Friday Finds

Shorter days, cooler nights means changing seasons.  Time to think about Autumn finally!  To spiff up your decor, you might check out a couple of these places.


Free projects are all over this page at  Landauerpub.com.  
From small quilts, to blocks, to appliques.....PDF projects are free to use.  Several projects from Thimbleberries, which are always so great.  Even if you are not making a seasonal project this year, you might want to grab the pattern for later.

From Bloombakecreate.com

At   Bloom bake create  I found a tutorial for what she calls hammered leaves......leaf pounding/flower pounding.    I like her idea of using a real hammer......that means I get to swipe something from the workshop when I play around with this technique.   Simple straight stitching brings out the details.  Great to use on many small projects.

From Bonjour Quilts

And a design idea......I found this at Bonjour Quilts.    Using 3 sizes of the Tossed 9 Patch block, she created a lot of visual interest for the background.  Appliqued flowers stretch from corner to corner.  While the color palette is not one I would select,  I found it interesting for  using the multiple sizes.  Done in seasonal colors....or batiks....this
could be fun to play with.

From A Few Scraps

A Few Scraps offered up a very good tutorial on joining Quilt As You Go blocks.    This is not a process that I like, yet Christina has some very good tips in her tutorial that make me think I might do this one day.  At least I pinned it for future reference.  Check out her blog for some excellent free motion lessons.....her second book was just published, too.   I like her simple direct style.







  As always, visit the links to pin from the source.  Happy stitching.

Small topper for Fall

  I don't know how the heat is where you live, but it is awful here.  Right now the heat index is 108 degrees.....that means the humidity is very high.  Too hot to get outside for photos, which I need to do.  High humidity equals foggy lens equals bad photos.  Maybe tomorrow......

   Instead I finished up a small project.  I made 3 acorn blocks for guild for next month.  Since I had fabric out, I  cut the pieces out to do one for me.     Then I added a couple more acorns, and a couple of leaves.....and corners, too!
  Perfect colors for Sir Old Man's new table!
  The corners are just a folded  4 inch square.  Once attached, I turned  back the folded diagonal edge and stitched it in place to create a curve.  Nothing like a little  satisfaction from  a quick finish project.

   I have a flimsy now of the scrappy trips......it is so heavy with all those seams.  I am glad I decided to stop and not add another row.  Photo to come next week...
   We decided to switch our travel plans and head to Michigan in about 10 days......the daughter asked for Dad's help in painting.  Giggle, giggle.....more projects!   Wonder what she has in store for me?   Have a  happy weekend....happy stitching.

Autumn's Carpet and postcards

It's peak week here for leaf viewing. So I spent the morning making fresh apple bread. I just finished the binding on a seasonal quilt called, Autumn's Carpet. I wanted to capture the effect of the colorful leaves spread across the yard. So I gathered leaves from my yard and my daughter's yard and used them for patterns for the leaves on the quilt. I had a stash of batiks that I used to create the background---using the Turning Twenty Again pattern. I just fused the leaves on and did machine applique and decorative stitches for the details. The stems are various yarns that I twisted and stitched down with a zig-zag stitch.
I machine quilted it with a bit of outline stitching and lots of swirls. It ended up about 55" by 75", a nice size lap quilt.
Over the weekend, I remembered that our guild exchange in December was to be a Christmas postcard. So I got busy and made three different ones. This time, instead of just using muslin, I created a "backside" for the postcard in my greeting card program and printed it on Printed Treasures. I used a snowflake graphic and changed the color of the snowflakes to match the front of the card. The edges were finished using Sulky thread. One more thing to cross off my to-do list!

Now to finish a sweatshirt jacket and get back to the one fabric quilt that is in pieces on the design wall. There are more ideas and designs in my head that hours in my days. Happy stitchin' to all.