All occasion card featuring handmade paper, stitching and watercoloured daisies

A card for a friend who is celebrating her birthday soon.  I started with an almond card.  I trimmed brown handmade paper and added a small sheet of marigold handmade paper and then the daisy image (my doodle).  I stitched around the flowers with my sewing machine in yellow thread and then added faux stitching to the other layers using my pattern tracing wheel.  I watercoloured the daisies to coordinate!!  

Therese
 

Sewing - finished my bright blend quilt with a red broadcloth backing

I have finally finished this bright quilt (47"' x 63") which I made up with the scraps of blend fabric that were donated to GLA.  I added a batting and then a red broadcloth (cotton poly blend) backing.  I wanted to be better at quilting a pattern so I decided to do squares on the pinwheels.  I pinned everything very carefully and then started in on the squares.  I should have done all the middle first and then moved to the sides.  Needless to say, that with all the pushing and shoving that is required to sew a square in each pin wheel the results were not stellar.  I started by unstitching half of them because there were large puckers in the quilt top.  After taking that much out I decided to remove all the stitching and starting all over.  Best decision!  I stitched down the middle and then added two more lines of vertical stitching on each side which nicely secured my layers.  Next, I trimmed my batting and backing and stitched the backing to self bind the edge of the quilt.  After I had it all finished I decided to stitch up the squares I orginally had stitched which worked much better now with all the layers nicely stitched together.  I had added halves to the edges and decided not to do those so I had to scrub off the pencil marks so it was washed again!!  The pencil marks came out!!!  I am happy with the final result but it was the loss of a full days work but a valuable lesson learned.  That is how life goes!!  Learning is sometimes time consuming!!!  Therese

 

Sewing - a small quilt with the last of the jungle fabric

I have made up a little quilt (36" x 38") with the last bit of Jungle fabric and some of the cotton fabrics which arrived with the last donation from Edmonton.  You can see that there is a rainbow of colours. I dyed the yellow and the orange to finish up the colours of the rainbow.  Really happy with how well that turned out.  I found a green cotton in my stash to go with it and so added it to the top and bottom of the Jungle fabric scraps.   I also had enough for the backing.   I am a novice quilter and after taking a photo the stripes do somewhat overwhelm the jungle fabric.  If it proves to be unacceptable for the merchandise table I will pass it on to the Linus project.  Therese

Dyed some light yellow cotton fabric - a brighter yellow and orange

 

I used some Tintex dye (Brilliant Yellow and Mandarin Orange  $1.60 each) which I bought at Dollarama to dye some of the light yellow cotton fabric I have on hand from the donation for GLA we received.  It worked really well.  I did a  half package and weighed fabric for the dark dye recipe.  It took 30 minutes for each batch and then I added more fabric into each one which gave me a lighter colour and then I mixed the orange and the yellow and got a light orange colour.  Nice to get a variety of hues in those two colours.  I have added some of these to my Jungle quilt.  It was colours I was missing and could easily be dyed from what I had on hand.  Therese

GLA - Grandparents Tea @ Cronquist House - September 7th

You are all welcome to come to our Grandparents' Tea in September.  There will be good food and a fabulous atmosphere for celebrating with a cup of tea!!                Therese

All occasion card featuring handmade paper, ribbon, embossing and vellum butterfly

 My oldest aunt has passed away at 91.  We are headed to the funeral this weekend and I got this card ready for her family.  I started with a white card and chalked the edges in pink.  I added faux stitching to the edges of the trimmed handmade paper, then an embossed strip and a pink sating ribbon.  I hand stitched the ribbon to the center of each motif using white thread.  I tied on three short lengths of the same ribbon on the right side and a hand embossed butterfly on the left hand side.  I added a green body to the butterfly (SX) to help it stand out and to accommodate the glue I used to secure it to the card.  It will be nice to see our cousins again!!  Therese

Sewing - pink baby blanket with pink, striped & white squares and happy face flannel backing

I cut the five inch squares of cotton fabric for this quilt a couple of weeks ago and took a sewing day yesterday to put it all together.  I stitched together the front matching the corners really well.  I created the backing using some happy face flannel and added a strip of the same pink as the front as I had to trim out a stain.  I layered the backing, the batting and then the top and pinned it really well.  I added diagonal lines of wavy decorative stitching in white thread to quilt all the pieces together and trimmed it to the edges of the front.  I usually like to use the backer to bind but it was not large enough so I trimmed strips of the striped fabric to create a binding.  I bound the top and the bottom and then added the sides.  It took quite a bit of fiddling to get diagonal lines on the corners so I will be finding a better way next time.  I am happy with how it worked out (31.5" x 40.5").  It will be going into our inventory for the fall Gramma Link Africa events in the fall.  Therese

Sewing - cute chicken potholders

 I made these cute chicken potholders for my sister who just had a birthday.  The chicken fabric and the coordinating borders were scraps which I trimmed to 7.5" once they were sewn.  I backed them with d to flannel batting and the red backing (9.5") and added two lines of quilting.  They are self bound with the backing fabric.  I usually cut the front 7" and the backing 9.5" but they worked out fine.  

Therese

All occasion card featuring a hand decorated background, black embossed border, embossed flowers and hand drawn border and leaves

 One of my sister's is having her 65th birthday and I made this card for her.  I started with a hand decorated background that had a variety of paints on it.  I stamped it with a flower image from the set using Versamark clear ink which gave a bit of a darker look to the stamped images.  I embossed the swirly floral border twice and the little flourishes twice as well with black embossing powder.  I stamped the flower onto coordinating coloured cardstock scraps and embossed them with pearl embossing powder.  I fussy cut them and added a tiny brad in the center of each.  After positioning them I removed them and doodled flowers, stems and leaves of them before mounting them to the background with 3D foam tape.  I doodled a wavy border all the way around and then glued this large embellished background to a blue card.  One of my other sisters hosted family to celebrate!!!  A fun weekend!!   Therese