schnitzel & boo mini swap

Whew… I was supposed to mail my mini quilt for the Schnitzel & Boo swap last friday, but my fingers wouldn’t let me.  They put up a protest after I finished the embroidery and moved onto the hand quilting.  But hey, it’s going in the mail tomorrow, so I’m not too late! I hope…

 

I wanted the quilting to provide texture only, so I sewed horizontal lines in a 100wt gray silk by Superior Threads.  I went around the strawberries which gave them a nice trapunto effect: 

 

The edges are finished with a facing technique that uses folded triangles on the corners:

 

Since the quilt is only 8.5″x11″, the triangles allowed me to stick in unsharpened pencils as a hanging device.  The top pencil hangs nicely on a nail and the bottom one keeps everything flat and square:

 

Anyway, I hope my partner likes it.  It has a trip across the pond coming tomorrow!  Yay!

 

**now closed** giveaway day!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO TOOK TIME TO PLAY!!! I had SOOOO much fun reading through all the comments this week!  It was endless entertainment! Love it.  So, to decide who won, I read each comment aloud during my dinner outing at the Cracker Barrel and we all discussed their awesome-itude and laughed and ate too many dumplins. In the end, we have a winner and it’s Leanne from My Year of Crafting Dangerously!  Here’s her comment:

I caught my breath when I saw this on the SMS giveaway. The Heather Ross Mendocino fabric line is almost an urban legend in New Zealand, with many whispers concerning its existence, but very few have actually seen it. I wonder if it would gain traction if I pieced it together and started a petition for it to become our new national flag, because you know, sewing is our national past-time, up there with being extras on The Hobbit. And these fabrics really would be my preciousss. Thanks for the chance to win them.

This woman wants to start a grassroots political movement with my fabric strips, people!! And she was a hobbit!!! Good lord, I can’t give her this fabric fast enough.  Congratulations, Leanne!! I’ve emailed you for your shipping info already.  Have a wonderful weekend!

What’s taters, precious?

 

Sew,Mama,Sew! has a Giveaway Day twice a year and I thought I’d share something very close to my heart….

These are nine 3″xWOF strips of Mendocino by Heather Ross for Free Spirit Fabrics.  They are in the blush colorway and are just about the loveliest things in the world….  To win this giveaway, post a comment and tell me how you would use this fabric!  Whichever answer tickles my fancy is the winnah!  I’ll leave this post open  until May 10 at 5 p.m. PST and international readers are welcome!  I’ll ship wherever.  Anyways, hope there’s someone out there who’s jonesin’ for some Heather Ross! Happy Monday! r

thar she blows!

 

This is Xerxes the whale!  (I asked my sister to name it & the first name that popped out was Xerxes.  Such an odd child… But I remember naming one of my childhood cats “Thomas Cola”, so I guess what goes around comes around.) Anyways, I’ve been working on her for about a month now. I actually finished her Thursday for a zippered pouch exchange at my local modern quilt guild.  But there was some drama ’round these parts & I wasn’t able to go to my meeting.  She’s been hanging out on my cutting table ever since and I started noticing all the things that were bugging me about her- seam lines were off center, the tail was wonky, etc.  So , I totally ripped her apart again this morning.  But I digress!  She started about a month ago when I made a clay sculpture of a half whale…

 

I used Crayola air dry clay from Target.  Thank God for Back to School sales!  Anyways, while it was about 75% dry, I draped it with muslin and made pattern pieces to test out in paper…

 

When I was satisfied, I busted out my beloved stash of Mendocino fabric by Heather Ross.  I love this line of fabric so much that I’ve been too afraid to make anything out of it!  But Xerxes seemed to be calling out for the ocean, so I sucked it up and cut out my pattern pieces before I could think about what I was doing.  To make it stand up on its own, I used ByAnnie’s Soft & Stable and used polyfil stuffing in the tail.

 

There was much wrestling involved with that zipper, let me tell ya.  It required a buttload of pins and I still managed to break a needle from shifting fabric. Oy.

I’m working right now on finishing the rest of my QuiltCon Block Challenge entries.  I did the easy one first:

& now I’m working on another one to stick with the Texas theme.  So… That was my week so far!  Fun times… Happy quilting!  rebecca