Tag Archives: hand sewing

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This week the Project QUILTING challenge is Sew Not a Square. Specifically, the quilt could not be a square or have any squares in it's composition. "use no square shapes in doing it"

I was out of town until Monday evening on my trip to QuiltCon and came down with symptoms and tested positive for Covid on Tuesday evening {whomp whomp} so I've been isolating from my family. I've also had limited energy as you can imagine. I still wanted to participate in this week's challenge so I grabbed a few supplies from my studio to bring into isolation.

When starting a quilt challenge with just a day left until the deadline, it is wise to think of how to get it done. Here were my rules for myself.

▪️Work very small.
▪️Limit options.
▪️Don’t overthink it.

I knew it would all be hand stitched. And I decided I would make it round. I began by cutting out a small circle from my batting (not sure why I didn't trim after the piecing). Then I pieced my smallest, irregular scraps using pearl cotton thread.

Once I was done stitching the quilt top I trimmed the backing fabric, and then the quilt top, to match the batting circle.

Once it was all trimmed, I cut strips of fabric a bit wider than 1/4" on a bias and stretched the strips a bit to fray the edges. Then I used more pearl cotton to kind of couch my fabric strips over the raw edge of my quilt. I'm not sure what to call the stitching I used... is it a blanket stitch?

1084 days from the start of the pandemic to my first case. (I'm thankful that after a few days I'm starting to improv.) And I have never made what I have considered a Covid Quilt or Pandemic Quilt... so this is My Little Covid Quilt. It's about 2 inches in diameter.

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Sew Not a Square challenge.

As a longtime participant of Project QUILTING, I'm excited to be a sponsor this year. Each week as a Weekly Sponsor I have contributed a PDF pattern to one winner. I'm also a Grand Prize Sponsor. The prize is a spot in one of my self-hosted open enrollment live virtual workshops.

Happy quilting!

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A few weeks ago I shared my new daily project, WIPs Be Gone with Leanne of Devoted Quilter. Here's a wrap up of all the works in progress I worked on during the first 25 days (of the last 100 days of 2021).

My commitment to myself is to spend at least 15 minutes (though often it's longer) making progress on a WIP. My goal is to finish 4 larger quilts before the end of the year as many of my finishes in the last year and a half have been mini quilts. You'll see that I'm still also working on mini quilt projects. In the next 25 days I'm gonna work to knock a couple larger projects into the finish column.

There's a bit of a theme in my projects so far: GREEN!

I spent the first week putting my Tac Tac Toe blocks into a finished quilt top. My WIPs Be Gone kickoff post lists all the Kona colors in this quilt and I absolutely love the palette. I'll be quilting it myself, but haven't yet basted it. This is atop my WIP priority list for the next few weeks.

I added hand stitching on my series of Personal Symbols mini art quilts from a summer class with Deborah Boschert. (hand stitching during Zoom meetings is great!) The next step on these is to add some free motion quilting before they are trimmed and mounted.

I finished the Positivity mini quilt that I shared recently. This was the project I spent the most time working on. I love the Kona Peapod background and always enjoy creating Scrappy Slabs.

I trimmed up my Waterfall quilt. It just needs binding, so I'll be finishing this in the next couple weeks, too.

And lastly, I worked on sewing together all my samples from the Improv Cutting Tips demo that I gave at the beginning of October. This blocks turned into a series of five mini quilts.

And I'm not just working on WIPs. I'm preparing for my first Improv Log Cabin guild class this weekend. And I'm also participating in Nicholas Ball's Improv Triangle Sew Along (in blue).

Oh and one more green thing I made recently. I'm taking a paper mixed media collage course and one thing we did this month was watercolor flowers and leaves with ink details. This is one of my favorites.

Thanks for visiting. I'd love to hear about what WIPs you're working on.

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I had seen some really adorable pin cushions on Instagram and Pinterest and had yet to try my hand at making one, so in February I signed up for the IG Pin Cushion Swap (#IGpincushionswap) to make my first pin cushion. My partner, Maja, lives in Croatia and she mentioned that she loves Disney, Smurfs & bright colors." I like to send extras along with my swaps and found a little set of Smurf figurines. That gave me the idea to make the actual pin cushion be a Smurf house.

I made it out of felt and went through a process of trial and error for what would work to make it the right shape. Since I do not enjoy sewing felt on the sewing machine, the whole project is hand sewn (oh, except for a little liner pouch to hold the crushed walnut shells). I don't typically hand sew, but I think it worked out well.

I started with a 8 1/2" circle. My first prototype had a base that I made by folding darts in the circle. The roof of the house is close to a semi-circle, as large as I could cut from a single 8 1/2" x 11" piece of felt. It didn't look like much at this stage, but I figured it would work and just hoped it would come out as cute in reality as it was in my head.

My second prototype base had less bulk because I cut Vs for the darts instead of folding the felt. Still a little wonky looking.

At this point I started the long journey of hand stitching. This meant the project could go on vacation with me for some car sewing. You can see how I cut my circle for the base of the house. Nothing is measured. It's all just eyeballed. So unlike me.

I purchased crushed walnut shells to put in the base of the pincushion and poly fill for the rest of it. Once I'd stitched the walls of the pin cushion I was concerned that my stitches might not have been perfect enough to keep the smallest crushed walnut dust inside, so I created a little pouch to hold the walnut shells. I slipped it into the base of the pin cushion before stuffing it with poly fill.

pouch holding crushed walnut shells

 

The finished pin cushion. It's a little giant. Maybe 8" tall and 6" across the base. ;-)

 

Here's the entire package I sent for the swap. Maja told me that it was "absolutely amazing and [she] only wants to use it as display." ;-) The best part is that she forgot that she mentioned Smurfs on her swap form so she was totally surprised. Win!

 

Here are the three pin cushions (and so many other goodies!) that I received from my partner, Jenipher. Aren’t they cute! The little ones are a bracelet and a ring pin cushion. That's right! Pin cushion jewelry!

I'm linking up at TGIFF, Finish It Up Friday, and Needle and Thread Thursday.

This finish is one of my Q2 Finish Along goals. I'm linking up with the Q2 Finishes party.