Swan Wool Appliques

Found a nice free pattern for the swan cut from cream felted wool and hand appliqued to festive plaid wool background. Holly is cut from overdyed green wool and berries from red wool. The stitching is done with perle cotton. I used a variegated perle cotton for the detail on the wing.

This one is stitched to a background of charcoal gray wool. These have not been finished yet-- I am thinking throw pillows.

All the wool came from thrift store garments washed and felted by me.

Charming Halloween Purse

I made this purse using 5 inch squares obtained in a Halloween fabric swap. It is in the raggedy quilt style--each square is quilted with batting and backing. I used a total of 17 quilted squares to construct the purse. The ragged seams are clipped to fray over time. I used an orange strip to bind the top edge to finish it nicely.

Since October is just a few days away, it won't be long before I start using it.

Pet Nap Mats

I love pillow shams. I acknowledge that they are at best decorative and mostly useless. That does not stop me from loving them. Whenever I see pretty pillow shams at thrift stores I buy them. Needless to say, I have more pillow shams than any one person would normally need. Then I had a brain flash!

I need to practice my quilting techniques and I don't want to do that on something that I have spent hours piecing together. Free motion quilting is tricky for me still and I do not want to risk ruining a quilt top while working on my skills. I decided to use the pillow shams as practice projects with a purpose.

I make pet nap mats from them!

I measure the opening that would take a pillow to see how much quilt batting to cut. I use pretty thin batting, Warm and Natural brand, so I use 2 layers of batting. I insert the batting inside the sham and pin the flap shut so that it will lie flat as I am quilting. I am careful to not run over those pins with my sewing machine. That can cause damage to the machine or myself.

Then I flip the sham over and start quilting on the front. Depending on the pattern of the sham, I may do free motion stippling as is shown in the purple plaid mat. I may stitch along the seam lines if the sham has a pieced front as is shown in the blue and yellow mat.

When the stitching is finished I have a nice nap mat for a cat or dog. I have an older cat who cannot groom himself as well as he used to. These mats protect my furniture from his accidental messes. The mats can be used in the car, in your pet's sleeping crate, at the foot of your bed in your pet's favorite lounging spot or as a security blanket when you need to board your pet at a kennel.

If you do not like the idea of using pillow shams from thrift stores, you could purchase shams at your local discount department store. They come in many patterns and colors and you are sure to find some to match your home decor. If your dog is larger than medium sized, you can use pillow shams meant for king sized pillows.

They are easily cleaned in the washer and dryer.

Let me know if you try this idea. I am thinking this will make a good present for my pet loving friends.

Pieces of Eight

I am calling this quilt "Pieces of Eight." It is a Chinese Coin Quilt with the "coins" grouped in eights. Then I added 5 inch borders all the way around. The name is inspired by my current infatuation with Pirates (I mean the pirates of old--not nasty machine gun toting pirates of today.)

I used the quilt as you go method for this quilt to see if I could do a better job with the machine quilting with less bulk under the harp of the sewing machine. Using a high contrast pink thread for the quilting allowed me to see how my stippling design was turning out. I experimented with different types of swirls and whorls. The eight pieces in the center of each block were done separately to help them stand out in the design.

So, usually the quilt as you go method calls for you to sew the quilted blocks together with the seam revealed to the backing. Then the seams on the back are trimmed and covered to hide them. However, I chose to have the seams revealed to the front because I like the smooth feel of a backing with no extra bumps or seams. I will have my work cut out for me to conceal the seams from the front without botching the design of the quilt. Right now I am trying to decide if I should use more of the white on white fabric that surrounds each group of eight coins or if I should use some hot pink for both the center seams and the binding. I am leaning toward the hot pink.

The backing for this quilt is a vintage sheet from a thrift store. I chose it both for its incredible softness and also for its busy design. Busy designs are more forgiving when being cut up and pieced back together.

Here's the math: I used a Tula Pink Nest Jelly Roll and cut 2 five inch pieces off each of the 40 strips. That made 80 2.5 x 5 inch rectangles. When I pieced 8 of them together that made 10 blocks. As you can see from the pictures, this lap sized quilt only uses 9 completed blocks.

What happened to the tenth block, you ask? It will be finished by itself and probably sent off to a swap partner in a small quilt swap on SwapBot.

More on this project when it is finished!

Log Cabin Quilt Finished!

Here is the completed log cabin quilt. I pieced and quilted it on the machine. The backing fabric is from a custom made bedding set I found at a recent yard sale. That set included an incredible amount of home decorator fabric that I will be using for other quilts to come.

Works in Progress

Here are 2 quilt tops I have completed this week. The first one is a scrap quilt made almost entirely from the aforementioned box of fabric scraps. It is in the log cabin pattern. The red fabric in the center is a fat quarter from Joanne Fabrics and the blue border is the last of the blue chambray sheet I used in this quilt. I have not found a backing fabric for it which suits me yet.


The next quilt top I completed today from 2 charm packs in the Neptune collection from Tula Pink. I am crazy about her fabrics. In addition to the charm packs I also had a yard of her navy blue with green pattern with sea turtles and sea horses hidden in the design.


This quilt top was made using the Disappearing Nine Patch pattern. I had enough 5 inch squares to create 7 largish blocks. I quartered them and arranged the resulting 28 blocks to suit me. I used 24 of them to make a 4x6 rectangle and had four quarter blocks left over. Whew, this math is making my head spin! (I teach reading !) Then I decided that the left over 4 blocks would be great at the corners of the borders.


That was a difficult trick getting all those corners lined up and if you look carefully at the picture you will see the wonky corner that resulted. No backing is picked out for this yet, either.

Finished Lap Quilt

Today was rainy and dreary. I finished my thrift store quilt. Last night I looked in my stash and found a large sheet with pale blue roses all over it. A perfect material to back my quilt in.

I sandwiched some Warm and Natural Batting in between the layers and pinned it all together. I chose to quilt in straight lines through the solid blue blocks. I could not wait to drive into Cville and buy matching thread, so I used white thread for the quilting. It looks nice enough with the blue fabric. For the border, I turned the excess backing fabric to the front, folded it under and pinned it. Then I machine stitched close to the edge to finish off the binding. For about 5 minutes I planned to hand stitch the edges of the binding, but that is hard on my fingers.

It is about 36 inches wide and about 62 inches long. Good size for covering up while watching tv. Or laying across the back seat of the car for dogs to lay on. Or using as a sand blanket at the beach... If I add some elastic to the end I could roll it up and stow it easily. HMMM.... the wheels are turning and the gears are smokin'!

I may enter this in the recycling category at the county fair. The only new material in it was the batting and the thread.

Thrift Store Quilt Top

Yesterday after getting 2 new tires on my car, I went by the Salvation Army Thrift Store looking for deals on precious treasures. I found a box of fabric scraps for $1.00. Among the scraps were some Schumacher decorator fabric samples. After some consideration, I thought I could cut the samples in half to make squares that I would piece into a quilt top.

This pattern I made reminds me of the Chinese Coin pattern. To construct it I sewed the squares of printed fabric right sides together, down two sides. Then I cut the squares in half and pressed them open. Now I had the same amount of squares I started out with, but half of each square was a different print. I divided the pile of squares into thirds and sewed them together into 3 long strips.

Between each long pieced strip I inserted chambray blue fabric cut from a cotton thrift store sheet. Then I added strips to the top and bottom of the same fabric. It looks wonderful! I have no idea what fabric I am going to use to back it. I have a couple of choices. More on this quilt when it is finished.