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.