Free Applique Pattern series: Fluttering, Block III

It's time for the next block in the Fluttering series. Just click the picture and it will take you to the downloadable PDF file.  I hope you enjoy making this block weather in applique or embroidery.

Sewing is everything!!!
Marjory

Another STUD swap completed and a Pincushion Tutorial

Here is the cute little quilt that I made for 13insanepenguins for the Nov/Dec STUD/Anything goes, swap.  It is made from a free pattern and a variation of that pattern available on the internet from several sources.  These little guys are about 3 1/2" square.  I told her it was just insane to make 13 penguins and I think that's why her name has insane in it.  But it sure was fun and I'm thinking of making one in pink for me.  Should it be hot pink penguins or light pink background?  Have a few more swaps to think about before I begin.  Here is the pincushion I made as an extra for this swap also available as a free tutorial:

Just click the image to be linked to the free PDF. I'm calling this pincushion Winter Star as I feel it looks a little icy.  Have fun with the tutorial and let me know if you make one.

Here is what I received from 13insanepenguins and it will let you know her humor.  She told me to be on the lookout for Oatmeal?  Isn't this great and funny.  After I posted in on Flickr I found out this isn't the first time she's done this.  Talk about going green!!!   Next is a picture of the contents.

That's fabric not wrapping paper, isn't it just great!!  The candies are long gone and were terrific!
Next let's open that fabric wrapped package:

She sure did a terrific job paperpiecing this bueaty.  Isn't it cute and it's PINK!!!!  I love it!!

Here is the quilt I made for QuiltyBee for the STUD/Pets swap.  I was a little disappointed that she only posted one blurry picture of her many pets and it was of a grey cat.  I'm not very fond of grey.  So this is my version of grey.  Take a closer look and you will see that it is periwinkle.  She seems to have liked it though.   Now the quilt I received from her:

A cute simple quilt of pink poodles along with chocolate mint homemade fudge and a cute little notebook.  Last a tin of mints.  That's rusching or gathering on the blue fabric.

Free Applique Pattern series: Fluttering, Block II

Fluttering Series continues with Block II.  Just click on the picture to be lead to the PDF file available free. Use these original blocks for applique or embroidery.  

Have fun and enjoy!!

Marjory

Scrappy Mug Rug Swap Christmas 2011

This month the mug rug group tried a new kind of swap.  We knew who our swap partners were and we exchanged one on one.  So my partner was Karen@Laughter in Quilts.  She many does piecing and I mainly do applique.  That makes for a great swap, we each received something we love but rarely do. Here is the mug rug  package I received from Karen:

Wasn't I lucky?  Two mug rugs, a pouch and chocolate.  Boy what a great Christmas swap!!!!!  This snowman was her first try at designing her own paper piecing pattern.  Isn't he great!! Then the snowflake, wow oh wow!!!  Love it all.

Here's the mug rug I designed, made and set to Karen:

Since Santa is one of my favorites and Karen told me she loved him too, I took a pattern I already had designed and modified it to fit a standard mug rug.  She loves it!  Which is all I could ask for.  But this isn't all I sent.  Here's the rest:

Another Santa mug rug using Christmas fabrics, a pincushion made to look like a peppermint candy.  I need to make one of those for myself.  Maybe I'll add it to my Pincushion tutorials.  How about that?

Merry Christmas!!!
Marjory

Green Tamale Day

My great friends, the Rudolfo's, are of Mexican heritage and every year they get together as a family and make red tamales. I am always included in this process. We make them a week or two from Christmas and then they are served on Christmas. This is an all day process but lots of fun. We did these last week and I forgot my camera.

Then they informed me that they were going to do green chili tamales. We did this today and I was smart enough to bring my camera. This was the first time for most of us to make green tamales so we imported more family members that were more knowledgeable. Actually it was much easier then the red tamales. Red tamales include meat, either pork, beef or both which is usually cooked the day before. Both are made using masa but is prepared differently. Red has the red chili sauce added to the masa and the green have creamed corn added. Actually the green are vegetarian and delicious. To keep this post from being over burdened with photos I made a mosaic of 16 of the photos I took that tells the whole story.

This mosaic takes you from preparing the masa to cooking and aftermath of eating tamales.  After making tamales it is traditional to cook a batch and have a feast.  Which was carried out on each of the tamale days.  Now on Christmas we will have both green and red tamales.  

What a great feast!!

