Snips and Snails and Sugar and Spice

There’s nothing more exciting than the birth of a brand new baby, unless it’s the birth of three beautiful babies! Twin grandsons Ryan William and Dylan Joseph made their grand entry into the world on Saturday evening, May 5th.  I was thrilled to be in the delivery room as my daughter, Kathleen and her husband, Steve welcomed these two new sons. Ryan weighed in at 8 pounds and Dylan weighed 6 pounds and 12 ounces! That’s a lot of babies to be carrying around for a normally skinny 5′ 2″ mama.  Mom and babies are healthy and happy.

Older brothers, Jackson, age 4, and Gavin, age 23 months are fascinated with the new additions. Jackson took a picture of the twins to preschool to proudly show off his new brothers. Gavin is beginning to realize he’s not the “baby” anymore but is adjusting.

I spent a couple of weeks cuddling these two and then boarded a plane to Okinawa, Japan to await the birth of Claire Marie. I had only been in Japan a couple of days when she decided to make her appearance on May 25th.  Nothing like being in the delivery room for the arrival, such a miracle!

She is a doll, weighing in at 7 pounds 9 ounces and 20 inches long. Big sisters, Kate, almost 5, and Emma, 3, think she is just the best little sister. They are anxious to teach her everything that a “girl’s life” entails. Mom, Courtney, and Dad, Ian, are adjusting to life with three girls.

More fun for me to enjoy cuddling another baby. Babies are such fun, so soft, and smell so good (most of the time)! This grandmother business sure has its perks!

Snow Quilts

What amazing snow art! Simon Beck found a great way to create art and get his exercise at the same time by creating these fabulous works of art on frozen lakes in Savoie, France. To see more great “quilt” art click here.  Or check out his facebook page here.

Thanks, Carol, for the “heads up” on this fabulous artist! This is certainly not on my “bucket list” since I detest the cold but I find it truly amazing what can be accomplished by someone who definitely thinks outside the box. Many of Simon’s designs would indeed make wonderful quilts which, ironically would keep you much warmer. However, since intricate piecing is farther down on my list I would have to attempt something similar in applique. Let’s just suffice it to say that’s probably not happening either!

Maybe these photos will inspire you to try something a little more challenging though!

Cats and Curly Haired Cuteness!

What fun to receive this picture of Kay Beasley’s precious granddaughter with the Sweety Cat quilt that Kay made for her fifth birthday.  I love the fact that she added additional blocks and even included a cross-eyed cat because her granddaughter often makes cute cross-eyed faces when being photographed!  Kay said she wished she had made a video when she gave the quilt to her granddaughter because she was so excited and said, “Oh, Nanny I knew you could do it!”

This is only the second quilt that Kay has made and I’m thrilled that she chose one of my patterns!  Great job Kay!

I’ve Been Grilled!

I was recently interviewed by Lisa for her blog Grandma’s Briefs and had a great time sharing all the reasons I love being a Grandma!  If you’d like to get an insight into a little more of my personal life, simply click here.

A Time to Sew

What a great weekend retreat we had last weekend as our bee went on our annual “bee-treat” at the beach! Lots of sewing, quilting, and knitting mixed in with delicious food and laughter.

It was great to have one of our long, lost members return for the weekend. Kelly moved out of state several years ago but slipped right back in without missing a beat and was able to enjoy all the fun just as if she had never left!

We were able to complete a few quilt tops and get a good start on more projects…

Shirley completed her top using beautiful Daiwabo fabrics.

Kelly made a bathrobe for her son out of John Deere flannel and also got a great start on some pineapple blocks and a quilt top made from plaid fabrics.

A shoulder injury kept Tina from bringing her machine to sew on but she got quite a bit accomplished on a knitted bag that she is planning to felt.

Carol made a gorgeous pinwheel quilt top (don’t know how I missed getting a picture of it) and also took a little time to work on her Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt which she has been hand-piecing for as long as I can remember. It is almost finished and we are ready to celebrate with her when she takes those last stitches!

Lori completed two quilt tops, a bright and happy jelly roll quilt made from a Moda Bake Shop pattern and her version of “Frog Days of Summer”, one of my patterns – Gorgeous!

