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Saturday, December 30, 2017
a year in review: 2017 was a good year!
Saturday, December 23, 2017
a cookie mat for Santa and a Merry Christmas
Monday, December 18, 2017
a warm scarf, teenager approved!
Saturday, December 16, 2017
a more or less traditional Christmas table topper
Here is my latest version of the hexagonal table topper
in a more traditional Christmas color way,
with red and green and a beautiful Liberty of London print.
And of course, for the background I used some linen,
it goes so well with the Liberty of London!
The pattern is from the book "Quilt petite" by Sedef Imer
And unlike my previous one, the red and aqua one:
there are no short cuts: no raw edges, no machine appliqued!
I did use some interfacing to make all the leaves,
much neater and accurate for me
than the traditional needle turn under.
I drew all the leaves on the interfacing
(I used iron on, it works great, just do not use an iron until the end!)
and stitched all of them at once, easier than one at a time.
it also uses less fabric as they can be quite close,
1/2 " apart is quite enough.
Then I cut around all the leaves, made a cut into the interfacing
and flipped the leaves right side out.
I pushed out the edges with a little stick,
rolling the edges until smooth, but no ironing,
since my iron on interfacing is on the outside...
and finally I organized them on the linen.
Then it was the perfect time to iron everything
as it sticked a little to the background.
I still had to pin the petals in place
while I hand appliqued all of them....
yep it took a while!
I matched the thread to the color of the petal.
After that I did some simple machine quilting around the shapes.
keeping the same pattern on the linen.
It has a lot more dimension and "thickness" than the red and aqua one.
I think it looks especially good with my flowers from Costco...
Happy sewing!
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
a new tradition: homemade gingerbread houses
I had been seeing a lot of gingerbread houses all over instagram
and the blogosphere, especially these by Miss Mustard Seed.
So Miss C and I decided to give a try.
And here is the result of our first efforts:
Not too bad, but I am not going to give up my day job!
As I mentioned earlier this week,
during the tree reveal,
Lou was very interested in the houses!
She was even willing to stand still for pics,
just so she could keep her eyes on them...
They do look good under the tree lights,
but it is not a safe place for them!