Needle Keep

In January 2013, I started my first Sue Spargo BOM. I was new to Sue's wool appliqué stitching and I decided to make a test block using wool from my stash. Of course, I then had a finished 6 1/2" bird block which I decided to use as the front of a small needle keep. My original needle keep has served me well these last 18 months but as Sue introduced a wider variety of needles, my original needle keep did not have enough labeled spaces for the needles. I designed my new needle keep with 4 wool pages which would allow spaces for 24 different types of needles plus I added two zippered vinyl pockets to hold thimbles and needle threaders. I did a wool appliqué flower on the front. The needle keep is 8 1/2" high and 7 1/2" wide.

African Tulip tote

I finished the African tulip tote today. The African Tulip tote was designed by Sue Spargo and is 21" wide, 16" in length and 5" deep. The embellished wool appliqué front gave me a chance to learn some new embellishing stitches and to use some different embellishing threads. Valdani pearl cotton, Thread Gathers silken pearl, silken chenille, and sea grass are some of the embellishing threads I used. Sue's pattern was constructed using batting but I decided to use Soft and Stable to give the tote more body. I also wanted a zipper closure and I used instructions from a by annie tote pattern.

Sliced Nine Patch Quilt

I love a challenge. Last week I decided to make a queen size quilt for a friend. I needed a fast and easy quilt and I picked The Right Slice quilt published in Quiltmaker Magazine, November/December 2013. The quilt in the magazine was constructed using assorted red and green 5 inch squares. I decided to make my quilt using just 3 batik fabrics, 2 batiks for the nine patch blocks and the remaining batik was inserted into the slashed nice patch blocks. The queen size quilt requires 36 blocks. I want to finished the quilt top by Tuesday so I can take the top to be quilted by Jessica Jones Gamez. It is going to be close, but I think I will finish the quilt top by Tuesday afternoon. I now have 24 blocks finished and sewn together, plus I have the remaining 12 blocks started. I took a picture of part of the quilt hanging on my design wall.

110 pillowcases

I have sewn another 40 pillowcases and they have been delivered to 35th Avenue Sew and Vac, they collect pillowcases for Back to School Clothing Drive. I made a total of 110 pillowcases in the month of June, it certainly was a great feeling to clear out fabric from my stash. I will admit that sewing the last 20 pillowcases was just a bit of a chore, but I wanted to really wanted to see if I could make at least 100 pillowcases.

Hope everyone is have a great 4th of July holiday weekend, although it seems as if most of the United States will be having rain. Phoenix had dust and thunderstorms yesterday, some local fireworks displays were cancelled. It is very overcast and humid today, thunderstorms are also predicted, hopefully we will get some rain too.