Some Recent Projects

Star ornaments made with scrapbook paper and Sizzix machine. Love these! Sending them out on a swapbot swap.

Star ornament made with felted wool.

Pet Mat made with vintage sheet material--very soft!

Another pet mat made with vintage sheet material-- polka dots and stripes.

Betz White shared the directions for redoing a freebie bag. I came home and whipped one up using the free lunch bag the school system gave me last year. This is the inside with a pocket that used to be on the outside. Next you can see the finished bag. The handles match this Amy Butler fabric perfectly.

School is back in full swing and I cannot craft 12 hours a day. Bummer!

How Do You Like Dem Apples?

Felted Wool Apple Pins

In honor of back to school, I am making some lapel pins. Felted wool from sweaters, blazers and other wool garments. These apples are about 2 inches tall.

More pics soon.

Saturday Quilt Day

I got a lot done on the Doll Quilt Swap project today. The pattern is the Chinese Coins variation Pieces of Eight. The fabrics are Amy Butler Daisy Chain line. I love these colors together and think this is turning out very nicely. It does not have to be finished until the beginning of September, but since school is starting again soon, I wanted to get a move on.

Doll Quilt Update

I have not had a lot of time recently to work on the Doll Quilt for DQS7. I planned to make a applique quilt using circles of various sizes. I picked out some prints, cut some circles in both the fabric and the Seam2Seam fusible web. I made a practice top by fusing the circles to a background fabric and pinning it to some of my usual batting (Warm and Natural.) So far so good.


Then I started to practice machine applique with the satin stitch. No good. I tried several times and turned to the Internet for help. I found some good tutorials for doing machine applique. Another thing I have found is that if you search Google Books, often times you will get an ebook as a result, which you can read parts of. The book I found last night had several chapters available and some good tips.


I worked some more this afternoon on the practice quilt and while I was a little more successful, I am afraid I do not have time to get good at this before the mailing deadline. And the stress of trying to make a nice quilt for my swap partner using techniques that are unfamiliar to me is not helpful when I have to go back to WORK next week. :(

(I am not really sad about going back to work, just nervous about the start of a new school year.)


So around 6:00 p.m. I decided to make the kind of quilt I know how to make. I have started a lovely Chinese Coin Quilt using Amy Butler fabrics. Last weekend my aunt who also quilts gave me 2 bagfuls of scraps of leftover fabric from projects she recently completed. I almost swooned over the Amy Butler Daisy Chain fabrics. All good sized scraps, including a couple of yards of one print. She is a good and generous soul.


So the new quilt top is nearly finished (just the top, not any of the quilting.) I think I am going to make a pieced binding with more scraps and back it with some of the yardage. I am feeling way more comfortable about how this is going to turn out. The most important thing is that it looks nice, not that I try new techniques. I can try new techniques on things for myself.