Tag Archives: sewing

Boxy Bags

Posted on May 31, 2016 | 9 comments

I was blessed with a glorious three days off! What to do, what to do? It isn’t that I don’t have anything to do, it is that I am behind on anything and everything. Three days is precious…I don’t want to waste it.

So I began cleaning/reorganizing my sewing studio. I say began, because…well…it quickly became overwhelming. So instead, I cleaned just enough to work on a project. Ha, ha!

I found a small tote full of 6″ squares of hand dyed fabric. This stuff is old and I want to use it up and empty the tote! Therefore, I cut the 6″ squares into 3″ squares and really filled up that tote. Sheesh!

Hand Dyed Scraps

I’ve been wanting to make boxy bags for quite a while. An upcoming trip to Hawaii (2 more months and I’m there!) is just the push that I needed.

Boxy Bags

Pink Stitches has a great tutorial for these boxy pouch bags and it is easy to change the size if one wants to (which I did).

Boxy Bags

I’ll be making more of these. They will make nice gifts.

Boxy Bags

And I’ve barely made a dent in that tote of hand dyed squares!

9 Comments

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Tagged boxy bags, diy, hand dyed fabric, LCsCottage, Pink Stitches, scraps, sewing

Initial Pillow No. 5

Posted on June 29, 2015 | 22 comments

For this month’s pillow, I have taken my inspiration from Diane Gaudynski’s Guide to Machine Quilting. I have owned this excellent, comprehensive book for many a year.

Diane is a very talented award winning quilter and I admire her work very much!

You can find lots of eye candy and free motion quilting tips on Diane’s blog!

Diane is an elegant, traditional quilter and uses lots of feathers and echo quilting. I saw this feather on page 69:

And on page 31 of Diane’s book:

I drew a version of it with a blue marker on a white tone-on-tone cotton fabric (I would have used silk, or sateen, if I had any, but couldn’t find any in my stash of fabrics.)

The ‘J’ is the initial of the name of a good friend to whom I will be giving this pillow.

A layer of batting is stitched with water soluble thread, and then carefully trimmed.

I wish I were better at taking photos, especially of white on white!

Since my friend likes pink, I am using a 40 weight pink variegated Aurifil thread for the feathers and the letter. The rest of the wholecloth quilting is done with 50 weight white Aurifil thread.

You can begin to see the texture forming!

Finished and washed:

Detail:

Like the other pillows that I have been making, this one is simple with a covered zipper.

Last look:

I participated in QuiltShopGal’s 2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge, so it would’ve been fun for me to repeat Diane’s lesson and compare the ‘then and now’. I may do that yet. However, I am doing Option 2 from this year’s Free Motion Quilting Challenge, and I will be linking up over there.

Previous pillows/challenges:

Joy Pillow

Initial Pillow No. 1

Initial Pillow No. 2

Initial Pillow No. 3

Initial Pillow No. 4

22 Comments

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Tagged cushion, Diane Gaudynski, fmq challenge, free motion quilt challenge, initial, LCsCottage, letter, pillow, quilting, QuiltShopGal, sewing

Initial Pillow No. 4

Posted on May 31, 2015 | 33 comments

This month’s pillow is for my second granddaughter.

I used Cindy Needham’s Ultimate circle stencil to create a guide to free motion quilt.

I didn’t want to use the larger circles, but I did start marking one by mistake. Oops.

After marking the lines from the stencil that I needed, it is simply a matter of ‘connecting the dots’, in my case, for petals.

Then it got complicated. I had drawn s0 many lines that I really needed to concentrate on which ones that I was going to quilt on.

I thought it easiest for me to outline stitch the lines that I needed, and fill them in later.

I hadn’t decided how I wanted to fill the petals, so I quilted the centers and the background first.

Now we are getting somewhere! Love the texture!

I used Wonderfil Invisifil 100 wt. to outline stitch the letter and the ladybug. Aurifil variegated 40 wt. was used to free motion quilt the flowers, and Aurifil 50 wt. was used for the background stitching, as well as appliqueing the letter.

The finished pillow:

Just a simple covered zipper backing:

I didn’t think that I would make it this month, but here it is the last day of the month, and I can still link up to QuiltShopGal’s May free motion quilting pillow challenge. Yay! I chose Option #1.

Be sure to check out Cindy Needham’s website and blog. She is a fabulous quilter and teacher!

Joy Pillow