Midweek Makers 325

Welcome to Midweek Makers - let's do some sharing!

First, I'd like to congratulate the winners from the Quilting Day giveaways:

Sharon won the Beginning Quilt bundle, Deb the Sewing Theme bundle, and Pat and JoAnne each won a copy of the Transfer Artist Paper book - again, congratulations and thanks for entering! 

For fun, my share involves the answers to the giveaway questions. I discovered that most of you were taught to quilt by Mom or through Home Ec class, with the average age of 12. An overwhelming majority have a dedicated sewing space, though most are not familiar with the books by Carol Dean Jones. And the two most favorite forms of quilt embellishments are embroidery and buttons. I always enjoy seeing the poll results!

Now let's see these shares from last week that caught my eye!

From Grace and Peace Quilting, a pretty new wall hanging for her studio,

a garden flower quilt finished by DonnaleeQ,

and a lovely scrap quilt from A Scrappy Quilter.

Now it's your turn - what will you share this week?

• please link directly to your post
• please link a quilt related item
• visit with the others and leave some comment love

Have fun!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Flower Runner Update

Woohoo! My wildflower runner is coming together, and now it's on the frame for quilting.

See? I did use those flying geese and the pink floral print. Plus the dark pink and bit of yellow to go with the background flowers, bringing it all together.

This of course, is just a close-up sneak peek which displays those flower petals I've been working on. They were first cut as circles with using my Crossover II machine from Crafters Edge.

Then they were cut again and stitched,

looking like this on the backside.

When flipped over and fused, the petal looks as shown below. Eventually I'll reveal the whole flower!

And for fun, before this runner got on the frame, I appliqued a few happy butterflies!

Though I have company this week, I'll try and get both the runner and the pattern finished up by Friday - I can't wait to show off this new spring floral runner!

Happy Quilting!

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Creative Cutting with Crafters Edge

Though I am no longer on the Crafters Edge design team, it doesn't mean I've stopped using the machine. It just means the pressure to produce a creative project each month is gone. I enjoyed being a member, but now with limited quilting time, I quilt when I can, and cut what I want!

If you've been following along lately, you would have noticed that I'm pretty excited that spring has arrived!

Isn't that a pretty picture? Beautiful pink blossoms and a pair of bluebirds - how I wish the bluebirds would nest in my yard again! We had such fun hearing the babies chirping outside our window in the spring of 2020, watching mom and dad bring them food, and finally having two fledge. Quite the essence of spring.

Yes, I'm excited about spring. And with all the hope and renewal that spring brings, I've got it in my head to start another flower project. This time I decided to enlist the help of my Crafters Edge Crossover II machine (affiliate link) and some circle dies.

Cutting no more than 6 fabrics at a time, several stacks of right-side-together fabric squares were run through the machine, creating ready to cut and stitch circles.

Then I continued to put the Crossover II through it's paces, cutting fusible rings to go onto those fabric circles.

To cut skinny rings like that, I used two different sized circle dies, centered with each other and held together with a bit of tape, as seen in the white circle.

That's a very useful, creative way to use those dies, right? Certainly that's an great idea for future reference!

But cutting fusible - that's requires a note of caution. I tried stacking several layers of fusible for super fast and easy cutting, just like with fabric, but ended up with a mess. Turns out that the pressure the machine exerts compressed all the fusible layers together, making them impossible to separate. A mess indeed!

So, back to square one, tediously cutting fusible rings one piece at a time. 

Not exactly efficient but I got what I wanted - narrow rings of fusible, saving my hands from lots of cutting! Overall, the Crossover II cutting machine did exactly what I needed, and now I can move on to making my flowers. More to come on that another day!

Happy Quilting!

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Midweek Makers 324

Welcome to Midweek Makers - a linky party for sharing your quilt projects!

I'm still in a very spring-y mood, with so many beautiful flowers blooming! I think I'm inspired to make another flower-themed runner - still working out the details on that but it may involve flying geese and a pink floral print.

Switching from spring flowers, I found these three striking beauties, all set on black.

From Quilts, Etc, these pickle dish blocks,

from Bell Creek Quilts, a Shout color catcher foundation pieced string quilt,

and from Time 4 Stitchn, a lovely green shamrock that just pops on black.

Now it's your turn to share!

• please link directly to your post
• please link a quilt related item
• visit with the others and leave some comment love

Have fun!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Spring is Here!

