Treasured Notions and Tools

November 24th, 2013
Whenever I’m with a group of quilters, I always end up hearing about a great product that someone uses all the time and I’ve never heard of it before.  I’m betting that each of us has tools and notions that we use all the time that most of our friends know nothing about.  Because of that, I’m going to post periodically about tools and notions that I use all the time.  Tonight is the first such post.
I am a thread person…there is thread coming out of the rafters in my sewing room!  One thing that drives me nuts is unwinding spools, so I use a product called Hugo’s Amazing Tape to keep my thread in order.  Here are 2 rolls of the tape, a 2 3/8 inch wide roll and a 1 inch wide roll.  These are my 2 favorite sizes:
hugo-on-side
This is vinyl tape on a roll that clings to itself, so it’s a great way to keep a spool of thread from unwinding.  I use the 1 inch wide tape to seal traditional sizes of spools:
hugo-on-traditional-sized-spools
and you just unroll a little expanse of it in your hand:
 
hugo-unrolled
Once you’ve secured your spools with Hugo’s Amazing Tape, it’s easy to just throw them into a ziplock bag or whatever and take them to a class:
hugo-bag-of-threads
 
I use the wider 2 3/8 inch wide tape on larger cones:
 
hugo-on-lge-cones
and it’s also useful on lots of other stuff.  I travel a lot and don’t want to have my blocks become all wrinkled, so I roll them around an empty cardboard roll and secure the whole thing with Hugo’s tape.  Here, I’ve got the 52 in x 52 in center section of a quilt surrounded by large quilt blocks and the quilted front of a tote bag all rolled up and secured with Hugo’s Amazing Tape:
 
hugo-on-quilt
It works on all those partial rolls of wrapping paper that we’ve all got as well!  This is a product I use virtually every day.  You can find the 2 3/8 inch wide rolls here and you can find the 1 inch wide rolls here.  It also comes in blue version (so that it’s easier to find the ends of it!) and you can find that version here.
I have my whole family taking these now. My daughter experiences less stomach aches and everyone has less gas. Generic levitra without prescription! You should be able to talk with a human being, including a licensed pharmacist, to answer questions about your prescription.

Bird Building

March 23rd, 2011

I finally finished the very last panel on my sampler quilt and it features 4 birds:

I really like the way it came out and can’t wait to attach it to the rest of the quilt. But first, I wanted to show the steps in basic bird building. Excuse the colors in the photos that follow; I had a lot of trouble replicating the actual quilt colors and the photo above comes the closest (but it isn’t quite right, either.)   You start off with the basic bird shape:

(Note that nothing is fused until all 4 birds are completed.)
Next, we add the internal wing and the tail swirl, which I adore:


…and just because I cannot leave well enough alone, I added a headdress.  In this case, the headdress is the same shape as the internal wing; I’ve just played with its position:


And that takes care of the two birds that will “kiss” in the center of the panel.  It’s amazing to me just how much of a “wow factor” something as simple as a swirl can add to an applique motif!  And now we move on to the second pair of birds. These are simpler birds, but cool nonetheless.  To start, we have a basic bird in blue:


…and then we add the internal wing and tail feather:


Nice…but we need more, don’t we?!  Let’s start by adding some internal teardrops into the tail feather area:


And now let’s make this bird into something kind of swish by adding an intricate headdress.  This headdress is simple to make because all you do is cut the tail swirl from the first bird and then snip off one portion:


Ooh-la-la…now I’m happy!  These birds are singin’ my song!  And now that I’ve got my layout just right, I can fuse them all down and get ready for some stitching:

So much fun, and so gratifying! The die to cut these birds will be available soon!