Winners for the Winter Bliss Machine Embroidery Set are Bobette L. and Sandra S. The numbers generated by my custom random number generator were 2 and 20. I counted comments from the first one to the last and got these winners. I will be emailing you this morning and hope you enjoy the sets.
And this is what I worked on this weekend. I am trying to finish a quilt to send to Gene Black for his Quilt Angels project. I just have to get this one on the frame and quilted.
And I finished a quilt of Norma’s–it is a Dear Jane. This one is absolutely gorgeous. It’s a gift for her daughter.
And I finished two embroidery quilts for a customer. Love the way the stippling turned out on the embroidered blocks. I think it looks so nice because the redwork embroidery thread is dark and heavy. While the embroidery was done by hand, it certainly gives me tips as to how I want to digitize redwork for machine embroidery.
Last weekend was a big birthday weekend for friends and family and to celebrate I am giving away two of my newest machine embroidery sets. Winter Bliss was finished a couple of weeks ago, and it is one of my favorites. In fact, every time I have to select pictures to post, I find that every block is a favorite and it is so hard to decide. The blocks designs are by AccuQuilt and the embroidery is digitized by yours truly.
Just leave a comment on this post between now and Friday, December 5 at midnight EST, and two commenters will be chosen at random to receive a downloadable machine embroidery set.
If you win, you can embroider one or two blocks a day and have a beautiful Christmas table runner or wall hanging or throw just in time for Christmas. The embroidery is simple so each block stitches up quickly. This set uses several of the AccuQuilt holiday dies as well as the numbers. Templates are included in the set so that you can trace any shapes for dies that you don’t have or you can cut those extra shapes with a digital craft cutter like a Silhouette or SNC or Cricut. There is an individual template file for each block which will help you organize your cutting and keep the shapes for each block separate.
Just wanted to post a note to say that we have a winner. Last weekend, I used the random number generator and pulled Sue’s comment from the hat. Patsy has contacted her and she is looking forward to stitching a design from Patsy. Thank you all for participating in the blog hop.
This is Day 3 of the Patsy Thompson Designs Blog Hop and that means it is my day to show you some beautiful machine embroidery applique. The design I chose is called Christmas is Coming and is a combination of the Feathered Setting Triangles and the Swag Wreath Quilt Block. This can be used as a table topper or a wall hanging. I made it in two color ways. One of these uses a periwinkle and green color combination and the second is the traditional red and green for Christmas. (And read all the way to the end for the giveaway).
This is one of the most elegant designs I have ever stitched. It includes multiple hoopings and was unbelievably easy to hoop and stitch. And that is because of the very simple, thorough, and straightforward instructions as well as the excellent digitizing of this design. What was absolutely remarkable to me was that I did not have a single glitch or stitch out of place after stitching two complete quilts. You can be sure that I am going to make a couple more of these to give as holiday gifts to family and a special friend. Here are photos of my two beautiful designs.You can see that on the purple and green I made a variation of the center design rotating a single filigree instead of mirror images. (And after the photos were done I realized I still had some of the soap marking lines left–they will steam out when I’m finished–these pieces are still in progress)
The embroidery was almost too beautiful to quilt, but I did quilt the green and red using Cotton batting and a stipple design. After looking at some of Patsy’s work, I think I’m going to quilt a background feather design on the green/periwinkle design.
Usually I do a tutorial with a blog hop. However, Patsy has created a Youtube video that has wonderful instructions for multiple hoopings, and that is all the tutorial that you will need. The designs use her Appli-Kutz applique dies. If you don’t want to make that investment, you can also purchase pre-cut shapes from Patsy.
If you’re interested in seeing more tutorials, you will find that Patsy is very generous with her instructions. You can find a whole series of excellent video tutorials for free motion machine quilting and machine embroidery here.
Did we mention a giveaway? Patsy is giving one free downloadable machine embroidery design to one lucky visitor each day of this blog hop. So, please leave a comment to enter your name into the drawing for a free downloadable machine embroidery design for today’s blog hop stop.
We’ve been getting ready for this for a couple of months now. And the time is here–the time is now. Starting Monday–yes that’s tomorrow–the Patsy Thompson Designs Blog Hop begins. And not only do you get to see some beautiful designs, but there will be five giveaways (one from each blog) of Patsy Thompson machine embroidery designs. Please join us for some fun. I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful my project is, but you’ll get to see it on Wednesday.
Kelly at I Have A Notionis sponsoring this blog hop. Here’s the full lineup of blogs featuring Patsy’s designs.
And we have a winner. Congratulations to Debra Reber as winner of the Fat Quarter Shop Gift Certificate giveaway. I used a random number generator that I randomly selected from a Google search, and this is the result. Yesterday was not only an election, but in our area that also means a Teacher Workday so that the schools may be used for voting. And a Teacher Workday means three grandchildren visiting me–that delayed the announcement a bit. Debra, we’ll be in touch with you. Again, congratulations.
The Fat Quarter Shop has generously donated a $25.00 gift certificate, and we thank them.
