I just got featured in another well-known blog, this one a shopping blog which I’ve been following for as long as I’ve been an Etsy seller!! I’m very pleased and can hardly believe how good my items look on their large format front page.

Meet Emma Thomas-McGinnis of Quilties on Etsy

What fun to be getting noticed!  Thanks, Erika, for posting about me and my Quilties!!

Before I was a quilter, I sewed. I embroidered, made stuffed toys, sewed clothes and pillows and just liked to try projects with fabric…but I obviously didn’t know any of the rules of quilting….

I just rediscovered an old project I made 10 years ago, while waiting for my first baby. It’s reallly cute, but I obviously didn’t know what I was doing. I made a quilted wall-hanging without a stitch of QUILTING!  I remember taking it down because it had gotten saggy. It’s also a set of pockets, so after years of holding toys and small books, the fact that there was no quilting holding it together made it look bunchy and wrong.

So yesterday, I fixed it.

Because “Once a Quilter, Always a Quilter”, I couldn’t just leave a quilt un-quilted!!

Click the images to see them bigger.  And I apologize, I don’t remember where I got this idea!! I think it was a book but I can’t be certain. If I figure it out, I’ll surely let you know, because I want to give proper credit. It was a great idea! And so fun to make. Look at all those rows of fancy stitches and reverse applique that I had fun with.

It’s still not a masterpiece of quilting. The sandwich, of course, didn’t lay quite flat anymore, so there are some bunches. But I’m now proud to call this a little quilt!

Kind of funny to have finished a 10-year-old UFO that I didn’t even know was a UFO! But it shows there’s always room for improvement.

If you’re not already a reader of the Pleasant Home blog, you should check it out.

Jodi writes a nice blog with lots of quilting inspiration, as well as projects, recipes and ideas for making your house a pleasant home.

Recently she featured Quilties in her “Needle Little Inspiration” section! It was so nice to be “found” by Jodi!! But then even better was that I found her blog by being featured. My friend Doris emailed me to say, “Congrats on your blog mention at Pleasant Home Creations”…so I had to do a quick search and find this blog. Well, I’m a follower now…and loving her latest “Needle Little Inspiration”s.

Here are some other gems from her site…

This tutorial for this super cute “Mini Double Hourglass Block”…

Her “In the Kitchen” Section featuring recipes for lots of yummy & pretty treats…

And she has a shop on Etsy…only a few fabric treats, but worth “hearting.”

Anyway, bookmark it or subscribe or whatever you do, but keep tabs on Pleasant Home Creations!

I just have to brag a little…I won the Project Quilting challenge this week!

First, I won the public vote, with 31 out of 115 votes, yeah! Thank you to all my friends and fellow quilters who voted for my entry!

Then I won the Judges Vote too!!

“First Place Winner is QUILTIES with her Firework’s quilt and an average score of 8.83!

Here’s what the judges had to say:

Judge 1: I love the choice of the batik fabric for the background and the thread and paint work turned out beautifully. The skyline is a wonderful addition as well. I would love to see this in person. The design is well balanced also.

Judge 2: Nice use of mixed techniques to make a simple, but very effective project. The beads and sequins and star charms add an extra sparkle.

Judge 3: I just plain liked this one best. I think it shows that she has an artist’s “eye” to pick a great fabric, as well as great choice of techniques and embellishments to maximize the fireworks effect. The silhouette at the bottom “weights” the bottom edge – I like it.

Judge 4: I love Fireworks and I love this piece.  Your son is so lucky to have this in his room.  The silhouette is unbelievable.  This piece is my favorite of the week AND I feel this week’s entries are the best yet!  Keep up the great work.”

For all the other entries, go to the Flickr Project Quilting Group.

I just completed another Project Quilting entry that I’m quite proud of. The theme is “Stars over America” and that was really the only guideline. The only other rule was that you could use red, white and blue, but you had to use at least one other color (and that you didn’t have to use red, white and blue).

My interpretation the fireworks that were blazing over America everywhere on July 4th (or 5th in Urbandale due to rain!) My boys had the best time with the fireworks this year and I am giving this to my three year old, Brennan, who saw fireworks for this first time this year. The background is a deep blueish, rainbow batik that looked just like the night sky to me, and has big flowerbursts that look like fireworks. Then I used metallic silver and pink paintsticks to do some of the fireworks and threadplay to do the rest. I used shiny rayon threads, that really sparkle and added a little more sparkle with beads and sequins. The silhouette on the bottom symbolizes with America with its trees and houses.

Close-ups to show the paintstik portions, I did with hand-cut freezer paper stencils and quilted fireworks of just thread. I added sequins and beads to a few of the starbursts, and a couple of silver star charms to go with the theme.

That’s the happy boy who gets this “beeeeauooootiful” quilt!

If you’d like to see any of the other beautiful entries, go to the flickr pool.

And pretty soon you will be able to vote at Kim’s Crafty Apple, but I don’t think it’s up yet tonight.

I was having a bad day a couple days ago… I don’t know why, I just was. I’m sure you know what I mean. So it was 7 p.m. on this bad day and I told everyone I just had to sew, leave me alone. Perked me right up!!  Look at this happy little bag I made, too!

Sewing just makes me happy!

