Quilt for Sue Spargo

November 2015, Sue was diagnosed with breast cancer and for the last 12 months has courageously fought this disease. On May 18, 2016, Sue's daughter Aimee Spargo, sent a request to Sue Spargo stitchers to make a 4-1/2" square embellished WOOL block to be incorporate into an inspirational quilt for her Mom. Stitchers from all over the world responded to this request by stitching 394 blocks which Mary, Aimee and Kelly sewed together into an amazing quilt. The quilt was presented to Sue on October 14, 2016.



This is the block I made


My courage block in the quilt



This October, Sue joined with BrightPink and pledged 20% from every pack of her Special Edition Breast Cancer Awareness Thread Packs. BrightPink is a national non-profit focused on prevention and early detection of breast and ovarian cancer in young women. The organization’s mission is to save women’s lives from breast and ovarian cancer by empowering them to live proactively at a young age. Bright Pink’s innovative programs educate and equip young women to assess their risk for breast and ovarian cancer, reduce their risk, and detect these diseases at early, non life-threatening stages.

Hocus Pocus

Sometimes it pays not to be the fastest student in a machine embroidery class. In January, I took a machine embroidery class with Claudia Dinnell of Claudia's Creations. I stayed after the end of the class so I could finish my Christmas "Boot'iful Bouquets. Claudia had some unfinished class project that she want to give away and I was lucky enough to get one of Claudia's halloween quilt.

My biggest challenge was sewing binding for an angle greater than 90 degrees. I did a google search and found a YouTube video by Marci Baker which had excellent directions for mitered binding angles, greater than 90 degrees.

Jessica Jones Gamez, Jessica Quilting Studio, did the beautiful machine quilting. The finished quilt is 18" by 54".

Beads of Courage Bags

I have not been sewing much lately, I have been doing a lot of embellished wool appliqué. After Labor Day, I realized I only had 4 more months to make Beads of Courage bags for my 2016 donation.

Today, I finished 25 bags. My 2016 donation goal is 120 bags, so I have quite a few more bags to finish. A lot of the bags were made with dot fabric which was left over from making my sewquilt.com quilt in 2005 which used well over 60 different dot fabrics.


Beads of Courage was developed by Jean Baruch while working on her PHD in Nursing at the University of Arizona. She piloted the program at Phoenix Children's Hospital in February 2003. Every year, Beads of Courage provides assistance to more than 60,000 sick children coping with serious and life-threatening illnesses, and their families in over 250 children's hospitals throughout the United States, and in six additional countries.

I will be donating all Beads of Courage bag to Phoenix Children's Hospital, in memory of Kendall Jansen, a granddaughter of a good friend.

Sunflower Cowboy Boot

Sunflower Cowboy Boot is now quilted and bound. Beautiful machine quilting was done by Jessica Jones Gamez. Finished quilt is 20" x 25".


"Boot"iful Bouquets are machine embroidery designs by Claudia Dinnell. Claudia has an unique method for preparing fabric before doing the embroidery. The background fabric is stabilized with Shape Flex SF101 by Pellon, then a polymesh cutaway stabilizer is sprayed with Webbond by Mettler to adhere it to the back of the background fabric. After the background fabric is hooped, a piece of tear-away stabilizer is floated under the embroidery design. Hooping is easier with the polymesh stabilizer since it is softer and more flexible than medium weight tear-away stabilizer.

New York Garden Trellis

What to do with all the blue and yellow fabrics after making a traditional kaleidoscope king size quilt in 2013. The quilt has 144 7” blocks using over 50 different blue and yellow fabrics so I really had a lot of fabric left over.



Pam, my cousin who lives near Batavia New York, lives in a house built circa 1840. In 2015, she finally did a full remodel of the second floor so she now has beautiful new master bedroom with new closets, windows, flooring and the room is painted a lovely yellow with white baseboards. Yes, a blue and yellow quilt would be just the what this room needs.



New York Garden Trellis has 195 4 1/2" blocks sashed with white on white fabric with blue cornerstones. I did have to buy more fabric for the back but the rest of the fabric did come from my stash. The finished quilt is 82" x 92" and was machine quilted by Jessica Jones Gamez. I used Quilter's Dream Wool batting which is now my favorite batting to use in bed quilt. I love that Quilter's Dream Wool batt can washed and dried in a dryer.

