free Motion Challenge that is. Joanne at Threadhead and her buddy Wendy have invited you and I to do a free-motion challenge. There are things that I'd like to learn and practice with my free motion, so I'm taking the plunge and signing up for the challenge.

I plan to start on Monday. I'm digging out my Dianne Gaudynski book, reviewing it during commercials on TV. I'm making a list of free motion styles I'd like to do. Top of the list is McTavishing, and bigger wonky feathers with echos. I'd also like to practice with different threads.

I'm lining up practice pieces to do. In addition to making some plain fabric layered blocks, I started a free motion piece in January that has various sections for using different techniques and I didn't finish it. So, that will be one of the first things I practice on.

The challenge is to do free motion a little every day for 14 days by the end of the month.

So, are you up for the challenge?

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

Next Tuesday is Teacher Appreciation Day.

The triplets came for a visit today and they (we) made each of their teachers a gift. (a quilty gift). Caitlin made a dog, and Mitchell and Grace made Kitty's. They stuffed the paws, the tails, the head and then sewed the parts together themselves. They are so cute and the kids absolutely loved making them.

They each hand wrote out a card of appreciation to their teacher and we'll include a picture in the card.

The kids can't wait to give them to their teachers. I hope they like them!!

Rug Hooking Show

A few of the Friday Girls and I went to see the Rug Hooking exhibition last Friday. It's lovely work and the display make it so inviting to take up the art. Here is a great picture of the Friday Girls standing by a hooked rug that took the maker over 10 years to complete. It's stunning and represents the Provincial flowers.

Cat Quilts - Purrrrfectly finished

A set of Jim Shore cats inspired me to use up some 2.5" strips. I love it that by sewing a light and dark strip together, and sub cutting 2.5" again, you can make 8 4-patch blocks out of a pair of strips. To make a 12" block simply cut a 4.5" focus fabric for the middle, then assemble like a 9 patch.

I made a total of 12 blocks. This would make a nice baby size quilt or in my case it's perrrfect for a couple of cat quilts.

I used a poly batting that I picked up with a coupon at Michaels. It's perrrrfect for what I wanted for the cats. After machine quilting these, I could tell that they will poof up pretty good after a wash.

There are 6 different cats in this panel, so each quilt got one of each cat. Here is the same cat, side by side in each of the quilts.

All folded up and ready to be delivered.

I'm ready for a cat nap.

Happy Birthday Patience

Everyone loves a party. The triplets helped Patience blow out her birthday candles this past weekend. Aurora wasn't quite sure about all the fire and wasn't getting near it.

Patience has been working hard to loose the last of her baby weight. So her Birthday supper was low fat and healthy. She requested a carrot cake with full fat cream cheese. I know she was having a weak moment when she requested that, so I went on the search for a healthy carrot cake recipe.

I came up with this Carrot Cake with cream cheese frosting from Gina's Weight Watcher recipes. It was amazingly moist and rich. Patience never did know, that I used light cream cheese and this cake has almost no oil. She showed great will power and only had one piece of cake. I on the other hand had two pieces.

Happy Birthday P.

Cat Quilts

I love it when I have help to do my quilting.

Grace, Mitchell and Caitlin are carefully placing the blocks so that the cat blocks are in the center and the 4-patch blocks make a checkerboard around the kitty in the middle. There is a total of 12 blocks and this will make 2 Cat Quilts.


These two quilts will lay on a bed or couch so cats can snuggle up on them. They will be big enough to fold in half so they are extra fluffy. The cat quilts can be washed and fluffed up in the dryer. Cats love fluffy quilts.


Do you think the cats will like the Jim Shore fabric?

Thanks for all your help kids. I'll machine quilt these next week along with all my other small projects. One will be for Aurora and Aunt Pear's cat, and the other will be for Michelle and Scott's cats.

Tri-Recs Table Runner

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I wanted to use my 2 year old Tri-Recs rulers for the first time. I was going to do a simple project that had Tri Recs blocks in it.

Inspired by Joanne at Threadhead's Tri-Recs Show and tell and just going by one of her pictures, I began calculating and cutting fabrics.

I finished the block components and then calculated the cuts for the side setting triangles.

Thinking that I had everything ready, and referring to Joanne's runner,

I laid out the blocks to make sure that everything was right. I realized that forgot to cut corner triangles.

And all those calculations, I ended up with one extra set of tri-recs points.

