useful cases...

...made with the Maggie pattern of Lazy Girl designs.

Quick and easy to make with only a few seams.

 Quilting and embellishing is only required if you want to take the extra few minutes.

You can add a magnetic closure, velcro or button.

On the purple wool - velcro was used and the others used a button and pony tail holder.

The small sized pouch is perfect for a cell phone.

The larger pouch can hold frequent buyer cards, coupons, sale cards, gift cards.....

out the sewing room window...

Out the Sewing Room Window is a quiltlet in my series of small quilts (12 x 12) created from doodled images in my sketch book.  I finally finished it in celebration of Earth Day but didn't have a chance to post yesterday.

The feather is a real, found, fether and given to me by my little friend, O-Bob.  He often shows up ringing the bell and giving me good stuff.

This week was cake!

This picture was taken from inside my sewing room.  It is the Crabapple tree which was the inspiration for the sketchbook doodle.

And this was taken from outside.

Happy Spring!

Christmas in April

This is my friend Sue's quilt that she designed and crafted using her new ruler set.

Sue's rulers and tools are used for cutting applique shapes. 

The rulers are not long arm quilting rulers, although I did use it to make a template for the quilting design.  Using the ruler  I cut the shapes I wanted out of a clear, flexible report cover.  Then I used a water soluable marking pen to trace around the template and transfer my design to the quilt. 

Melissa's quilt is below.

Sue designed Melissa's quilt using her rulers.  Sue, Sharon and I made this quilt for our friend Melissa.  We gave it to Melissa in the fall and Sue borrowed it back to hang in our Guild's quilt show last month.

Here you can see it hanging with a pretty blue ribbon!

Sue developed a pattern for Melissa's quilt. If you plan to visit MQX this week, I hope you stop by and meet Sue in her booth.  She will be vending her new products and she is always full of colorful inspiration.

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My friend Deb and I made a promise to get together and yesterday we were finally able to hook up.  I helped her get started on some machine quilting practice exercises.  And she helped me with a bargello quilt design.  My son chose a bargello quilt pattern for the quilt he wants to take to college in the fall. 

His favorite colors have always been orange and blue, and ironically (or maybe not) he will be going to Syracuse University in the fall...  so, I guess I better get busy collecting orange and blue fabrics and stitching them together...

(Thanks for the book and help Deb!)

Jacobean Shade Tree

I forgot to post a finished picture of this.

It's my Charity Challenge for MQX.  The donations this year are to benefit New England Quilt Museum.  The challenge was to use the MQX bear paw logo anywhere in the quilt. Also, to incorporate the luscious batik fabric pack.

I loved making this. It's simple, but it was fun.  

I used the Accuquilt Go cutter, cut shapes and then recut them with scissors into jacobean flower shapes.  Misty Fuse worked great for the fusing, it kept the little pieces light and not stiff,  I could easily quilt over and around them. 

The black fabric is a cotton sateen and I love the look, but the edges frayed like crazy when I had to zig zag stitch around the shapes, before quilting.  It quilted up nicely, though,  I used YLI silk threads, a silk batt with a Hobbs Poly on top. 

...like many others in New England this past week, we were knee deep...

... drying out now and hoping to get back stitchn' soon...

...in the mean time spring is springing right before our eyes...