Bright and happy quilt tops were also made by Ann using Dr. Seuss fabrics which she made for baby quilts.

Julianne managed to crank out 25 lined fabric bags for Beads of Courage, an organization that provides bags to children with serious illnesses to carry their collection of beads.

Julianne also worked on more blocks for her triangle log cabin quilt top.

 

As for me, applique was the name of the game as I worked on blocks for my grand-daughter, Emma’s, quilt. Photos for that quilt to be posted at a later date.

I think we all came home with great feelings of accomplishment, and a renewed sense of spirit, ready to hit the ground running for the upcoming week.

Happy Dance!

 

I am thrilled to be the March featured designer at Fairfield World.

Scoop It Up! was designed specifically to be a free PDF download on their sight. Head on over to print off your free design!

On another note, every year my bee buddies and I head off for a weekend of sewing fun. I am frantically pulling fabrics for a project to work on this weekend. I am so looking forward to spending time together sewing and laughing for a few days!

It’s Not Always Work!

 I always come away rejuvenated after teaching a class and Friday was no exception. The free-motion class I taught at Bernina World of Sewing was such fun with a lively group of ladies so eager to pick up some new tips.

Sometimes I get so bogged down with paperwork and the business aspect of trying to have a design business that I forget to take the time to sew and enjoy what got me into this business in the first place!

I took some time this past week to actually sit down at my machine and have a little fun. Ahhh, there’s nothing like the feeling of pride and accomplishment when you are actually working on a project and seeing it develop before your eyes.

Since I recently refolded all my fabric and have it in shelves that I can actually see everything now, it was so much easier to find just the right fabrics to pull together for a block.

Granted, my sewing room soon turned into a disaster area as I began to pull and audition fabrics and then proceed to cut them up but what fun I had in the process.

Time management is a real challenge for me but I’m slowly getting a little better at it. I’ve signed up to take a class next week to help me get my act together. Hopefully I will be able to schedule more time with my machine and actually see these designs bouncing around in my head come to life!

Fabric Storage Dilemma

I’ve been feeling a lot of fabric lately. That sounds a little strange but let me explain…I bought some new shelves to hold my fabric stash and in the process of moving the fabric into to its new home I’ve been doing a lot of folding! This is the third system I’ve tried to store all of my fabric and I think it may be just what I’ve been looking for.

For many years my fabric was folded in stacks and placed on a shelving unit. The problem with this system was that there were no dividers between the stacks and when I’d pull out the fabrics I needed for a project, I usually ended up with a mess of leaning towers of fabric. A few years ago I read an article in Quilting Arts Studios magazine about using square wire baskets to store the fabric. This would still allow you to see your fabric,  keep it more contained and avoid the mess of fabric falling over in the process of pulling and grabbing it from the shelf. I found wire baskets and plopped the folded fabrics into them, keeping them separated by color.

After trying this method for a couple of years I finally had to admit that it didn’t work for me either. If I needed a particular red fabric I had to pull down the red fabric basket, dig through to find the fabric, pull it out dislodging others in the process, and then cram the basket back on the shelves. Since the baskets were wedged so tightly into the shelves this usually carried the risk of having the whole shelving unit fall forward with all the pushing and pulling.

I decided it was time to try something new and found the Expedit shelves by searching the Ikea website.

 These seemed like the perfect solution because I could display all my fabrics stacked by color on shelves again, but these shelves were like cubes so they offered the extra dividing system I needed to keep the towers of fabric from leaning and falling over in the grabbing and pulling process!  Unfortunately, the closest Ikea is 3 hours from here and the cost to order online and have them shipped was outrageous so a daytrip was in order. DH and I made the trip a couple of weeks ago and purchased the 5 x 5 cube unit as well as a single tower unit. We then spent a Sunday afternoon putting them together. As with all things Ikea, the directions were easy to follow, no words, just pictures and we didn’t even end up with extra pieces of hardware in the end! One thing we did, that wasn’t in the instructions though, was to add wood glue to each of the little wooden “dowels” to make sure everything held together well. We also attached the units to the wall so that there won’t be a chance of the shelves toppling.