Marjory

Little Quilt Swap

Sorry for the delay in posting.  This time it was computer failure.  Ughhh!  I hate this.  My computer just wouldn't turn on.  Everyone said it was the little motor.  But it's a Dell and only they will fix it.  So I had to dig up $300 to buy a new one.  I still have to retrieve data from the old one.  I'm working on that.

Last month I joined in on a new kind of swap.  It's called "Little Quilt, Sew, Vote and Ship".  It's very different.  We send pictures of our quilts to the leader and she posts them.  That way no one knows whose is whose.  After the picture deadline we vote on the one we like the best. Actually we had to rate them 1-20.  The way it works is that the one with the highest score gets their first pick, then the second place gets their first pick unless already picked.  So one down the list.  Then after all the votes are in we are notified who to send our quilts to, but we still don't know how we rated or whose quilt we get.  It was very exciting and I enjoyed it tremendously.  Here is my entry:

It is a pattern I put out about 15 years ago that was designed by myself and my mother, June P. Brennan.  Here is the quilt we designed together as a composite in EQ7:

Mom designed the flower and I designed the quilt.  It is wall hanging size, about 54" square.  I don't have a picture of the final quilt because I never quilted it.  I have to get busy and hand quilt it.

I was almost late with my photo for the swap because of my computer failure so I just posted the quilt without the binding.  Shh, don't tell anyone.  It was fully quilted just not bound.  Then I cropped the picture so you couldn't tell.    When the voting was done I was told to ship to Sewgentle in PA.  We had 7 days to post them.  I still had to do the binding so it took 2 more days to pick a binding and get the work done.

I then mailed my quilt of on like a Thursday.  On Friday I received a package from Sewgentle.  This confused me.  Why would the one receiving my quilt send me a package.  Then I realized that I had won her quilt!!!  I still didn't know which one it was so I quickly opened it.  It was one of my top choices:

Isn't it cute!!!!   I love Santa's!!  Actually I have a collection of them that I put of every year.  It turns out she choice mine as her number 1 choice.  How nice is that!!!  She ended up rated 5 and I was 9.  I'm really happy with what I received and she is too!!!!  Both happy swappers here!!!

For the love of swapping!!!
Marjory

Free Applique Pattern series: Fluttering, Block I

The Romance Series of 4 blocks have all been posted and shared.  Now here is the 1st block from the Fluttering Series of 4 blocks.  They can stand alone or be added into the same quilt as the Romance Series. With these blocks I share my love of butterflies to compliment my love of flowers and hearts.  What could be greater but a quilt with all my favorites. I have heard from several people that they will be using my patterns for a embroidery pattern.  That's what is great about applique patterns.  They can be used for embroidery, applique and painting.  Just have fun and enjoy.  
Marjory

STUD (Swap Till You Drop) Sept-Oct Anything Goes Theme

My partner, Quiltnkimmie, loves "The Wizard of OZ" movie.  She has a collection of many different items from Oz.  I decide to do the witch for her.  After all my favorite holiday is Halloween.  I have called this mini quilt "Take that! My pretty!"  This was a gas to make.  Loved every inch of it. Here is the final package sent.

Yes, that's a witches hat pincushion.  Coming up with the right extra was the only problem I had with this swap.  Here's a closeup.

I'll be making one for myself for my collection and I will be putting together a tutorial at that time.  I may wait until next Halloween to share it or I may not.  tee he he he

Here's what I receive fro Quiltnkimmie.

He really is a "STUD".  I adore him!!!!  He's so cute!  I have yet to put him up on my wall of fame, but he will end up there sooner or later.  Wait I'm not done yet!!!  Let's see what else I received in this package.

There was a glass, a wood and 2 silver frogs in my package.  I'm in glory, I'm so thrilled.  The glass frog in on my frog shelf, the wooden frog is a magnet and is on the frig.  The silver frogs are hung out for me to see everyday.  Actually I will see them all everyday.
Quiltnkimmie said she thought it would be fun to include frogs made of different materials.  It is, it is!!!!  The next picture shows the little purse that the silver frogs

were.  It's darling!!!  When I finally have a shelf for all my pincushions this will be included with them.  The peace signs are actually tacks and have been added to my design wall.  I received this the day after the package from Scrapnchick arrived so I've been a very happy camper lately. 


Keep on Swapping!

