Come on down to my new blog and join me on my latest fabric adventures, including the following video tutorial for making reusable fabric coffee cup sleeves.

One week into the new year and my 2010 Dear Diary quilt is off to a great start! Come on down to my new blog and take a peek at the first 7 blocks: dear diary 2010: week 1

Come on down to my new blog and see the beaded African embroidery I've been working on lately!

Come visit me at my new blog. I'm featured in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks from today's top designers. See my block and enter for your chance to win a copy of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks.

Last month I very nearly ripped all my hand quilting out of this quilt to start over with machine quilting. I'm glad I didn't though, because now I know exactly how I'm going to finish the hand quilting in the solid yellow bars. =(^_^)=

Fusible applique is quick and fun. Here are a few cutting tips to make it easier:

• Even if you like a bit of fraying, smooth-cut edges are still important. You don't want it to look as if your new puppy chewed up your appliques, so make sure you have a good, comfortable, sharp pair of scissors, not too large and not too small. It doesn't have to be expensive, just sharp.
• Cut slowly and carefully, it's not a race.

•  Cut smart. Notice the differences between the two appliques above. The red swirl is actually only cut once ...

I don't know about you, but somehow we ended up with literally mountains of candy after Halloween was all said and done. That got me thinking about candy quilt blocks ... maybe some orange and black taffy would look nice.

I always like to consider the shapes of the designs I choose. Chocolate bars are delicious, but their shape is slightly on the boring side. Unless of course, you have some fantastic fabric to spice up their wrappers!

Taffy makers come up with all kinds of neat designs for their candies, and even the wrapper itself adds a great deal ...

With the holidays as well as the flu season fast approaching, the Red Cross needs a steady supply of blood donations to meet the increased need. You probably know that blood donors get free juice and cookies, and that just one donation can save up to three lives, but you most likely did not know that you also get a free supply of great quilting thimbles.

Now I have tried many different kinds of thimbles in my quilting career: closed, open, metal, leather, ... and the list goes on. But for me, none can beat a piece of the simple bandage ...

What could be more fun for an autumn quilt design than a peck of pumpkins?
Rather than centering your pumpkins in the middle of the block, try placing your pumpkins off center and crop off an edge or two for a creative composition.
For extra personality, give your pumpkin a jack-o-lantern's face if you wish.
Just remember: like flower petals, no two pumpkins are exactly alike so don't worry too much about making each pumpkin the same. (see my September 29 ...

I almost forgot to post my Fabric Friday today. Continuing with the leaf theme, here's my sun-painted silk. I used Pébéo Setacolor Transparent on China silk, with real leaves and little round pasta for the designs. Yes, it really is that pink. Not very autumnal but it makes a great scarf nonetheless.

Setacolor is a fantastic fabric paint. I love their colors and the silk comes out very soft. Check out the Pébéo website to find out more about Setacolor and how to use it for sun painting.

I've heard that you can sun paint inside with a ...

Here's an autumn leaf UFO from fall 2006. Or maybe those are autumn flowers, I can't remember. It's my own original design so it can be anything I want it to be.

Either way, the top is nearly complete. The hand-dyed cotton petals are all machine appliqued and the solid wool felt petals are hand appliqued and beaded. I still need to finish the applique on a few of the wool petals. Then I'm going to do some sashiko-style hand quilting in the background.

It's fun and easy to make leaf patterns for applique. Just gather a collection of interesting leaves. They don't even have to be in autumn colors, just find some shapes that you like. When you're choosing fabric for your leaves, they can be any colors you want.

Lay the leaves down on a computer scanner or photocopy machine and print them out. If they're not the right size you can enlarge or reduce them. This is a scan of some gingko leaves I collected.
If you're in a hurry you can use the printout just ...

Today's featured fabric is Under the influence of fabric by Quilt Country, Sara Tuttle & Sandy Brawner. What a great print and a great title! Guilty as charged.
This would make a great border for a quilt made of spool blocks (Read my post, Muse Monday: Inspired by Thread). It would be fun to try to practice free-motion machine quilting on as well.
Thanks for all your wonderful suggestions on what to do with my frog fabric. I'm loving all your creative ideas!

I've finished the machine quilting on my Candy Hearts Baskets quilt. Can you believe it? This quilt is now ready for binding. Just think, on Sunday it wasn't even basted yet. Here's how the blocks turned out.

And I'm nearly done with my African Folklore Embroidery. Time to start dreaming of what I want to do with it when the embroidery is finished. I already have a few ideas simmering.
Stay tuned to see what happens next! <:3)~

Sometimes the hardest thing about free-motion quilting is simply getting started.

This week I'm quilting my Candy Hearts Baskets from February 2007. After quilting in the ditch over the seam lines with invisible thread I free-motioned the borders before tackling the appliqued blocks. Heart vines seemed appropriate for this heart-themed quilt so that's what I went with, plus a twisting ribbon in the narrow vertical yellow border as well as to fill the extra space in the wider horizontal yellow border. I enhanced the quilted lines at right to give you a better idea of what it looks ...

For this week's inspiration try taking a treasured memory or two and incorporate them into a quilt. This cool cat block is made from my family's old clothes and sports my daughter's baby sunglasses for embellishment. Whether you literally sew the "memories" onto your quilt or use them as the inspiration for a quilt made from new materials, you're sure to end up with something special!

Click here for more about this quilt.

Click here for more "memory" quilts.

Today's fabric comes to you from my stash, a cotton denim weave from 1997. These fabulous frogs are so much fun! I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this fabric. Any suggestions?

Here's a knitted purse I've been working on. This is two skeins of hand-dyed self-striping wool yarn (Noro Kureyon) before the felting, a bit over 17" x 14". It was so much fun to knit, seeing the different color stripes appear like magic.