The calendar says it's official - spring arrived yesterday, March 20!

With the time change last weekend providing longer daylight hours, there's more time to enjoy the beauty of nature. And I've been doing just that, snapping pictures of the flowers in my new-to-me yard. 

Starting at the top left, I've found beautiful white calla lilies, fuschia azaleas, cheery daffodils, a clump of bluebells, lovely hellebores, and a flowering tree I don't know the name of but the hummingbirds like it!

Such a pleasure to discover! Now I can't wait to find out what all the fruit trees are - hopefully they'll provide some fruit this year to solve the mystery.

All of that floral beauty really puts me the spring mood. And how better to further my enjoyment than with my Spring Fling table runner?

I made mine on a navy background to make those flowers pop, though any color combo would look great!

Something else that's always associated with spring is strawberries. They were my late mother's favorite, and they were always in the store around her March 5th birthday - certainly a perfect gift! 

She enjoyed hers as they were, but now I've gotten a bit fancy and dressed them up with a bit of chocolate. I wish she was here for the decadence of Chocolate Dipped Strawberries!

Now that I have two spring favorites, flowers and strawberries, I can enjoy them together in Strawberry Splendor.

This is my favorite spring wall hanging - easy to paper piecing, a bit of applique, and wonderful quilting, especially the trapunto strawberries in the border. I am seriously in the mood for spring! 

Happy Spring!

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National Quilting Day!

How exciting! A day for quilters, by quilters, to honor quilters!

And how better to celebrate than with a giveaway! Did I say 'a' giveaway? I meant three - lots of chances to win some books, compliments of C&T Publishing. Affiliate links are provided to see what's inside the books.

Contests are open today till midnight Wednesday, March 23 to those residing in the continental US only - no Alaska, Hawaii, or International entries at this time. Entry is easy - use the Rafflecopter forms for each giveaway. Good luck!

First up is a 2-book bundle plus a mini color wheel, perfect for the beginning quilter.

Jump into Patchwork and Quilting has cute projects for those just learning to quilt. Angela Walters and her daughter Chloe cover the important basics in the Quiltmaking for Beginners pocket book. And every quilter needs a color wheel!

Enter via Rafflecopter to win the beginning quilter giveaway bundle:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The second giveaway is for the more experienced sewer/quilter. Sew Healthy, Sew Happy is perfect for those wanting to design a more permanent sewing space while learning how to keep themselves free from injury. And when taking a break from all that cutting and stitching, enjoy reading the quilt-themed novel, Frayed Edges.

For this sewing themed 2 book giveaway, enter via the Rafflecopter widget below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The last giveaway is for the art quilter. C&T Publishing graciously provided two copies of The Ultimate Guide to Transfer Artist Paper, which means there are two winners on this giveaway.

Don't know what Transfer Artist Paper (TAP) is? It's paper that you put an image on by printing or coloring, then iron that image onto fabric. I've used it a couple times, each with great success. Check out a tutorial Using TAP, and my projects, The Second Life of Quilts and Doggone Good! - it's a great product!  I do wish C&T had sent more of the actual TAP product to giveaway, but at least this book gives ideas for what TAP can do, opening the door to more creativity.

The Rafflecopter giveaway for the transfer artist paper books is below, from which I'll draw two winners.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck to everyone and Happy National Quilting Day!

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Midweek Makers 323

Welcome to Midweek Makers! Time to do some sharing!

After the client quilting blitz of last week, I'm back to making more scrap blocks. The hostess of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, So Scrappy, has decided that yellow and gold shall be the colors for March. Hmm, not some of my favorites, which means I don't have a lot of scraps to work with, though I did my best.

Here's a couple in yellow,

and a couple in gold, cause I just couldn't mix the two values. Much to splotchy in my mind!

Soon I'll be back to making blocks for my red/white heart themed quilt, though due to a hand injury, that may be delayed a bit. Argh.

As for this week, I'm featuring these pretties. From Bell Creek Quilts is a great paver block border on a panel,

from Canadian Needle Nana comes this cheery sunflower table topper,

and from JBigg's Scrap Bag, this lovely Locking Chains bed runner - the picture doesn't do the quilting justice!

Now it's your turn to share!

• please link directly to your post
• please link a quilt related item
• visit with the other guests and leave some comment love

Have fun!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter