Traveling Stash Winner!!!

Join me in congratulating Foolish Feathers in winning the stash box.  The random number generator chose number '4'.  I tried to grab it to post but when I went to the clipboard to retrieve it it was not there and was gone when I came back, so unfortunatly you will have to take my word for it.  Anybody want to tell me how it's done???

She posted,

  This is such a fun stash box! My favorite part of fall is the cooling of the weather (I moved from Alaska to Texas, so you can imagine). I also love how everyone in the neighborhood comes out of hibernation and are very active"

I will be mailing it to her as soon as I get her snail mail address and since it is priority mail it will be in texas in no time.  I had fun reading all your favorite Fall things. Thanks

Congratulations Foolish Feathers 

Pumpkin Pincushion

Just a quick little sharing of one of my latest projects.  I found this pattern in the Winter 2012 edition of Simple Quilts and Sewing magazine on stands now.  This magazine is chocked full of great patterns and projects that would make great Christmas gifts.  This obviously not so great for Christmas but I just made one for my Halloween See Saw Swap partner and plan on making more of them.  It turned out so cute.

            This picture is not the best but you can see how cute he is.

This magazine is definitely worth picking up and seeing if it has anything you might be interested in.  See the little owl pincushions on the cover? You know I will have to make some of them, too. I've been busy with my Wicked Blog Hop project so be sure to come back October 26th to see what has kept me sew busy this month.  It is truly WICKED.
Keep Stitchin'

Traveling Stash Giveaway!!!

I'm sure some of you have heard by now that I won traveling stash box #5 from Marci at Marci Girl Designs recently.  If you don't know the traveling stash boxes are fabric and goodies that travel around the US and are kept track of by Cherise at Sewingly Along, she does a fantastic job and you can always see where the boxes are by visiting her blog.  When you are the lucky recipient you can keep anything you want out of the box, as long as you replace what you take with like items.  What a great idea, huh???

Here it what was in the box when I received it:

These were in the box along with all of this, too

 and

These were in the box when I received it

Wow, talk about a lot of options to choose from.

Here is what I decided to keep for myself:

I am super excited about the hexagons. Can't wait to use these.  The button covers will become cherries for a quilt I'm working on. Thanks Marci!!! I love the books so I kept those and added two different ones back in.  I also love the two inch squares, can't wait to see what I can create with them. There are a lot of cute cuts in there.  Bet you're excited to see what is in the box now.  These next pictures show what I added back in. Although to get it to all fit I had to take the multi-color striped fabric that is in the upper right hand corner of the third picture from the top on this post.

Here is a better look at what I added in for you to choose from:

              I added also added some snaps, sewing machine needles and some fusible tape not in these pix.
The lower set are all fat quarters. The upper set has a mixture of 1/2 yard cuts and fat quarters.  This box is once again jammed full and ready to visit one lucky lady or guy. If you want a chance to win this box there are a few rules you must follow in order to enter.

RULES:

• Be an active Blogger.  Post about receiving the box and the giveaway on your blog in a timely manner.
• There is a note in the box that logs where the box has been.  Please add your info and place the note back in the box.
• There is a list of Rules and Guidelines in the box.  Please read and follow these and return the list to the box.
• You may take anything you like from the box.  Just replace each item with a comparable quilt shop quality item eaqual to the amount taken.
• Ship the box to the next person in a reasonable amount of time.
• Due to the amount of shipping costs it is only open to residents within the USA

Please leave a comment here for a chance to win, one comment per person. In your comment maybe you can let me know what your favorite thing about fall is.  I will leave the comments open until Thursday night, October 11th...8pm PST. Hopefully Mr. Random will help me choose a winner shortly thereafter and I will contact the lucky winner.  If you are a no-reply blogger please post your email address in your comment or you will be disqualified. Sorry but I need a way to contact you and get your 4.1.1 should you win.

Good Luck!!!

Sweet Day

 Yesterday I took a vacation day to accomplish a few things on my to do list at home.  One of which was to get started on my "Wicked" project.  Here is how I started my day. Just a sneak peek is all you get.  I like how my spooky eyes turned out...but whose are they do you suppose??? You will have to come back on Friday, October 26th to find the answer to that question.  That is the day I will be participating in the Wicked Blog hop put on by Wendy.

 

Next up was getting my raffle blanket machine quilted.  The due date is October 17th and since I want all my fellow employees to sign it, I need to have it done early.  I always dread the finishing process.  I hate layering the batting between the layers.  I can't stand that you can't see the bottom layer once you put the pieces together.  I certainly don't want wrinkles in the back.  Yesterday that process went very smoothly. No pun intended.  Maybe part of it was a new choice in batting. I'm not sure.  I used this new product and hope it continues to amaze me as it has so far.  It is the first time I have pre-washed a batting.  The bag says it could be quilted up to 8 inches apart which is a feature I like.  While many people quilt all over with inch by inch coverage, I think the quilt is so much softer and friendlier to use when quilting is farther apart.  I also am not the biggest fan of the wrinkles that happen when you wash the quilt so although this product reported a mere 2 to 3 percent shrinkage it also said it could be preshrunk.  I just had to soak the batting for 20 minutes in hot water and then wring dry and tumble dry in the dryer.  This is the part I find scary and have never attempted but it worked very well.  It came out of the dryer in one piece    ( which was a huge bonus!!!)  I had no problem with the layering of the project and it quilted very nicely with no bearding at all.   I did have a bobbin tension problem that took me a good hour to take care of.  Arrrrgh....I had to clean the dust bunnies out of there three times to get them all and after many attempts to change the bobbin tension with no luck finally just gave up and switched bobbins.  Should have started there because I think that was the winner, winner, chicken dinner. I got the project about 80 percent quilted not bad for the first day and will finish it today.  Speaking of winner, winner look what I won recently.  My grand daughter who is four was here this weekend when it arrived and she immediately thought the pincushion would make a great pillow for her bear who was also spending the night with us. I will have to make her one as this is definitely for my collection. I love it.  The charm pack is my first EVER.  It has a wonderful collection of fabrics in it and look forward to putting it to good use.

