Dresden Turkeys

Carrie of Freckles Galore just e-mailed me the news that she used my Dresden Turkey block pattern to make a wallhanging. You can visit her blog, http://www.myfrecklesgalore.blogspot.com/, to see her turkey.

If you'd like to make one, the block pattern is available for free on my web site: http://www.sundropdesigns.com/thanksgiving.html. You will soon find some other Thanksgiving ideas on that web page, too.

It's a Banner!

When I sat down to sew my leaf blocks into a table runner, I suddenly changed my mind! I blame it on those stark, white sheets of drywall that seemed to be screaming for something to decorate them. I decided to make two simple banners instead - one for my shed and one to give to a friend. The scan of a portion of one banner shows the fabrics I used. The other graphic shows a rendering of the banner made with Electric Quilt software. You can get the applique patterns and very basic instructions for making this banner on my website: http://www.sundropdesigns.com/specialdays.html

Kitty Block

My sister and nephew showed up without warning on Saturday to put the drywall up in my sewing shed. Needless to say, my sewing plans flew to the wayside. It took me the better part of 3 afternoons to get things back in enough order that I could sit down at my sewing machine today and finish the alternate blocks for my Halloween table runner. But the disruption was worth it as the drywall will make my shed a warmer place to work.

For my altternate block, I decided on a black kitten batting at a falling leaf. It's cute, but I've dicovered that I have a difficult time seeing what I'm stitching around when the applique is black.

More Fall Leaves

I collected fallen leaves from the silver maple tree today. This is my favorite tree on the property because there's such a variety of colors and sizes. Leaves on the other trees generally turn just one color or another, often a dull brown.

I chose 4 leaves of various sizes and traced them on brown freezer paper to make templates to keep on hand for future use. They look wrinkled because I salvaged this paper from a box of art supplies that I ordered years ago - the paper had been used as filler instead of styrofoam peanuts. Of course, I had to try a couple of the templates out now using some fabric scraps. Wow! I really like how this simple block turned out. I'm now inspired to make a few more to make a small table runner for the bowl of Halloween candy to sit on.

By the way, I noticed something odd about the silver maple tree: only the leaves on the east side of the tree are turning color. The leaves on the west, south and north sides are all green!

Leaf Quiz Answers

This is the answer sheet to the leaf quiz. How many did you get correct? It's not that easy to identify a tree by just the leaf or a leaf without its tree. After scanning the leaves, it took me 5 minutes to remember what tree or bush the grape leaf was from!

My Newest Pieced Quilt Pattern

My friend Dena, who sometimes tests pieced patterns for me (oh, how I wish she did applique, too!) came by last week to show me the second quilt she made from one of my new patterns she was testing. She strayed a bit from my instructions on this one, so I can't use the photos for the cover, but her quilt is absolutely gorgeous (and her little niece is adorable, too). Dena chose a striped fabric from her stash for the border, then used colors from it to pick out her other fabrics. A local long-arm quilter chose a loose meandering stitch that looks like a cross between waves and clouds - perfect for this quilt.

Here's a full shot of the quilt, along with some of Oregon's beautiful scenery. If you look closely, you can see the four white sails in the Mayflower block. Instructions for a crib size version of this quilt will be on my web site someday soon - before Halloween for sure.

Leaf Quiz

I took a walk yesterday to check on the blackberries and ended up stuffing my pockets with a variety of leaves (I stuffed the blackberries in my mouth - mmm, yum!). How many leaves can you identify? Hints: Most of the leaves are small ones, not grown to full size - that way I could get more of them on my scanner. Near the bottom left corner, there are two leaves from the same tree: one shows the top color and the other shows the underneath color.


Here's the list:

apple

big leaf maple

bracken fern

cherry

Douglas-fir

filbert (hazelnut)

grape

ivy

lilac

morning glory

plum

silver maple

sword fern

viburnum (snowball bush)



I could have included three kinds of blackberry leaves and a holly leaf, but I didn't fancy getting my fingers pricked. I'll post the answer sheet a couple of posts from now (that way the quiz and the answers won't appear on the same web page). Good luck!

Stitches for Redwork

While watching the Olympic games on tv, I kept my hands busy trying various stitches for embroidery on some inexpensive stamped quilt blocks that I bought at a local store. I'm using size 8 DMC perle cotton and love not having to separate the strands!

On this block, I tried four kinds of stitches. The rope, the arm, the hat and the bow are done in stem stitch. I'm a little rusty on my embroidery stitches (haven't done much since high school) and it shows on the bow. But I doubt that anyone will notice once this block is in a completed project.

I used my own wierd version of the backstitch to do the bottom flowers and scallops. It looks okay on top, but it's messy looking on the back side and uses lots of thread. Still, I like this stitch, especially for small things with tight curves.

The shoes and the flowers on the hat were done with a faux chain stitch. I haven't seen my version of this stitch in any embroidery stitch encyclopedia either! Like my weird backstitch, this one is a bit messy on the back side, but it makes a smooth, solid line on top.

My favorite stitch on this block is the whipped running stitch. I used this stitch for the dress, the sleeve and the hat band. This stitch goes fast and has a soft, ruffly or fluted appearance. I like it for clothing and think it would be great for furry animals, but I'm not sure I'd like it for body parts. Maybe I'll try it on the next block to see what it looks like.

By the way, if you're familiar with these blocks you've probably noticed that the butterfly is missing. I discovered that zipper-lock plastic bags don't necessarily prevent moisture from getting to fabric. I left my bag in the sun one day and condensation formed on the inside. These blocks are pinted with an ink that easily washes out, and my butterfly did just that. Since the butterfly was so close to the corner and difficult to get in a 6" hoop, I decided not to bother drawing it in freehand.

Fall Leaves

You can blame one of my 3rd grade teachers (I had 2 teachers that year) for my interest in leaves. She assigned us to collect "pretty colored leaves" for an art project and I've been fascinated by leaves and their changing colors ever since. Today, I found an internet article that explains why leaves change colors and gives a toll-free phone number for the U. S. Forest Service's Fall Color Hotline (who would have guessed there was such a thing?!): http://my.att.net/s/editorial.dll?eetype=Article&eeid=6104281&render=y&ck=&Table=
(800) 354-4595 Fall Color Hotline

Leaves are one applique pattern you don't need a designer for - nature provides them in abundance! Take a walk, collect some leaves, then trace them on paper or template plastic. Or sandwich the leaves between clear adhesive-backed plastic (i.e., Contac paper), then cut about 1/8" around the leaf (leave enough seam allowance for the plastic to adhere to itself). Now you have a pretty leaf to look at and an applique pattern to trace.

If you need an activity for kids, have them collect the leaves and sandwich them between the adhesive-backed plastic, or press between two sheets of waxed paper (adult help required), then cut them out. Punch a hole at the top of each leaf, thread yarn or string through the hole then tie to make loop. With adult help, hang leaves near a window or above child's bed. Small leaves can be used as bookmarks. Have fun!

It's Summer!

Summer is here! In western Oregon, that means 2-3 months relatively free of rain. For me that means trying to do a zillion things during those precious dry months that are difficult to do when it's wet and muddy. And I never have enough time to do much more than make a small dent in my list of things to do. So far, I've managed to cross off 2 major items: set up a canopy (so I have a dry place to work under if it does rain) and add a deck to my sewing shed. Still have to add drywall to shed and prepare and move my trailer to a new spot with a better view and hopefully more sunshine.

Now that the Olympics are on TV, I'm getting even less done. Well, less outside stuff and computer stuff. I am making headway on a redwork project. And I gathered up 8 quilt tops that need to be sandwiched and quilted. I can do things like that while half-watching the TV, but my back is toward the TV when I'm at the computer. Once the rain returns, I'll spend more time at the computer and blogging.

New Quilt Blocks

I've been busy this week catching up on a block challenge for one of the Yahoo groups I belong to. The challenge is to make one block for each month that features a cat and represents that month in some way. We had snow in January, so I used yo-yos to make a snowcat and stitched it to a snowball block.

February's block features a heart for Valentine's Day and uses a pink fabric that I used in a project I was working on in February. The cat fabric just looked like Valentine's Day to me.

March's block is a 3-leaf clover made without a pattern - I just haphazardly cut some white rectangle and square shapes and sewed them to green squares to make the leaves. It's fun to ignore all the fussy rules once in a while! I drew the cat on a small piece of fusible web, cut it out and fused it in place. The stem is embroidered.

My oldest cat, Wylie, was born in April many years ago, so I searched my cat fabric stash for a black and white tuxedo cat. The kitten in the center of this block was the best I could find. The block features a 4" Puss in the Corner block as the center of an 8" Puss in the Corner block.

What I Learned Today

It's said that we should try to learn at least one new thing each day. Here's three things I learned today:
1. If a grocery store employee is walking around the store with a box of cookies from the store bakery and offering a cookie to adults as well as kids, say "no thanks." I said "yes" today and about broke a tooth on the cookie. I'm guessing it was at least 3 days old, probably older.
2. Don't put a cookie in your pocket and then forget about it for 12 hours. I did and I now have a greasy pocket.
3. Wrap cookies in paper towels for several hours before eating them. If fabric can absorb so much oil from a stale cookie, paper should absorb even more from a fresh one. And less oil means fewer calories, right?

Twin Star

On TV last Saturday, Fons and Porter demonstrated how to use the basic component of the Twin Star block to make a twisted ribbon border. Like them, this was a new method to me for making this border so I had to experiment. I was watching the show in my studio shed and didn't want to dash to the house to work the measurements out on the computer first, so I picked up some fabrics, cut a 3" square in fourths and went where it led me. I ended up with a 10.5" block (finished) - not exactly a common block size but I had fun. I'll add more log cabin type rows to make it big enough to make a pillow.

Later, I went to my computer and drafted a pattern for a 12" block. I like this block, but I think I like the other method of making the twisted ribbon best. Getting those little triangles to line up to make a square can be a bit tricky.

More Surprises

As I continue to sort through stuff, I find a few surprises. Today, I found some photos of me taken in first or second grade. Black and white photos were quite common back then. :-)

And I found some of a litter of kittens one of my cats had several years ago. It's about time for this year's feral kittens to start peeking out at the world, but so far I haven't even heard any tiny meows. Since the cold weather stayed around for so long this year, I'm wondering if this year's kittens will show up later than usual. We don't really need more kittens, but they sure are cute! (My females are all spayed now, btw. And the ferals get spayed whenever I'm lucky enough to catch one.)

I also found a sample of a crazy heart block I designed years ago that I'd totally forgotten about. I pulled scraps from a box to make the 4 blocks it took to make the sample, and I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out. Next time, I'll have to try it with a controlled pallette of fabrics. This is what an EQ (Electric Quilt) mock-up looks like:

If you'd like to play with this foundation pieced block pattern, let me know.

Long Lost Recipes

Two years ago, I hurriedly packed my belongings and moved out to my parents' place. The first year, me, my pets and my most essential belongings stayed in a 26-ft. travel trailer. Late last summer, the shed for my studio was built and I had just enough time to put down flooring, get insulation on the walls, and get boxes of fabrics and books and other stuff stashed in there before bad weather hit.

This week, I started what now seems like the never-ending job of unpacking more boxes. At this point, it's mostly the boxes that got packed last - the ones that have no labels because they contain a bit of everything. Some things I'm delighted to see again. Other things I toss in the trash while wondering why they got packed in the first place.

One of the treasures I unpacked yesterday was my box of collected recipes, the ones I liked so much that I actually took time to write them down, by hand, on 3x5 cards. The oldest one is from childhood, a recipe for gingerbread. My fourth grade teacher loved the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and read each one to us that year. One day, she brought us a treat: gingerbread made from Laura's recipe! I'd never liked gingerbread until that day, so my mom got the recipe and somewhere in time I copied it for my collection. I'm not sure I understand all the instructions, but you're welcome to try it! I'm guessing that you add the cup of water to the batter and that a "moderate oven" is 350 degrees. And I think my mom baked it in a 9" x 13" pan.

Laura's Gingerbread

Blend together:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup shortening
Mix in: 1 cup molasses

Add 2 teaspoons baking soda to 1 cup boiling water. Be sure cup is full of water after foam has run off into cake mixture. Set aside.

To 3 cups flour, add:
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt

Sift flour mixture into cake mixture and mix well.
Add 2 well-beaten eggs and stir.
Note: the mixture should be quite thin.

Bake in moderate oven for 30 minutes.

Variations: add raisins and/or candied fruits and/or a chocolate frosting.

Bunny Baskets Update

I finished setting my bunny basket blocks last week - thought you might like a peek at how it turned out. I choose to set then on the diagonal with alternate white blocks and sashing. Setting blocks on the diagonal is not my favorite setting option. Working in a small space without a design wall like I do at present, it's easy to get diagonal settings mixed up. But I really liked the garden lattice look it gave these blocks so I decided it was worth the struggle. Now all I have to do is sew the borders on and I'll have another top ready for quilting this summer.

The Gammage Cup

Have you ever wondered what inspires quilt designs? Sometimes it's a fabric or collection of fabrics. Sometimes it's our pets or children. Sometimes it's nature at her finest beauty. And sometimes it's just something wierd.

This week, I had the dubious honor of undergoing one of our society's initiation rites into the Past 50 Club: a colonoscopy. Those of you who have already suffered this pleasure know that it's a 2-day ordeal, at best. I had it figured that I wouldn't get any work done the day of the procedure, but I'd planned to get my taxes done the day before. Oh, how naive! When I realized that I'd be sitting on a porcelain seat, not an office chair, all day, I decided to make the best of a yucky situation and pulled one of my all-time favorite children's novels from the shelf, The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall.


It's been years since I'd last read this book, so I lost myself in it despite my uncomfortable setting. First published in 1959, it was a Caldecott Honor Book way back then. It's always puzzled me why this book hasn't been more popular through the years. Although the story lacks the complexity of Harry Potter books or the Hobbit, it has a simple, witty charm that I find delightful. The theme (as I see it) is a fairly universal and timeless one, that of finding the courage to stand up to peer pressure and be yourself, and allow others to be who they are.


As I lost myself in the land of the Minnipins, and fell in love with Muggles and Gummy and even Mingy once again, I decided that I'd try to translate this wonderful story into a quilt when I'd recovered. So yesterday afternoon (I slept all morning!) I sketched and figured out measurements and began cutting, and today I sewed up a prototype block of a Minnipin cottage. In the beginning of the story, all Minnipin cottages are white-washed and have thatched roofs, and all are supposed to have green doors. I chose to make the walls of my cottage from 1" (finished) white-on-white strips to make it look like clapboard siding. As in most fantasies, electricity doesn't exist in this story. The minnipins use candles and reed-lamps for illumination, so I chose a yellow-with-white fabric for my windows. The door is green, of course. Most of the cottage is pieced, but I chose fusible applique for the thatched roof. The finished cottage is 10" x 10", a bit larger than I was originally planning, but the perfect size for my Wee Folk (applique patterns) who can easily be turned into Minnipins.


Not bad for my first cottage, but I see a few things I want to change. I'm going to move the second-floor window up a notch, and make the thatched roof a bit wider. The soft-yellow windows look nice up close, but in the scan they blend in too much with the white walls, so I might need to find a more intense yellow to create more contrast. I can't wait to finish my taxes so I can build my next cottage!

Experimental Gardening

Today was sunny and warm (mid 60's), so I planted tulips! I know we don't normally plant tulips in April here inthe US. They're supposed to be planted in the fall. I bought the bag of bulbs last fall, fully intending to plant them within a week. But the weather turned nasty earlier than usual so they didn't get planted.

