Archive for June, 2009

Glass Necklace-a garage sale goody

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

I thought I’d share one of my recent garage sale finds.  It was love at first sight!

glass necklace004

The beads are such a pretty combo of teal and Peridot with a couple of Amethyst, the metal beads are silver, the clasp is silver with a pretty Peridot stone set in it, but the thing that I really love is the pendant. It’s blown glass with a flower swirled in it.

glass necklace002

We have a “rule of thumb” with garage sale purchases. In general, we like to pay about 10% of what the item probably cost new.  Of course there are certain things like electronics that don’t fit the rule..and items that we. must. have. This is one of those items that breaks the 10% rule.  I paid $5 for the necklace.

Posted in Garage sale goodies | 8 Comments »

Finishing up the half hex quilt..

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Once I had the top put together it looked like a pond with lily pads to me? I quilted it by machine using a large stipple…and I decided to applique a few leaping frogs on the quilt. Well now..half hex quilt isn’t a very fancy name..so I named it “Leap Frog”.

Leap Frog with appliques

I had problems with the quilting..the thread kept breaking, my machine overheated and went berserk, and I used fusible batting..which gummed up the needle pretty good, but I was determined to finish this one! Changing to a larger eyed needle, and swabbing Pam onto it helped a lot. I ended up with a couple of puckers on the back..but I can live with it. It IS the back after all. ;)

Leap Frog Quilt001

I love my Leap Frog quilt…warts and all!

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Posted in Pieced quilts | 9 Comments »

Half Hex Quilt Along

Monday, June 29th, 2009

My friend Aneela, of Comfortstitching decided to do a quilt along using an easy method to piece hexagons, by cutting them in half. With this method the hexagons can be pieced in rows..no set in seams! I laid out my fabrics for a random placement design. Once I was happy with it I pinned the pieces in rows and labeled them (that part is important..if you don’t label what the row number is you’ll have a mess) , then I chain pieced the whole lot by feeding them through my sewing machine.

chain piecing

chain piecing

I know..it looks like a mess right? That’s why it so important to label the rows. ;)

I added a border and ended up with a nice sized quilt top.

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Posted in Pieced quilts | 6 Comments »

A Little Bragging…

Monday, June 29th, 2009

My quilt is on the cover of Quiltmaker Magazine July/August 2009 issue.Quiltmaker Magazine July- August 2009002
I saw a quilt top from the 1930’s at auction. It was made from the happy fabrics from that time and I fell in love. It quickly went way out of my price range, so I decided to try drafting a block to see if I could make myself a quilt like that. I drafted the pattern and stitched up a block, using 1930’s repro fabrics..and found it was easy to piece. I was able to piece the gentle curves with just a few pins. I figured if the block was that old..it must have a name? My friend Barb has a computer program with a catalog of blocks and she found the name. It’s a Flowering Snowball block. The design I drafted had bigger center squares and I liked it better. The block is pieced with light and dark values to show the design. I used the back sides of a lot of the fabrics for my lights. Hey..I paid for both sides…I might as well use them! LOL
Quiltmaker Magazine July- August 2009003
I liked the finished quilt so much I thought I’d see if Quiltmaker would be interested in using the design..so I submitted it. They contacted me immediately and said they were very interested in using it.
The magazine changed the name of the design to something a little more catchy..”Thirty Something”.

Flowering Snowball finished001

The magazine did a real nice job on the photography, but unfortunately..they made a typo in the cutting directions. The center squares should be cut at 2 1/8″  NOT the 2 5/8″ they listed. I sincerely hope this error on their part hasn’t caused anyone problems? I personally, hate to waste fabrics..so I hope that isn’t happening to any of you who try this fun design!

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Posted in Published designs | 20 Comments »