Don't you just love the fabrics that were in this charm pack???   I want to thank Elizabeth of pieceful life for the wonderful things she offered in her giveaway. The book was also a first for me and I have been wanting to read one of these quilting novels for a long time.  I started it last night with a glass of wine and a hot bath and it was the perfect way to end my  sweet day.

I can only hope day two of my my mini vacation 'ME' time goes as well.  Hope you are having a great day, too.  Hugs,

Wicked Good Times Ahead

  

I am happy to have finally bit the bullet and joined my first blog hop!  I'm excited to be able to put my wicked thoughts to good use on this one.   Lions, tigers and bears, oh my...Witches, warlocks, what will I try???  Wendy from Why Knot Kwilt has invited us to share our dark or deliciously wicked sides Oct 22nd-31st.  It will also be a chance for me to find something wonderful to giveaway.  Now I will have to dare to be spooky. What wickedly, wacky, wonderful thing will I dare to do??? Stay tuned.....

See Saw Swap Block Progress this week

I thought I would share the method behind the madness with my partner's block this week.  I am putting the second round of the Ghastlie tree on her quilt and am sharing a little of how I am doing it.  This is my first tutorial and by no means the best teaching tool but here goes. This is how the block ended at round one.

Sharon added a border and sent it back and I needed to add round two of my Ghastlie tree.  I had originally enlarged a ghastlie tree print from a picture of one and blew it up very large on a piece of Christmas wrapping paper.  Here is a picture of what was left of the pattern after round one.

The center is the area where I cut out the size of Sharon's original block plus the area I used to make the first tree border.  Now I needed to cut out the size of Sharon's added border.  Which was 2 1/2", so I first drew a line at that width on the paper and then another at 3" out from there so my finished border will be another 2 1/2" when completed.

Then I cut that area out that I needed to be my border. Here is where the fun begins. I  need to look at it  and decide how I could paper piece each area and put it back together again.

 Here is what I came up with. I know as I move them around I may get the order wrong so here is my solution.

I add the A - B- C - D- E- F -G -H labels to the patterns so I can have a reference how this goes back together.  After that I just paper piece each part, trim , and sew it all back together.

I like to start each piece by cutting the approximate size of fabric I need.  With paper piecing you want to make the pieces larger than the area you are covering.  It does waste a lot of fabric compared to conventional rotary cut pieces but I love what it allows me to create and for me it is worth the extra fabric it takes to create that look.  Because in paper piecing you will be creating a mirror image and I want the exact image I will need to be doing the sewing on the bottom side of the paper and putting the fabric on the top.  I just flipped the pieces over and drew my pattern on that side.  If it was difficult to see the pattern I could take it to a window and use the light to trace the pattern on the reverse side, but since I used a sharpie it was a pretty easy task.

Next I just started building my pieces.  After each addition of fabric I just trimmed the fabric giving me my 1/4" seam allowance. I do this each time by just folding back the pattern and trimming the fabrics to a quarter inch by just estimating it like so.

If you rather you can always use your rulers to trim fabrics back to the quarter inch but I like to speed the process up and just trim it to an approximate 1/4", if you prefer you can always use your ruler like so.

When I got each piece completed I just added a quarter inch to each of the sides I will be sewing back together to make my border strip.  Since I cut my pattern at 3" width I don't add the 1/4" inch to the top and bottom sides each time.

I must say this is the first time I have paper pieced using Christmas wrap. I did it out of necessity due to the size of the pattern when I enlarged it but I highly recommend it.  It tears off so easily when it comes to that step.  I have used tissue paper, cheap drawing pad paper, all kinds of quilt tear away papers and none remove as easy as this xmas wrapping paper.  I usually run my tissue paper through the copy machine but with this project I just drew it directly on the paper so the wrapping paper was a great choice.

Once I had them all made and sewn together my border looked like this.  I put it and the other side on to get this far.

I've added the last two borders to the top and bottom and sent it out to my partner.  But she and you will have to wait to see the rest.  Just a peek for now, I hope she loves it as much as I do.  I can't wait to add my next go round onto the block, this has been one fun project to work on. See you soon Ghastlie block, I have a lot of work to do to get ready for my final turn at you :)  Looking forward to seeing you again.

Wonderous Winnings

Here is some fabric I won a while back during one of the blog hops.  I won it from Sew Allegorical and thought it would come in very handy for my Halloween See Swap Block.  I have used the orange stars in it and the rest may have to wait for another project. I love the colors in this collection and am so thankful to Al for sharing it with me. She is fabric-oholic and I appreciate her sharing some of her Halloween stash with me.

This is the fab-tastic Pearadise FQ bundle I won when Sonja was born from her mom Bea and Connecting Threads.  I must say I was very impressed with Connecting threads service.  I had the fabric in just two days.  It helps that they are close to me and I fell in love with the fabric.  Funny how they always look so much better close up and personal.  It too had one fat quarter that was immediately put to use in my See Saw swap block.  I used the yellow cross hatched one in it.  I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the fabric.  Connecting Threads has fabulous prices and I must say I think this line is a very good collection of fabric and look forward to finding where the rest of the fat quarters will end up being used.  Check them out:
Aren't the pears so cute?

Keep Stitchin'