I then resolved to plant them in February. Almost every February we get a week or two of beautiful, spring-like weather before winter weather returns for another 6-8 weeks. We got one week of almost-nice weather this February, but I totally forgot about the tulip bulbs. I spotted the bulbs last week and decided to try planting them soon as it quit raining and got above 45 degrees for awhile.

When I opened the bag today, I almost changed my mind. Although most of the bulbs had pale, yellowgreen shoots sprouting from them, showing that something was still alive, the bulbs themselves were really squishy. I wondered if it was worth the bother. In the spirit of "nothing ventured, nothing gained," I dumped the bulbs in an old planter, set them as upright as I could, and covered their heads with soil. They're not buried as deep as they should be, but they're certainly deeper than the forced tulip bulbs that the local grocery store was selling before Easter.

Now I get to play the waiting game to see what happens.

Bunny Baskets

Last week, I began working with the novelty Easter fabrics I bought in February. The bunnies were just too cute to pass up! After studying the fabric for several hours, I decided to go with a pieced basket block idea. I chose what's probably the simplest of all pieced basket blocks, a triangle basket with base and an appliqued handle. But instead of appliqueing a handle, I decided to fussy-cut some bunnies and fuse them to the top triangle. To hide some of the awkward cuts, I fussy-cut some eggs and fused them over the "holes" left where another bunny was originally.

For the baskets, I dug into my doll clothes stash for some trims like lace, rick rack, etc. My goal was to make each basket different in some way - no exact look-alikes! I'm pleased with how they turned out. Now I just have to decide how to set the 16 blocks I made.

Snoopy and Woodstock's Irish Jig

I have a weakness for novelty fabrics, especially the cute ones. So when I saw a St. Patrick's Day fabric featuring Snoopy and Woodstock, my favorites of the Peanuts characters, I had to get some. Fortunately for my budget, Wal-mart has great prices on the holiday fabrics. A 1-yard piece of the Snoopy fabric, a 1-yard piece of shamrock fabric (for the back and binding) and two half-yard pieces of coordinating fabrics cost me $6. (If I'd waited until after March 17, chances are the price would have been marked down 50%, but the Snoopy fabric might have sold out before then and I didn't want to chance it.)

But there's a flip side to most things in life. In this case, Wal-mart's $2/yard fabrics can have a huge range in quality, from really nice to really bad. I certainly wouldn't choose these fabrics to make an heirloom project of any kind. But they do have their uses: playing with ideas, making doll quilts and drag-around-everywhere quilts for kids and pets, and making crafts you don't expect to last a lifetime.




After fondling the fabrics for a few weeks, I began cutting strips and sewing them together and ended up with a little quilt top that looks a bit like this (oops! forgot to press it before I scanned it):


Okay, my scanner doesn't show much of it, but I wanted you to see the actual fabrics. Below is a mock-up of the quilt top using Electric Quilt software. The finished size is 24" x 28", perfect for a doll quilt or perhaps a baby-size lap quilt for tucking in a baby stroller or a car seat to have handy when the weather turns a bit chilly.

To make a quilt top like this, you will need 1 yd. focal fabric, 1/2 yd. light color fabric and 1/4 yd. medium color fabric. You will need to make 20 Uneven 9-Patch (also called Puss in the Corner) blocks, then set them with sashing and cornerstones. My Uneven 9-Patch blocks are 4" square finished size. To make one block this size (quantity needed for entire quilt in parentheses), you need:

one (20) 2.5" square focal fabric

four (80) 1.5" squares medium color fabric

four (80) 1.5" x 2.5" rectangles light color fabric

Sew pieces together using a scant 1/4" seam allowance. Press and square-up each block to measure 4.5" x 4.5".

For the sashing you will need:

(31) 1.5" x 4.5" rectangles light color fabric

(12) 1.5" x 1.5" squares focal fabric

For the borders you will need:

(2) 3" x 19.5" strips focal fabric

(2) 3" x 29.5" strips focal fabric

My quilt top is now folded, with the backing fabric and strips for the binding, waiting for good weather so I can spread it out on the patio table to sandwich the layers together.