SANTA ORNAMENT

We still have company and are having a good time with them.  But I needed to sit and do some stitching too.  I have this Santa ornament from Chickadee Hollow Designs that I started outlining with embroidery floss yesterday evening.  Still  more needs done to it.

There have several vintage look ornaments to select from.  The stitcheries are printed onto fabric already colored.  You do some simple stitching to outline different parts and fill in lines within the designs.  It is taking longer to stitch than I thought it would.  You layer Warm 'n Natural batting behind the fabric before doing the embroidery.  Then add a backing, cut on the dotted liners, and then do a button hole stitch to finish off the ornament.

I changed my header photo and the blog background today.  I will probably change it again soon as I have several holiday quilts to pick from.  Or maybe I will do a collage of them.

My only Black Friday shopping yesterday was to go to Hobby Lobby for the batting and a marking pen that I needed.  The craft store was not at all busy.  I do not like the craziness of the crowds on the day after our Thanksgiving.  For those of you reading this that lives elsewhere in the world, it is a tradition for stores to have big sales the day after Thanksgiving to kick off the Christmas shopping season.  It is called Black Friday.  So the stores, instead of being in the red in sales numbers, they are in the black or to the money making side of the scale.

Happy Holidays!    
Karen                              

SWAP QUILT FINISHED

I recently showed the completed quilt top and now I have the quilting done and the binding attached.  It is ready to be mailed to my swap partner.  I hand quilted this and enjoyed doing it.  I haven't done much hand quilting in the last couple years.

To refresh your memory, the applique blocks are from a Lori Smith pattern.  Her quilt pattern business is named "From My Heart to Your Hands".  I would like to combine the applique blocks from this pattern with some other applique patterns I have and make a quilt for myself.  Probably with a different layout.  I forget how many block patterns there are in the pattern but several that I did not include in this quilt.

Thanks for taking time to pay my blog a visit.

Karen

SEWING ROOM UPDATE

You asked to see the sewing room after the clean up, so here goes.

This is as good as I could get the plaid fabrics area.  I took the larger pieces meant for quilt backs off the shelving unit on the left and moved them to the closet shelf.  I put overflows of plaids into plastic crates, turned them on their side and used three shelves of the unit for that.  The plaids in the cubicles got refolded and sorted better by color.  I still have some fabric meant for certain projects in three crates stacked on the floor.  But I can at least walk safely in that area.  The bottom shelf of the unit on the left side of the pictures has two scrap baskets.  One for plaids and the other assorted pieces.

I moved the jar and a tin of perle cottons balls to two high shelves in the cubicles.  The extra cutting board, pressing pad, newsprint and tracing paper for drawing are in the same location as they were previously.

These shelves are now neater looking.  I culled out some fabric pieces I don't think I will be using and they will be going to the church thrift store.

The sewing machine cabinet is fairly empty on top.  Rulers organized underneath and some I will never use going to the thrift store.  You can see that I keep a folding tray with a press pad to the right of the sewing machine.  That way, I can swivel on the office chair and press without getting up.  I do my cutting on a small table that you can see a quilt laying on right now.  I adjusted to using the rotary cutter and ruler sitting down quite some time ago when my back pain started giving me fits.

I wanted you to see that you can see the floor around the sewing machine area.  I took fabric out of crates that were sitting there and worked them onto the shelves.  I put away projects that were waiting for attention and found a home for them.  I hope they see the light of day some time in the future.

The book and pattern area was not a total disaster to start with.  I have removed a few books and patterns for donation.  I sorted all of Cheri Payne's patterns into a basket that is sitting to the right side of the bookcase.  There just was not room on the shelf for them.  I keep an office chair in front of the bookcase so that I can sit in comfort and look through books at leisure.

My sewing room will never be one that you will see in a magazine with wonderful vignettes of quilts and prim style items on display.  I just have too much in that room for that.  I keep thinking I could do that if I used up a bunch of fabric but you know how that goes.  It multiplies when we aren't looking.

Karen

SEWING ROOM MESS

Why is it that cleaning and re-organizing my sewing room creates such a mess?

