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".