Christmas is for Cowboys

It is summer in Phoenix, I was thinking about the cooler weather to come in December while I was binding the Christmas is for Cowboys quilt. I actually do not mind summers in Phoenix but I am thankful for air conditioning.


I took a machine embroidery class with Claudia Dinnell of Claudia's Creations in January. Claudia designed a new rework style design for machine embroidery call "Boot"iful Bouquets which has 3 boot types and 3 different bouquets to choose from, "Boot"iful Bouquets is the ultimate pick and chose machine embroidery design. The boot types are a cowboy boot, an ice skate or a Victorian boot and the bouquets choices are toys, sunflower or instruments. I used my Bernina 790 and the maxi hoop to complete the embroidery. The maxi hoop has a 8 1/4" x 15 3/4" embroidery field which reduced the number of necessary re-hoopings. Claudia has an excellent method for perfect placement and alignment so everything lined up perfectly. I was able to complete the Christmas boot with only one re-hoop.

I will be donating this quilt to Quilt for a Cause, their mission : To use the art and business of quilting to pursue advances in breast and/or gynecologic cancers by raising funds for research, by continuing the education of medical professionals, and by supporting clinical organizations that raise awareness, offer detection and provide treatment for all women.

Jessica Jones Gamez did the beautiful machine quilting. The quilt is 21 1/2" x 25".

Evolution of a needle case

January 2013, I started my first Sue Spargo BOM. I was new to wool appliqué, especially embellished wool appliqué. I decided to make a Bird Dance test block before I actually used the wool in the first BOM package. While stitching the first 3 Bird Dance block, I realized I was using quite a few different needles and I needed a needle case.


I used the my test Bird Dance block for the front of the needle case. The case is 6" x 6", small but served me well for about a year. As I began my second Sue Spargo BOM in 2014, I began thinking of making another needle case which was larger and had more pages for the additional needles I was using to do my wool appliqué.



My second needle case is 7 1/2" x 8 1/2", plus had some zipper pockets and 4 pages for needles. I used this needle case for 2 years and I was quite happy with my design but there were some features that I wanted to change. In June, Sue Spargo published Folk-Tails which had a wool appliqué Sue designed for a Folk-Tails workbox. Also, in June, Sue introduced an elephant pincushion pattern. My mind is now whirring thinking about the elephant wool appliqués.


I used some design elements from Folk-Tails, the workbox and pincushion patterns for my new needle case. The elephant appliqué is a smaller version of the workbox elephant, the green fabric is a design element from the pincushion, the cloud is a design from Folk-Tails, the back is fabric Sue used for the back of the Folk-Tails quilt. The front of the needle case is 8" x 8".

These are pictures of the inside of the needle case. I printed the needle names and then used Soft Fuse to attach the names to the wool pages.

Tropical Forest

Another quilt made from my stash!

It is always satisfying to finish a binding a quilt. It is doubly satisfying to finish a quilt that is made completely from fabric in my stash! I found an opened Bali Pop, a collection of 40 different 2.5" x 44" strips of batik fabric from Hoffman Fabrics. A Bali Pop is basically a batik fabric version of a jelly roll. I cut a few more batik strips from fabric in my stash and made a quilt. I again made the Andouille Quilt from the book Jelly Roll Jambalaya Quilts by Jean Ann Wright. Jessica Jones Gamez did the machine quilting with a leaf design. I named the quilt, Tropical Forest, because of the quilting motif and the colors of the quilt. The finished quilt is 52" x 67"

Elephant bag

Oh so cute! An elephant felt notions bag, handmade in Nepal, which I purchased from Sue Spargo during her 4 day Folk-Tails celebration.

Sue suggested embellishing the bag. Marcie likes hearts and the color pink so I used pink and magenta thread for the chain stitching. BTW, Marcie was surprised and thrilled when I gave her the bag. The bag is about 5 1/2" x 8 1/2".

Flower Pot

120 piano keys later, I finished the border for my newest wool appliqué quilt.


This quilt is just one block from Kim McLean's appliqué quilt called Flower Pot, the block I used is on the right side of the quilt. Kim's quilt is huge, 78" X 90" and the individual blocks are quilt large. I took the Kim's original pattern to a printing shop to reduce the block size to 75% of the original size. The interior block 15" X 35".