Once the shelves were assembled, it was very tempting just to load them up with my stash just by transferring the fabrics from the baskets to the shelves. However, I knew there was fabric buried in those baskets that hadn’t seen the light of day in many years. Some of the fabrics were bought years ago when I first decided to try my hand at quilting and just weren’t the quality fabrics that I wanted to keep. You may have some of these in your stash as well. You know the ones I mean. They are a little stiffer or just don’t have the feel of the better quality fabrics. I decided this was my opportunity to weed out those fabrics that I knew no longer met my standards or were not the style I am currently using. So my days of refolding and weeding out have begun. I’m spending long hours watching old reruns of Project Runway and stroking fabric.  I’ll keep you posted…

Pink and Purdy!

Apparently this mild winter we’ve had on the east coast has really inspired some very special quilters to get ready for the summer. Pat Boggs finished her Flamingo Frolics quilt and brought it to show me at the Statesville Quilting and Needle Art Extravaganza. I love all the pink!

This was the first time I’ve vended in Statesville and let me tell you it was such a great show! There was such a variety of vendors and we were just as excited to be there as the customers were to see us. Can’t wait to go again next near.

How to Use an Applique Press Sheet

Since all of my applique designs are done using the fusible method, I thought a post on how to use an applique press sheet might be helpful. If you like to applique by machine using this method you already know how valuable an applique press sheet can be. I will admit that as I am sewing and working in my sewing studio it usually looks as if a tornado has passed through!  However, I can usually lay my hands on my applique press sheet at any time. It is a tool I can’t live without so I always put it where I can find it.

The main advantage of this wonderful product is that it has sort of a “teflon” finish to it that allows you to press all the pieces of your applique design together as one unit, let it cool, and then peel it off and place it in the proper position on your background fabric. If you have ever fused a design down, one piece at a time, on your backgound fabric you may have run into issues of it not being centered or in the specific place you wanted, or maybe it wasn’t straight and was leaning one way or another!

Hopefully these instructions will help you to understand the process and make your life easier. 

First of all you will need an applique design…

Trace your design onto fusible web, my particular favorite is Heat ‘n Bond Lite. 

 

Be sure to leave approximately 1/2 inch between each pattern piece. Number each piece accordingly just inside the drawn line of each piece. It may also be helpful to write the fabric color on each piece along the inside edge.

 Roughly cut your fusible web pieces apart, leaving about 1/4 inch outside the drawn line.

I like to trim out the center fusible area on large pieces so that there isn’t a build up of fusible which can make your design too stiff.  To do this, simply cut the center from your fusible web, leaving approximately 1/4 inch from the inside drawn line.  (This is why you label your number and fabric color close to the inside drawn line so that it won’t be cut away during this trimming process.)  Be very careful with larger pattern pieces so that you don’t distort your design when you begin to iron this “strippy” piece down.

Lay each piece on the WRONG side of the appropriate fabric and fuse.   Be sure to check the iron settings for your particular fusible web as they sometimes vary.

Cut each of your pieces out on the drawn line.

Although my patterns are reversed for you to trace your design onto fusible web, you do need to flip your pattern sheet over and use a light box or sunny window to trace your design on the back of the pattern sheet for the next step.  This will ensure that your design will look the way it should when you are ready to fuse it to your fabric and you can place this under your applique press sheet as a guide for fusing.

Lay your applique press sheet on your ironing board and place the pattern sheet underneath so that your drawn design can be seen through the press sheet. 

Remove the paper backing from your pieces and begin layering your design by placing the piece that is the farthest away from the top down first, lightly press in place.

Continue to add pieces , making sure that no gaps are showing.

When all the pieces have been fused in place, let your design cool and then peel it from your press sheet.

Now lightly press your background fabric down the center both horizontally and vertically. 

This will give you lines to center your design.  When you are happy with the placement, fuse in place.

My favorite applique press sheet is by Bear Thread Designs. It is sturdy and has served me well for several years.

I hope you find this little demo useful and begin your own love of fusible applique!