Marjory

STUD (Swap Till You Drop) Sept-Oct Halloween Theme

My partner, Scrapnchick has received the mini quilt that I made her for this round.  This means I can finally share it here.  This is and the other STUD swap I've done this round is why it's been so quiet here the last week or so.  I can't share here if I want it to be a surprise and I'm big on surprises.    For this round Halloween was the theme.  Not hard for me, I just had to go to my already designed unfinished projects and steal from them.  I did some tweeking to make it fit this venue and it was ready to go.  Oh, oh my partner posted that she likes spiderwebs.  I wasn't planning on that.

That made me rethink the ghosts in the offsetting corners.  I still wanted to do them but I wanted the spiderwebs to be seen too.  "Flash" goes my brain.  What if the Ghosts were made from organza.  I could burn the edges and sew them on.  Better yet what if I sewed them on with Glow in the Dark Thread.  This resulted in 2 technical problems that delayed my finishing the quilt on time.

Most Spiderweb blocks are made using 4 blocks that intersect.  This would make the web way to large for a mini quilt.  After a search of the web, I found this pattern.  So I designed my mini quilt around this block.  The problem was I didn't read the directions.  This block is made by sewing strips together, cutting this into squares.  Then cutting the squares in half on the diagonal.  Easy right, just like half square triagles. Just pieced.  The problem was it's done completely random and the block comes
out the size it comes out.  I decided on what size strips I would cut to do a small enough block.  This quilt is not suppose to be bigger than 15"  Half of 15 is 7 1/2", right.  Well the first block game out to be 8 1/2".  Too large!!!  So I recut strips 1/4" smaller thinking this should get me closer to the right size.  Wrong!!  It came out about 6" finished.  Instead of making another test, I just added a border around the web to make it float.  Whew!!! 

Second problem came when I tried to attach the first ghost.  I thought and thought about this and decided to use paper piecing paper. I could temporarily sew the ghost to the paper, thereby stablizing the organza.  Then I could cut out the ghost and zigzag it in place on the quilt.  This would work because the back of the ghost was in the seam allowance, so I could pull the paper out through this side.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!!   The paper is stronger then the organza!!!  The organza tore before the paper!!!!  This was a nightmare.  I was going to be late!!!   I still had to do my other swap for the same group.  Ughhh!

I refused to change my design.  I needed to make it work!!!  After several sleeples nights and a consultation with my BFF in Texas. I came up with the idea that maybe I should cut out a fusible web to be about  1/8" around the outside edge of the ghost.  That would stabilize it long enough to zigzag around it.  Hopefully.    As you can see it worked.   Here is the entire package that I sent Scrapnchick.

Here is the quilt that arrived from Scrapnchick. Isn't it great.  I love the black and white

border fabric and the way it cries fall not just halloween.  Below is the whole package.  That large green button is really a little box filled with colorful buttons.  The Jackolatern face is a small mugrug.  It's so cute!  I love it!  Then there is a pad of paper with a magnet on the back.  It's now joined all my frig art.  I've been very lucky this round with my partners.

Swapping is Fun!!!!

Marjory

Potholders Pass Shipped and Received!!

Here are the potholders that I sent to my secret partner.  She should receive it sometime this next week.  I can't say much about her except that she posted on Flickr that she likes them.  I included a little house pincushion as a little extra.  I am thinking of doing a tutorial next month for both the potholders and the house pincushion.  Anyone interested?

Here's what came yesterday but I didn't find until today.  I have what is almost extinct in this country.  Door to door mail service.  I have a slot in my office wall where the mail is deposited.  If the mailman can't insert it they leave it on my bench right outside the door and next to the slot.  I didn't see this until I went out front to water this morning.  What a Sunday surprise. 

Just look at the decorated envelope.  Isn't it just great!!!  Inside was the wrapped package.  My partner took a lot of time and consideration for this swap.  I really love that! Here is the back of the envelope.

Now wait until you see what was inside the wrapped package.  Can you stand the suspense? 

They aren't potholders they are little pieces of art!!!!   Can you see the little pumpkins in front of the house?  Look at that tree and moon.  These are so cute. I won't be able to use them so let's see how I am featuring them in my kitchen.



I already owned this colorful magnetic clips and they offset this little quilts perfectly.  Now I will smile every time I open the frig.  How did she know what colors to do to match my clips?  The mystery of life.  Thank you MyHeart4Him!!! I couldn't be happier.

Creating is the key!! 
Marjory