The Quilter’s Giving Bee is closed to donations and now the gifts are being tallied and the prizes are sent to the winners. This is a big shout out to SewCalGal for organizing and sponsoring this great event, the four blogger participants and their organizations, and most of all to all of you who contributed money and/or purchased machine embroidery designs from me as a donation to HopeforHH.org. You will also find a post I wrote on the Craftsy blog for Holiday machine embroidered napkins for those of you who like to do machine embroidery on napkins. And for those of you who just want to use Christmas fabric to make napkins, here’s a link to a great tutorial for Nine Minute Napkins. I love cloth napkins and have loved making them using this tutorial. So many of the tutorials show how to fold the corners and trim, etc. This is so much quicker and easier for me. I also added links to these tutorials in my blog roll links.
Don’t forget to sign up for the Quilter’s Bee Giving raffle and auction. The giveaways have been EXTENDED to DEC 15, so you’ve still got plenty of time left to gift yourself with great prizes (that you can use) and it’s all for a good cause (four causes–read about them at the link above).
SewCalGal has found some of the best prizes ever–and there will be lots of winners. But most of all the charities that these benefit are the biggest winners. Please visit HopeforHH.org to find out about the organization that I support.
My first granddaughter was born with hypothalamic hamartoma which is a lifelong and very rare condition. Without the volunteer efforts of the women who founded HopeforHH, many children would face devastating results as this brain tumor causes progressive intractable seizures and cognitive decline when it is not treated. Many doctors have never seen a patient with this kind of brain tumor and it goes undiagnosed unless the parents are able to find information about the symptoms and are able to find a doctor who can diagnose and treat. And getting information and resources to patients and their doctors is what we’re all about at HopeforHH.
SewCalGal and other great quilters are having a blog hop this week with tutorials and projects to celebrate the release of a new book: Quick and Easy Hexie Quilts. And. . . there’s a prize at the end.
Here’s a quilt that I finished this weekend as a gift for my neighbor. It’s been in my unfinished bin for quite some time. His wife passed away last Spring, and he has been donating her stash to me, box by box. I took a beautiful piece of fleece that he brought me and used it for the backing. The quilting is a geometric pattern and there is no batting. It is a very soft and drapey quilt which I think will be just perfect for these chilly Spring days.
And, of course, it’s impossible for me to make anything using a rotary cutter these days, so I wanted to give you a little tutorial on how to make this using the AccuQuilt Go or Studio cutter.
The strips are scraps and are random widths. The first blocks that were made were pieced using a 10 1/2″ paper foundation. You can also use a fabric foundation. When trimmed, the blocks look like this.
Block completed using a paper foundation.
To make the block into half square triangles, a 10-1/2 inch solid piece of fabric is cut and layered together with the pieced block with right sides of fabric facing each other, then a line is marked from corner to corner and stitched 1/4″ on either side of the marked line. This makes two complete blocks. All blocks are trimmed to the same size, and the quilt assembled. While I did a straight layout, the blocks could be turned many different ways to create a number of different unique layouts.
As I was stitching the last few blocks so that this quilt could be completed, I started thinking about ways to make this using my AccuQuilt cutter. I find making the blocks on a foundation very cumbersome because after stitching, each strip has to be trimmed in length. And then there is a trimming process in the end.
The first thing I tried was to make a row of strips as shown below. This strip looks nice and even, but it was made from scraps and then trimmed to 6-1/2″ using a ruler. You could make the strip any width. After the strip was trimmed, it was cut into half square triangles.
At first I used the 45 degree angle across the ruler to cut triangles. Then it occurred to me that the 8-1/2″ quarter square triangle die that cuts the triangles lengthwise would work. This made me very happy. You can see the fabric after being cut with the die shown below.
Of course, the next thing that has to be cut is the half square triangle from solid fabric that is needed to complete the block. Because the outside of the pieced half square triangle is cut on the bias, it is ideal to have the solid fabric half square triangle cut with the straight grain on the two outer edges of the block. Thus, I didn’t want to cut the solid fabric half of the square using the 8-1/2″ quarter square triangle die. The nearest size half square triangle that would match the 8-1/2″ quarter square triangle was the 6-1/2″ half square triangle.
When the pieced half square triangle and the solid half square triangle are stitched together, you will see that the solid triangle is just slightly larger and will have to be trimmed to a square. Because of the fabric grain, it is worth it to me to do that little bit of trimming because of the squaring issues that a bias quilt presents during the quilting process.
But there are other options that could be used so that one only used the quarter square triangle die or only the 6-1/2″ half square triangle die. For example, if you cut all of the triangles – solid and strips, with the 8-1/2″ QST die, then you could put them together like this and have the straight edges on the outside.
Or, you could make the strips like the original plan on a foundation and then cut both the pieced strip square and the solid square with the 6-1/2″ half square triangle die.
Hope this helps you begin to brainstorm ways to use up all those short ends of strips that you’ve cut from other projects.
