Donation Quilt for Afgan Refugee

January 9th, 2022

Welcomeblanket.org is a movement to provide immigrants with a welcoming blanket from artisans and textile craftsmen/women from across the US.  They sponsored a drive to provide welcome blankets for Afgan refugees and here is the one I made just before Christmas:

It’s a very simple quilt design and I think the quilting adds a nice texture:

I’m not sure why, but they want these quilts to only be 40 inches x 40 inches.  Seems more like a wall hanging size than a usable quilt, but I hope the Afgan refugee who moves here enjoys it and feels like he/she is welcome in the US!

Day 2 of the Machine Embroidery Blog Hop and a Quickie Gift project

November 11th, 2014
Patsy-ThompsonButtonHop
Today’s stop on the blog hop is Gene Black’s blog!  Gene has done a great tutorial that shows you how to get the most out of a digitized file by selectively eliminating certain stitching sequences.  He has taken the feathered star digitized quilting motif and created multiple offshoot designs from it by choosing which sequences to stitch and which to leave out.  He is working with the feathered star shown below:
 
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…but he’s taking it to a whole new place!  Check out his post by clicking here and don’t forget to enter his give away for a free downloadable digitized design from our store! 
 
I have a weakness for pin cushions, partly because they are small and cute and partly because they are so fast to make.  I have been meaning to do some machine embroidery applique using hand dyed wool and bamboo felts and finally got around to it last Sunday.  Is this not the most adorable pin cushion you’ve ever seen:
 
MEA-felt-pincushion
The thing that I love about it is all the 3-D texture created by the felted portions.  It’s really hard to capture that in a  photo:
 
MEA-felt-pincushion-2
The flower/petal pair unit is stitched in a single hooping and I merely substituted the hand dyed felts for fabric.  I began with  a 6 in x 6 in piece of green fabric for my background and once it had been appliqued/embroidered, I quilted it using a scrap of batting.  I cut the shapes using Appli-K-Kutz dies on my Sizzix machine so that part went very fast.  Here’s a shot of it once it had been quilted:
 
MEA-felt-pincushion-after-quilting
 
I attached it to another piece of 6 in x 6 in quilted fabric and then stuffed it with poly pellet beads and voila!  These make wonderful gifts for fellow quilters and sewists!  Who doesn’t love a pincushion?
 
MEA-felt-pincushion

Have You Started Making Gifts for the Holidays Yet?

September 13th, 2014
 
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I know, I know, it’s only mid-September! I don’t really even want to start THINKING about the holidays yet, but they’ll be here before we know it.  If you’re like me, you’ll want to make some gifts yourself, and who can resist felted wool pin cushions like these:
 
 felted-wool-pincushions
 
These are so easy and so fast to make and quilters and sewists love to receive them!  If you’ve never made these before, we made a short video tutorial that shows you how to do it from start to finish.  If you’re looking for some colorful wool roving to make them with, check out the wool roving in our online store by clicking right here.  And now for the tutorial, so you can see how easy it is for yourself: