Hello Everyone! As some of you know, Craftsy closed the shops of many pattern designers and I was one of them. This past week I have been busy setting up an Esty shop and I wanted to let you know that it is now open. It’s called BrendasQuiltingNook. Even though I only have a few patterns, I do plan to add more in the future.
I’m sure you recognize this as my “Swell” quilt. I finally came up with a new name, “Holly-Daze”, with the help of my husband and daughter. You can read more about the quilt here. Even though the quilt is made with the Swell Christmas fabric by Urban Chiks for Moda, it would look great in any color schematic.
Here it is in Portsmouth by Minick and Simpson for Moda. After seeing it mocked up in these fabrics, I want to make it all over again!
The quilt is 66 1/2″ x 66 1/2″ and is layer cake (10″ square) friendly. You will need a little extra yardage for the background if you don’t have at least 13 light fabrics in the pack. I currently have this listed as a PDF download only, but if there is enough interest in a paper pattern, I can get the pattern printed.
Please visit my Etsy shop and take a look around. I am offering all of my patterns at 20% off through January 20. Use coupon code NEW20.
Thanks for stopping by today and have a great week.
Hello Everyone! Today I’d like to share my plans and goals for 2019. Part of setting new goals is looking back to see how I did last year.
I didn’t do too bad on last year’s UFO list. Not everything was finished, but progress was made on about 70% of my list.
One of my finishes from the UFO list was Jake’s quilt. This took several years to make and I worked on it on and off until it was finished.
Besides the UFO list, I also made a Want to Do list.
I think I started with the first 21 items on the list, then added to it as the year went on. There are still things on the list that I would like to do, but I’m trying to narrow the list this year to a few things that I really want to do because I know new things will be popping up.
Swoon Block – WIP
So for this year, I’ve created two lists. One for UFOs, projects that haven’t been worked on in at least 6 months, and a WIPs list, projects that I’ve been working on consistently. I’ve also written down what stage each project is in.
On Point Quilt UFO
For example, this On Point quilt top is finished, I just need to make the backing. I guess I never took a picture of the finished quilt top, but I hope you see the finished quilt later this year.
After writing down the UFOs and WIPs, I made a To Do List.
I know I will be working on more than these things, but I’ve written down things that have to be done or I really want to do this year. Another project that’s not on the list above (but will be added) is a guild project I’ll be moderating. It’s a challenge to use your stash and we’ll be using Diane D. Knott’s Sew Your Stash Quilt Along as the project.
Cabin Quilt Test Block
This year, I’m also designing two collections for Jacquelynne Steves’ The Art of Home Club. I plan to cut the fabric this week for the Cabin Quilt and am working on the main embroidery design.
A big event for us this year will be our daughter’s graduation from college. Besides graduation, we are turning it into a beach vacation with family. That should be a fun and exciting time.
So these are my plans. Do you make plans at the beginning of the year and do you make as many lists as I do? I do like my lists. I hope you have a great week and thanks for stopping by.
Hello Everyone! I hope you’ve had a good start to the new year! Mine has been a busy one. I’ve spent most of my quilting time this past week cleaning off the ping pong table that I quilt and sew on.
The front half is usually covered with project baskets and anything else that needs a temporary home. I put away all the fabric and quilts that were laying on it, then went through some of my storage areas and found places to put away most of my projects. I hope I can keep it like this, at least for a little while!
I had a great 2018. I taught my first quilting workshop on Machine Applique and designed my first pattern collection for Jacquelynne Steves’ The Art if Home Club. We spent a week on the Central Coast of California and had some great camping trips. I also spent a lot of time quilting and making many beautiful things. Today I would like to share my top three favorite quilts, minis and projects from 2018.
Favorite Quilts
1. The Swell Quilt, which I will rename, is my favorite finish. I have a pattern half written and hope to make it available by next weekend.
2. This is Star Voyage, a paper pieced wall hanging. I had lots of fun making and quilting this one.
3. There is just something I love about the Bike Quilt that I made for my friend Lydia! Not sure if it’s the pattern, colors or both.
Mini Quilts
It’s hard to just pick three minis from the year. I love them all, but I do have a few that really are my favorites.
1. Flower Patch Mini using Pepper and Flax fabric. This one is my favorite for the year. I love this fabric!
3. It was hard to chose just three, so I’m choosing four minis! I designed this Heart Mini and love the fabrics in this one, too.
4. And the final mini is Be My Neighbor Mini. Part of what I love about this mini is the combination of fabrics from Sherri and Chelsi, Corey Yoder and Fig Tree. Do you see a theme about the minis? Even though I like all the patterns, it’s usually the fabrics that I enjoy the most.
Other Projects
This category includes anything besides quilts.
1. I really like my Stag Cross-stitch piece. I haven’t fully completed a cross-stitch project in years, so this was fun to do and I love the way it’s finished.
2. I really enjoyed designing my first collection for The Art of Home Club. This is the wall-hanging and pillow from the Needles Collection.
3. My Quilt Journal Cover. I enjoyed stitching the embroidery design by Jenny then using it on the cover.
I’m looking forward to another great year in 2019. Thanks for joining me on this journey and I hope you continue to check in as I start my fourth year of writing about my projects and travels. I will be back shortly with some of my plans for 2019.
Hello and Happy New Year! It’s always exciting to start a new year with new plans. The Christmas decorations are put away, the house is back in order and the sewing room is in the process of a good clean up. Even though most of my December was spent quilting, I did make a few small gifts which was the December theme for the Minis and More Parade hosted by Michele and Sherri.
In mid December, my daughter and I were talking and she mentioned that she needed a new pencil case. Hers was too small to hold all her pens and pencils for her drawings. Well, I had just watched a few YouTube videos on making vinyl cross-stitch project bags. The first one was by Making Life Count and the second one by Calico, changed the same bag up a little bit. I used the tutorials and made a few changes of my own to the bag.
These are a smaller version of the bags at 9″ x 7″, perfect for her pens. I couldn’t decide on which fabric to use, so I made two. My daughter was very happy with the bags. One of the first things on my list of new projects for the new year will be to make several of these bags for me. Besides using them for cross-stitch, I think they will be great for embroidery projects.
For our December Guild meeting, we had an ornament/mug rug exchange. I had the Gail Pan embroidery from “Christmas Patchwork Loves Embroidery” already finished and the hexies in the mug rug made. I just needed to make them into a finished project. For the hexies, I hand stitched them together, then used a small zigzag stitch to stitch it to the background, batting, and backing for a quilting stitch. I’ve had this fabric for a long time and only have pieces of it left. I wonder if I have enough to make a mug rug for me? Very appropriate for a winter afternoon tea.
Moda Blockheads 2017, almost finished quilting
I am still in the process of going through my WIPs and UFOs (things I haven’t worked on in a least 6 months) as I’m cleaning my sewing room. I am making a list and then I want to prioritize them. This will work for the first few weeks of the year until something new comes a long! It’s not so much new patterns, but new fabric that I’m drawn to. I’ll be back in a few days with a wrap-up of some of my favorites from 2018 and plans for the new year.
I hope you all have a great and productive start to 2019. Thanks for stopping by.
Hello Everyone! I hope you are enjoying this holiday season. We had a fun, but quick trip to Virginia over Christmas to visit my father-in-law and my parents. It was the first time we’ve made the trip at Christmas time in over 3 years. My son and daughter went with us and we had a great time.
First up, a little business. Some of you may already know this, but Craftsy has closed a lot of designer shops and mine is one of them. If you feel compelled to buy a pattern from me in the next few weeks, you can still get paper patterns here. I’m hoping to have an Etsy shop opened in mid January with a new pattern for my Swell quilt, with a new name.
Our trip started in Williamsburg for a few days. Christmas is a beautiful time of year to be there.
We went to the Colonial District on Christmas Eve morning and did a little shopping and walked the Duke of Gloucester Street or the DOG. It was a cool but beautiful day.
I love to look at all the natural decorations on the houses and buildings. This was one of my favorites this year. The first time we spent Christmas in Williamsburg, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and I took a walking tour and learned all about making of the wreaths and the different materials that are used.
After lunch and a drive to Jamestown, we returned to Colonial Williamsburg late in the afternoon to get a Gingercake (which they were out of) and to watch the Christmas Firing of the Guns. It was a beautiful evening! Click the links under the pictures to read more about each place.
It’s fun to watch them load and fire the canon and muskets.
After the guns fired, we were treated to the Fifes and Drums. In the past, there was a whole Christmas Eve program with carols and then the lighting of the tree. I think the last couple of years, they’ve done all that a few days earlier.
On our way to dinner, we drove by The Inn. It was beautifully lit up, a nice way to end to our evening.
We spent a nice Christmas morning with my father-in-law, then drove to Fredericksburg to see my parents and two sisters. We had a nice visit with them, too. We did our usual tour of downtown Fredericksburg with the kids and my sister and brother-in-law. It’s always fun to see if there are any new treasures in the shops.
I plan on spending the next few days taking down Christmas decorations and cleaning my sewing room. I haven’t touched my sewing machine in two weeks and am ready to finish quilting the Winterville quilt.
I hope you all have a great weekend. Thanks for stopping by.
Hello Everyone! I’m back to share a cross-stitch finish with you today.
I combined two ornaments by Lucie Heaton from the Just Cross Stitch 2018 Ornament Issue to make this small Christmas decoration.
These are the original ornaments from the magazine.
I added a few extra trees for continuity. I stitched on a piece of 28 ct Wichelt Stony Point fabric and used Aurifloss thread. This was the first time to use the Aurifloss for cross-stitch. I liked it, but did have to use three threads to get the coverage I wanted. So I used 3 over 2. I guess there is a lingo amongst cross-stitchers that I’ve been learning from watching Flosstube videos on YouTube.
There is a video tutorial on Vonna’s site and was very helpful. I like this finish for small projects and I think it will also work for embroidered pieces.
The backing fabric is Holiday Frost from Jan Shade Beach for Henry Glass. I’ve had it for several years and I used it for the Star Bright mini quilt in the background. I will definitely be using this technique again.
We had our guild Christmas dinner last Monday and I won several things. The first is this table center piece. Rose, the party organizer, made all of these.
Isn’t it pretty? I have it sitting on my table in my sewing room where I can look at it. I won’t take the fabric out until after Christmas!
I also won this awesome basket of goodies for winning one of the games we played. I’ve been in the guild for 3 years and these are only the second items I’ve won and they give out 4 or 5 things at each meeting.
This is the fabric in the basket. Look how well the fat quarter bundle matches the mini. I’ll enjoy using all of the goodies. Thank you Rose for organizing the party and putting together all these wonderful packages.
This will be my last post before Christmas. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful time with friends and family! Be safe if you are traveling. Thanks for stopping by.
Hello Everyone! Are you as busy as I’ve been? I haven’t touched my sewing machine since last Saturday, almost a week now! My daughter has been home and between dentist appointments and shopping, I’ve been out almost every day. In my last post, I shared I was hoping to finish the Winterville quilt before my guild meeting on Monday. I spent a lot of time last week quilting, and by Saturday, I knew I wasn’t going to finish. I did share some progress shots on Instagram of the quilting. I probably have about two more days of quilting to do and so I will finish it after Christmas.
I do have my Swell quilt to share today. I’ve had it finished for over a week, but had to wait for a sunny day to take pictures.
I love this quilt! The fabric is very vintage looking with the colors and the Santa’s. I used a layer cake of Swell fabric by Urban Chiks for Moda to make the blocks along with the green Grunge and red Dot Grunge by Moda. The inner border is an ivory tone on tone dot that I’ve had in my stash for a long time. I went back and forth on using the red or green Santa’s for the outer border and am very happy I chose the green. The binding is one of the plaids from the Swell line, too,
I used Quilter’s Dream Wool batting and it has a nice and light loft. Perfect to cuddle up with.
I created the snowball center holly design using freezer paper.
I ironed about 5 layers of freezer paper together, then cut out the design,
Then I traced the design onto the quilt with the Air Erasable purple marker just before I was ready to quilt it.
I quilted on the markings, then echo quilted around it a few times to fill up the area. I used the ruler foot as a guide for the distance between the echo lines.
I quilted the whole quilt with light green (number 2886) 50 wt Aurifil thread. I used the Handi Quilter Multi Clamshells template for the continuous curves in the 9-patch blocks. You can see I placed the Washi tape on it so I would have a guideline to use for placement on the quilt.
In the small border, I quilted a double wishbone that I had seen Angela Walters do in one of her Midnight Quilt Shows. Not bad for a first time, my goal was to keep the loops opposite each other and overall, I managed that.
In the border, I quilted a swag with the holly leaves in between the swags with one on top of the swag and three in the corners. You can see it better from the back. I love the little holly print from the Swell line, too. I also have enough fabric leftover from the layer cake to make a mini quilt with some day!
By the way, this is my own quilt design. I made a table topper years ago in this design and thought the Swell fabric would be great to use for a full size quilt. The quilt is 66″ x 66″, so a perfect lap size. I’m thinking about writing it up as a pattern. Leave me a comment and tell me what do you think?
I hope you have a great weekend and safe travels if visiting family. Thanks for stopping by!