Learning to sew new things makes me really happy, and this was a new way to make a zipper pouch that I really enjoyed. If you want to see a great tutorial about how to make it, go to Toni’s blog  “Make it Perfect.” It was really easy to follow, and even though I already know how to make zippered pouches, she did a couple things differently that really made it easy and nice looking.

HomespunIreland just made a beautiful treasury of all things pink and sew-y. I think you’ll love it, so go take a look!

Lynne Rossetto Kasper spoke about the word “resourceful” on The Splendid Table yesterday and I was feeling a little proud of this resourceful pillow…so let me tell you about it.

I went from this…my bag of thread ends, snippets, batting scraps and selvages….

to this!

A fantastic floor pillow for my husband for Father’s Day…

He’s a Peanuts fan like crazy and bought this fabric himself the last time we were at the fabric store together. I didn’t have enough polyester fiberfill in the house and I didn’t want to purchase an expensive pillow form that would just flatten out in a few months anyway. So, I made a muslin pillow form, filled it with my gobs of snippets and a slender layer of fiberfill for fluffiness. Then I covered that in this nice fleece pillow cover. It’s a large pillow, perfect for having on the floor and will withstand lots of squishing without going flat.

Be resourceful!

Ok, ok, it seems like the only thing I’m finding to write about is the Project Quilting Challenges, but at least I have that!

Here’s what happened last weekend…

The Challenge: 1. The front, back, borders, binding and embellishments should all be made from materials that have had a previous life as something else.
2. You may use new thread and batting.
3. Your project should include at least 3 different materials used as embellishments.

My source of “previous life” materials was a bag of old clothing slated to go to Goodwill. One of which was a green flowered suit jacket that I could hardly part with! It was so cute, but never fit me right. (Teresa, it was Ruthie’s, recognize it?!) Anyway, I decided that making a quilt out of it, instead of giving it away would let me keep it around! (I know, selfish, huh?!) Here’s the stash:

I decided to work small because the pink and yellow fabrics looked like good dolly quilt material, so I cut 2.5″ squares and arranged them in a trip around the world. Then I fussy cut some of those fabulous pink flowers from the jacket and roughly machine appliquéd them on. I counted the appliqué as the first embellishment.

Next, I found an assortment of pearly white buttons…they are pretty easy to find on clothing! And the third embellishment was the silk leaves. They made the center appliques look like a nice wreath. That’s it!

The fabrics gave me some special challenges that made me appreciate quilter’s cotton. They were all stretchy twill, which was thick AND stretchy. It didn’t press well because it would just bounce back, but I was able to press the seams open and even pin the seam allowances flat a few times. I used a quick straight stitch to add on the appliqués, because the fabric didn’t fray much and I wanted it to look pretty casual and handmade, even a little rough due to its recycled nature. I had to use pants legs to get a long binding piece, so it became pink. And I did it single layered, because it would have been too bulky folded in the traditional way. But I like the raw edges on that too, keeping with the appliqués.

Please click on this last photo to really see it. It was a horrible rainy day when I finished it so the photo is dark, but I am really pleased with the finished quilt.

Sorry, voting is closed. I waited too long to post this story to get any votes from my friends…but that’s ok, I’m just happy to quilting, I don’t need to win anything!
You can still go to Kim’sCraftyApple to see the other entries, though. There are some beautiful ones, as usual!

Happy Quilting!!

So, I forgot to take in progress photos of my latest “Project Quilting” challenge…but I definitely want to show you the finished project! And here’s the story….

The challenge: The theme is “Road Trip” and must use at least 12 different fabrics on the front of your quilt.

My inspiration: An old, metal, red cooler that my family had when I was growing up. We went on lots of family road trips and camping trips and decorated that cooler with souvenir stickers from the places we visited. I’m pretty sure my parents started the collection before I was born, because some of those stickers I just heard the stories about. It was a fascinating cooler.

So this tote bag is symbolic of that very special cooler! So, I found images of souvenir stickers online and tried out a new transfer paper I had called “TAP – Transfer Artist Paper”. It was pretty easy to use. It went through my inkjet printer really smoothly. Then I ironed it onto a piece of white cotton and the backing peeled right off. It was working a little too well, as I wanted the transfers to be rough around the edges. Many of those stickers had been through a lot, and were in various stages of faded and rubbing off, so I tried to mimic that by distressing the transfers a little and printing some of them more faded then others.

Click the image for a close-up of the patches.

Here’s one in progress photo I remembered to take.  I quilted diagonal lines on the outsides of the bag.  I also stitched around the patches.

The top border has a story too, I needed to include 12 fabrics, so I decided to go all out with scraps. I dug through and found any scraps I had that looked like scenery of a road trip; flowers, stones, starry skies and leaves. They are arranged in two strips on either side of a road-like dashed yellow line.

I wanted this to be a nice tote bag to use for future road trips, so I quilted the sides, lined it, made a gusset in the bottom so it’s really roomy and added nice thick handles, so it’s a really functional bag.
My mom doesn’t know where that old cooler is anymore…but the memory of it will live on in this project!

It’s already time to vote, so if you like my project, please go to Kim’s Crafty Apple and vote for it. But if you have a chance, go there to see all the other entries, too. There are some really talented quilters participating in these challenges. I don’t even know which I’m going to vote for!   You should actually go to the Flickr site to see all of the entries in more detail.