Hopefully the room will look a lot better when I get done.  I know, I know!  I have a big stash of fabric.  I have known others with more.  It is such a rewarding feeling to be working on a quilt project and to be able to find a piece of fabric within my stash that fits works just right.  But I have made a decision that I need to make some pieced scrappy quilts this coming year.  Since switching to doing more applique than piecing, the stash is not getting used up fast enough.  That said, I do have some fabric on the way to go with a fat quarter bundle I purchased a while back.  It is from Jan Patek's "Remembrance" line of fabric.  My first fabric purchase in a while.

It is the Saturday for the Christmas Sew-Along but I don't know that I will have time to participate.  The mess in the sewing room is calling.

"Silly Goose Quilts" is having a row by row free block of the month.  It looks like it will be some applique and some piecing.  Check it out.

And, if you  did not see this link for a free block of the month by Dorothy Baker on Lucien's website already, be sure to check it out.  A beautiful applique quilt pattern.  Click here.

Red Brolly has a wonderful free Christmas stitchery sampler available here.  And a second Christmas sampler stitchery here.

Back to the sewing room clean up.

Karen

QUILTING AND SHARING

A finish to share with you.  I hand quilted this smaller size quilt and am happy with the results.  It will be a gift.  I am going to let the recipient decide if they want the crinkle look or more flat look.  Myself, I would wash the quilt as I like the little pucker crinkles that result.  Somone else may not.

I am now hand quilting another of the small quilts which you I showed on a recent post.  I have four of the nine blocks quilted.

I did the four blocks yesterday evening so I don't think it will take long to do the remaining five.

I received an elegent little sewing kit from a friend who has a talent for crazy quilting, silk ribbon embroidery, etc.  Here is the front of the kit.

The inside is shown in the following picture.

And the back.  I like the tiny little medallion she put on the back.  A delightful surprise.  I took the pictures on the tile floor so those are the grout lines you are seeing.

I finally was able to make the trip to spend a Saturday with The Sew 'n Sews, my sewing friends who live a distance away from me.  I took three pictures of some quilts that were shared.  I should have taken some more as our hostess showed some that I forgot to take pictures of.  Another time and I will do that.

Beverly completed the Bunny Hill free block of the month.  She is going to give the quilt to a young friend of hers that collects squirrel items.  Beverly  does such nice applique and this quilt is no exception.

Not the best picture but I did want to share with you that several of the stitcheries are blocks that I made.  The patterns are from "Nice People, Nice Things".  I got tired of the project and stopped the embroidery.  My friend Jean took over the project and completed the embroidery and set the blocks into a quilt.  If I have a project that lingers too long and I lose interest, Jean is willing to take over the parts and create something from it.  This is not all the blocks from the pattern set but all that I had traced before giving away the pattern set.

This last quilt is all done in wool applique.  I forget the pattern name but it came from McCall's Quilting magazine several years ago.  It was published in several parts.  A beauty of a quilt.  I have to share with you that I started one from the same pattern.  It was my first experience with wool.  I did the center block and did not like the results at all.  It was too puffy, puckering, and too busy looking.  I donated the rest of the parts I had ready to a charity thrift store and decided that wool applique was not for me.  Well, the story goes that wool applique and me now get along and I have done several projects that I have used wool on.  I don't know why my first attempt was not successful.  I now enjoy the process very much.  I do not have the pattern any longer but if I were to start again, I would leave a bit off the center block to make it less busy looking than mine was.  And use different thread than I did then.  I was using a wool floss and I think that it caused some of my problems with the look I was getting.  Rosy's version shown above turned out beautiful!

The ninth free block from Scrap, Quilt, Stitch is available now.  The blog is in French but you can get the gist of things just by looking or by using Google translation.  It is available here.  And there is a free quilt in the works on a blog written in Spanish here.  It is not necessarily one each month but as the parts are available.  Take a look and see if it interests you.  The blogs are also listed on my side bar if you want to refer back to them later on.

That is all I have to share with you today.  Take time to sew this evening!
Karen