Kim McLean's Flower Pot quilt

My quilt is a combination of wool and cotton fabrics. I used Cherrywood Hand Dyed fabric for the background, Kaffe Fassett fabrics for the piano key border and some of the appliqué shapes. I used a variety of embellishing threads, silken pearl, sashiko threads, razzle thread by Wonderfil and Oriental Linen thread. I used Painter's single loop embellishment on the lower left turquoise shape which I must admit was quilt a challenge to appliqué.

The quilt is about 23" X 43".

Folk-Tails

Today, Sue Spargo has started a 4 day countdown to the release of her new book, Folk-Tails. Today, we are allowed to share pictures of our completed Folk-Tails 2015 BOM quilts.

This is my Folk-Tails quilt top, it measures about 37" by 43". My quilt is awaiting machine quilting by Jessica Jones Gamez, I can hardly wait to get it back.
Sue picked Alexander Henry fabric for the backing which is just perfect for the quilt's theme.

VW - Tootin' Along

I know better, I should never look at Sue Spargo's web site on Friday afternoon. Every Friday afternoon, Sue sends out her newsletter and she always seems to showcase a new patterns, fabrics or threads. A few weeks ago, Sue published a new pattern called Tootin' Along and of course I loved the quilt as did Marcie.



I immediately decided to change the generic blue cars to VW Bugs since I have long been a VW bug aficionado! Today, I drew a VW bug and decided I really should test the design before going ahead with appliquéing the VW bugs to the quilt. This block is about 4" by 6".

Today, I also prepared the background for my quilt. I decided to use a cotton fabric instead of wool for my road. There is about 120" of road that I must appliqué before I can start preparing all the wool VW, houses and trees. The finished quilt will be about 24" by 37".

Serendipity Quilt top

Honestly, I have had problems completing this quilt, I was so dissatisfied with Erica Kaprow's Summertime sampler pattern. I felt the blocks were poorly designed and I was struggling to redraw the blocks. In March, I had 9 blocks completed and managed to complete 3 more blocks. A few weeks ago, I decided to get serious about trying to complete this quilt. Bottom line, I hated any arrangement of the 12 blocks on my design wall.

Now my focus became trying to make lemonade out of lemons. I decided that I only liked 6 of the completed blocks, so I decided use only 6 blocks in my quilt. 6 blocks would be a small quilt so added some sashing to the blocks.


I appliquéd some fabric rectangles to the wool border, then I stitched around each rectangle with size 8 pearl cotton. The quilt top is 28" by 38".

These are the 6 blocks which I decided not to use in the quilt.

Marcie's Bunny and Birds

Patiently waiting 10 months for a quilt to be machine quilted is hard to do but so worth the wait. Jessica Jones Gamez did the gorgeous quilting my wool quilt. She used wool and cotton batting which gives the appliqué a trapunto effect.


The wool appliqué were designed by Bonnie Sullivan. I added some embellishing stitches, notably the buttonhole scallops on the baby chick wings and bullion knots for the bird legs. The piano key border was made with 100% Italian linen fabric I purchased at the 2014 Houston Quilt Festival.

The back of the quilt is 100% linen fabric which I purchased from Sue Spargo a few years ago. Using linen on the back, definitely made the machine quilting more challenging for Jessica.


I will be giving this quilt to my daughter Marcie. The quilt is 31" by 37".

Allium Spool Sac

It has been months in the making because I chose not to follow the pattern exactly. The Allium Spool Sac was designed by Sue Spargo specifically to store Eleganza, Razzle and Dazzle threads with the special vinyl zippered pockets.




The wool appliqué front is about 14" by 15", the opened bag is 14" by 36". The interior base has 4" wide soft pile velcro so the hook velcro on the vinyl zippered pockets can attach to the base. The fabric is Birds & The Bees by tamarakate for Michael Miller, which perfectly compliments the wool appliqué. I used Incomparable Buttons on both upper bands. Incomparable Buttons are handmade by women in South Africa and are fully washable.



I wanted to use this new bag to carry all the threads used in Sue Spargo's 2016 BOM so I needed to design and sew a special vinyl zippered pocket insert which would hold the larger Genziana Wool thread spools. The new pocket insert is 13" by 28" with four sets of zippered gusseted pockets. I sewed the hook velcro to center vertical area and I sewed the soft pile velcro on the backside of the insert so I could attach one of Sue's vinyl zippered pocket to hold the Eleganza, Razzle and Dazzle threads.

