Have a wonderful holiday.

Short and Sweet

The holidays are grinding down on me and I have a lot to get done so this is a short offering today.

I spent two or three days getting my appliquéd flower and dog off the bed and fused down.  First I scattered scraps of fusible here and there on the wrong side of the backing fabric and then fused the batting to it.  The final step was to fuse the flower and dog to their appropriate batting and backing.  Now they won't be lounging on the bed and in danger of getting messed up.  I hung them both on my design wall and they are ready to quilt when the holiday busy-ness settles down.

So...what to do with my time?  I don't want to get deeply involved at this point so I made some really cute ornaments that I saw on a blog last week.

Origami hexagon ornaments
Pardon the threads - I left them attached to sew on the buttons.

Here is the U-tube video that shows how to make them.  I spent about 1-1/2 hours making five of them.  Easy-peasy!  They all need a button to cover the raw edges in the center.  I went to Joann's and bought buttons specifically for them.  When I got home the buttons were not in the bag or in the car.  They must have fallen out of the bag into the cart when I left the cart in its parking area as I left the store.  Bummer!! Big Time.  I live over 1 hr away from Joann's and the snow began to fall so no buttons with which to finish the ornaments in time for the photo.  I'll hit Hobby Lobby when I venture down the canyon for a haircut in a couple of days.  Hopefully I can find something there that I can use.  I intend to have them ready to hang on a Christmas tree before the big day.

That's all folks.  I've been doing other things with my time lately...you know, like cooking, cleaning, laundry, shoveling snow.......

Sew some happy seams this week if you have time.  Enjoy the holidays, family and friends.

Cut and Paste

My sewing machine had been gone for almost 4 weeks.  I finally called on a Friday and they apparently scrambled because they had it ready to pick up on Monday.  Now tell me, why couldn't they have done that 3 weeks ago?  The intermittently functioning Start button performed to perfection for them so nothing was done to solve that problem.  The foot pedal works great...even though it is sluggish and jumpy so nothing was done on that.  I am linked to this outfit for the one-year warranty, but after that I will find someone else to work on my machine!  I think I will just buy a new foot pedal.  They aren't very expensive and maybe I'll get one that works better.

Clearly, I have not been sewing, but that doesn't mean I am not working on quilts.  I cut freezer paper, cut fabric, glued, pressed fusible, trimmed, placed and repeated.  My gaillardia is almost ready to quilt except that I found some fabrics in my stash that I missed when I was choosing.  Hmmmm!  I may have to do a few replacements.  We'll see.  The flower turned out great.

Detail from my "Dancing Gaillardia.

Ever since I took the photo of the gaillardia I have puzzled over how I could put it into a quilt.  I was stumped because I was trying to figure out how to accomplish the lovely gradation from yellow to red in the petals.  Now I was forced to face the problem head-on if I wanted to keep busy.  That flower had become my primary fixation.

How to:  First I cut a yellow rectangle for each petal then wet it down with water.  Using Textil fabric paint I painted red on one end of the rectangle and brushed the red with paint and water until it blended with the yellow.  After all was dry I cut out the petal, painted glue on the edges and ironed fusible on the back.  The last touch was to draw the red lines with a fine Sharpie.  That was probably not necessary as I will be quilting over those lines with red thread.

I have also done the background and it was a lot of fun.  I told the fabric to talk to me and it kept on chattering for days until it finally told me I was done.  You'll see it when the quilt is finished.

Lady with her bow.

I got the collie's bow back from Spoonflower and it is gorgeous!  I cut it out in its entirety and fused it to the dog's head.  After spending many hours trying every method in the book, having it printed professionally from my photo was the simplest and the best.  Occam's Razor has invaded my sewing room!  Some edges of the ribbon are a little hard to make out because of value similarity, but a few quilting stitches with a darker or lighter thread will solve that.  The color is stunning and true.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you simplicity and chattering fabric to fuel your creativity.