Quilting - QAYG modified with lots of poly cotton scraps from Mom

I have finished my QAYG experiment where I have stitched scraps of fabric on one side of my flannel batting and then did the same on the other side leaving an extra seam allowance on all sides.  I did the same colour on both sides of the squares so they could easily be laid out.  I stitched the rows first finishing the seams as I went.  To finish the seams I cut strips of fabric about 1.25" wide and then folded in both sides and ironed them down.  I used a cardstock strip 1" wide to make sure that my strip would over the seam allowances after I pressed them open.  

You can see where the green square is joined to the blue square on the left hand side of the photo. The seam has been pressed open and I have the piece that will cover it laying over the open seam.  There is already a blue one stitched in place on the right.  I simply pinned it in place and stitched both sides down through all the layers.  This method makes the quilting more integral and with the seams reinforced less likely to unravel if there is tugging and so on.  I added the same sort of strips over the seams which I used to stitch the rows together. 

Here is one side of the quilt.  Here you can see all the small strips I added to cover the seams between the squares and the rows. In this method of assembly the binding only shows on one side of the quilt as it is stitched to the outer seam allowances on each side and then folded over twice onto the quilt and stitched in place.  I did the top and bottom first and then each side with square corners.  I am really happy with how scrappy it looks!!!!!  Both sides!!!!  Therese

 

Slow Stitching - a cute little folk art bird

 I found this little bird online. It is offered by Chloe Redfern - Folk art Bird.  I sized it for my piece of fabric and traced it with a Crayola Ultra Clean gray marker.  Christi Johnson in her Mystical Stitches book indicated that she had good luck getting this ink to wash out after finishing her embroidery.  With school supplies on sale last month I picked up a set of 10 for about $4 which I thought was pretty good.  I have been working on it off and on and will be posting an update very soon!! 

Therese

Papermaking session

I have a few of my friends over to make paper a while back.  We started with white paper and made a few embossed sheets that are the perfect size for the front of an A2 sized card.  I have quite a few moulds I made using hot glue so I dug out a few and everyone could choose the ones they wanted.  

 I had several batches ready to go so we made some sheets with blue paper that incorpated snippet of blue paper, white paper with geranium petals, teal paper (white coloured with paper napkin), purple with snippets, ivory with onion skins, green with snippets, warm green with naturals and snippets of paper and dark teal with snippets.  It was a very fun evening and everyone took home their stash of little sheets and laid them out so they could dry.  Mine took a little longer than I remembered - the better part of overnight and the next day.  

I used up the leftovers from the session making the larger sheets - 8.5" x 5.5".  Ivory and petals, pink and petals, more pink and tissue paper snippets, yellow with onion skins, several more batches of greens and browns with naturals as I combined previous batches with others to finish them off.  Finally, the greens and teals and the purples and I was done.  I have a stack of new papers which I hope to use in my cardmaking class at the end of the month. 

Therese