Yesterday I finished sewing the blocks together and put the borders on. I really like this runner, and I am so glad I finally learned how to use the Tri Recs. thanks Joanne.

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Next week, I'll be machine quilting many small projects that I've been piecing over the past few weeks, including this runner.

Spicy Spiral Table Runner - Part II

I had my strata's sewed and already for the cutting of the wedges this morning. I had a hard time to cut the wedges from strata and I made a couple of mistakes. But through the mistakes, I discovered the proper cutting procedure. It was easy to cut one side of the wedge, but the other side required some tricky positioning, but I got it with the help of a second straight edge.

My brain was tired when I finished cutting and I needed a break. I just couldn't see how it all went together. So I set everything up by my sewing machine and thought I would go for my walk and then work on another project for a bit and just continue the spiral tomorrow.

During my walk and I thinking and thinking about the pattern directions. After all this thinking, I thought I understood what the instructions were trying to say. After lunch, I couldn't resist starting sewing.

Well, t he process was different than I had thought through on the walk. :) But once I got started, the sewing was quite straight forward and quick. After a couple of seams, I knew I had it. I was really excited and relieved to see it come together. I really like the light stripe down the center. It is shown here on my wide ironing board, and measures about 20" x 40". A great size.

The little jagged edges will be all cut to a smooth curve after all the quilting is done and just before binding.

It's an amazing design and I can't wait to make another. I'll layer and quilt this one next week along with a couple of other runners that I'm making.

Spicy Spiral Table Runner

While I was in South Carolina, I happened to see a really different and unique small project. It's a Spiral table runner. I had a hard time to find the Spicy Spiral pattern to buy, but asking around, and ardent googling gave me some leads and I ultimately found it online. I ordered it, and it came by mail earlier this week.

I also borrowed the 9 degree wedge ruler from my friend Lois, and I read the spicy directions front to back and back to front. There's a lot of numbers, fractions, and special little steps, so I'm being careful. Yesterday, I pulled 8 fabrics from my stash. Reds, creams, a light green and some blacks.

I have the first couple of steps done, which is cutting 4 strips of various widths of each of the 8 fabrics. Then sewing 4 sets of strata using the 8 strips.

Tomorrow I'll move on to the next step.

Post Note:   If you are looking where to buy the pattern and the 10 degree wedge ruler, they are both available here at Phillips Fibre Art..

Batik Beauty - Finished

I'm so pleased with how my Batik Beauty turned out. I just put the binding on this morning. It's a little tricky to do bind curves, and then those 90 degree corners are a little intimidating. I took it slow and used lots of pins.

It was so hard to take a picture that showed the machine quilting, so that's a good lesson for me. "Don't spend so much time trying to figure out quilting on a batik fabrics". Plain stippling will be just fine. You can get a peek at the stippling on the red quadrant here.

Overall, the quilting looks great, but I do really like the echo of the points in the black background. This Beauty is now sitting on my dining room table and it looks stunning.

Do you want to make your own Beauty, go here for the pattern at Sew Karen-ly's online store.

This finish is just in time, because the Friday Girls have another Batik project in mind, that is going to be so fun. You'll have to wait until we get started on it, before you can see it. I know you'll love it.

Working on my Beauty

I have my Batik Beauty all quilted. It was nice to play with my Juki for the first time in a few months. All that is left to do is the binding. My machine that has the quarter inch foot is in being serviced, but I'll have it back on Tuesday. I'll show you the finished Beauty then.

It's always hard to decide on quilting. I put a ton of thought on how to quilt the center part but didn't actually come to a final decision until I sat down to stitch this morning. It turns out that the quilting on the center part doesn't really show up that good on the batiks. I'll try to get a better shot of it on Tuesday.

But I do love how the variegated thread shows up on the dark background of the points. It kinda represents little licks of flame, as in the a fireball.

I guess, I would label this as organic machine quilting as opposed to eclectic like the stitching I did earlier this week on Lanaya's quilt. My organic as in lots of subtle curves, and no straight line quilting at all.

BTW: Lanaya's mother loved the quilt. She looked at all the stitching and kept saying wow. She noticed all the little hearts. Like I predicted, she said, "Oh, I'm going to keep that for good", so I told her, to please please use it, and wash it lots, and I'll make her another in a couple of years. She said she would so that made me happy. She couldn't wait to show it to her aunt. I felt proud to give it to her.