Look what the Mailman brought!

I won this lovely kit from Carrie at A Passion for Applique!  She hosts the challenge - Nothing But UFOs and as an incentive to get us to keep working on our UFOs monthly she has a giveaway.  In June, I won!  LOL - this would be my fifth applique project I am currently working on if I start it soon.  Maybe I'll wait to start it in August as my NewFO.  It comes with a luscious fabric for the columns between the applique that has all kinds of fancy stitches between the rows.  I love the border!  Thanks so much, Carrie!

Applique Tuesday 7/9/13

Thank you, Billie, for reminding me it's my day to post about applique.  I've just come back from babysitting for 8 hours and I'm sort of wiped out (there was swimming, bike riding, baseball and dinner plus general play with a 2 year-old).  But sure I just need a good night's sleep, and I'll be back to my go self.  I did do some applique this past week.  I hand appliqued the center of my compass (see last post) and I machine appliqued these diamond shapes on this charity quilt:

This will be another VA charity lap quilt and measures 36" by 45". This design is a widely adapted one of Ivory Spring's Watercolor Sketches.  I resized the blocks, removed the sashing, and took off the borders and added the striped design at the top.  Do you think that is changed enough?  Can see this with fussy cut centers.  I'm calling it Old Glory for the stripes and the star design that was generated from the placement of the blocks.  I'll show another version later that was easier than this to make.  I'm going to keep this design handy.

Are you appliqueing?  Have some old, new or completed project you could share? Doesn't even have to be applique - would love to see whatever you're working on.  Linky below.



And I'm linking to Connie's Free Motion Quilting by the River. Check out the goodies there, too.

Design Wall Monday 7/8/13

Here's my compass for the Love Entwined Coverlet. First one I've ever made.  And it was paper piecing, ugh - not my favorite, but I learned a good bit from making it.  First off if one folds the paper at the sewing line, making sure of the correct seam allowance is easy. If the piece you're adding is roughly a larger version of the one on the paper, it's usually the right size, but to be sure, I made an extra copy of the section and cut it up and used it to determine rectangles for each part. A trick I learned from Esther Aliu - is color one of the segments so you don't sew the wrong piece to the wrong place. And - if you do them assembly style, it doesn't seem like such a chore to make 8 segments (cuz most paper pieced blocks are more than one segment - LOL).  Phew! I got through the sewing with only one seam to rip. Oh and the center is appliqued. Except for the background, this will be a big scrappy quilt. Now for the ring around it.

I'm linking to Judy's Patchwork Times, Esther's Wow, and Lyn's BOMs Away  as this is part of a 18 month BOM.  What are you up to?