Serendipity update

Oh my goodness, it is has been over 6 months since I have posted about my progress on my serendipity quilt. I started working on multiple blocks because I was having some creative indecision on selecting embellishing stitches and wool colors. I am not thrilled with some of my color decisions but truthfully, I just want to finish this quilt and move on to other projects. I now have 9 out of 12 blocks finished.

As my serendipity blocks where up on my design wall, I decided to make some changes to the previously posted fish block. I added yellow wool under the angel fish eye to make the eye more defined. I also sewed eyes on the magenta fish and the clown fish.

Black and White and Read All Over

I have a personal rule, I don't buy fabric without a plan to use the fabric in the immediate future. In other words, I don't want to buy fabric to add to my stash. In October, I went Modern Quilting just to check out the newest quilt store in Phoenix. I saw a newspaper fabric that I just loved but I really did not have any plan for using this fabric. I walked around the store but I kept going back to the newspaper fabric so I looked at books for a quilt idea. I found the book, Jelly Roll Jambalaya Quilts by Jean Ann Wright and I liked one quilt called Andouille. So with a quilt in mind, I purchased a jelly roll (a first for me) and enough newsprint fabric to use for the quilt back.


The fabric is modern background paper by zen chic for Moda. As I am sewing the quilt, I am remembering the old riddle - What is black and white and read all over? The answer is a newspaper because of the identical pronunciation of read and red. Wow, I now have a name for my new quilt, Black and White and Read All Over and an idea for the machine quilting. Jessica Jones Gamez did the beautiful machine quilting with red thread.

I used a striped fabric for the binding which I cut on the bias. The quilt is 62" by 47".

Sunflower Cowboy boot

Yesterday, I finished another boot at Claudia Dinnell's "Boot"iful Bouquets class. I had so much fun and my Bernina 790 performed like a champ. My second boot was again a cowboy boot but I made a blue boot with grey trim, choosing brighter hues than I used on the first cowboy boot. The second boot has a sunflower bouquet instead of the Christmas toys.

I love the Maxi hoop which I can use on my Bernina 790 because of the large embroidery area. The entire boot was embroidered in one hooping and the sunflower bouquet only required one hooping too. The embroidery time for just the sunflower bouquet was 180 minutes. The background fabric is stabilized with Shape Flex SF101 by Pellon. Then a polymesh cutaway stabilizer was sprayed with Webbond by Mettler to adhere it to the back of the background fabric. After the background fabric was hooped, a piece of tear-away stabilizer was floated. Hooping is easier with the polymesh stabilizer since it is softer and more flexible than medium weight tear-away stabilizer. This stabilizing procedure was a new technique for me.


This week, I need to add borders to the finished embroidered centers. One of the best parts of these 2 quilts, all the fabric and threads were in my stash.

Christmas Cowboy Boot

What a fun day!  I took a machine embroidery class with Claudia Dinnell of Claudia's Creations.  Actually, it is a 2 day class so I get to have fun tomorrow too.  Claudia designed a new rework style design for machine embroidery call "Boot'iful Bouquets.   There are 3 boot types and 3 different bouquets to choose from, "Boot"iful Bouquets is  the ultimate pick and chose machine embroidery design. The boot types were a cowboy boot, an ice skate or a Victorian boot and the bouquets choices were toys, sunflower or instruments.  


I choose the cowboy boot and filled it with a christmas toy bouquet.  Currently, the block is about 15" by 20”. 

Bernina Stitch Designer

My Bernina 790 has a very cool feature called Stitch Designer. Today, I took a class at Bernina Connection where I was able to explore a few of the Stitch Designer features. The Stitch Designer allowed me to create stitches by drawing right on the machine touch screen.

Today, I learned how to alter existing stitches by adding additional elements or move stitch points to create a new stitch. I was able to write my name on the touch screen and stitch it out. The circles were also drawn on the touch screen and by removing the 9 mm restraint, I was able to stitch the circles using the Sideways Motions foot. The larger circles design is almost 2 inches wide. I was able to alter stitch #1329, a blanket stitch, to have a slanted appearance which really could be a nice edge stitch on a ribbon edge.