Last night I participated in a Friday Night Sew in organized by “Handemade by Heidi”.

I worked on my Gator Quilt in the Garden Maze Paper Piecing pattern.  I finished 2 1/2 strips.  I have 2 1/2 strips left to go on the paper piecing strips.

Thank you Heidi for putting this together.  It really made me get to work, instead of slacking around watching TV.

I finished the first block of my Vacation Quilt. I wanted the center block to be an outline of the US with the date and location of the vacation enbroidered on. I designed the block myself. I don’t have the outline in digital form yet; I will try to do that this week. When it is ready, I will post on the site for anyone who wants to make a similar block.

Here it is and below that are the step-by-steps of how I did it.

First, I traced an outline of the US from one of my daughter’s puzzles.  Then I flipped it over and traced the reverse side.

I layed a piece of fusable web, rough side down, on top of the pattern.

Since you can see through the fusable and I traced it with a dark pen you can easily trace the pattern onto the fusable.  Of course, if you have a light box this is much easier to do.

Iron the fusable onto your fabric.  Be sure to follow the directions of the fusable.  My iron settings were too hot and it left a faint grid pattern on my material.

Cut it out.

Iron it onto your background fabric.  ps. don’t forget to peel the paper off.

Stitch along the edges.  I used a very small blanket stitch.

Next I added the borders with mitered corners.

Then I added my embroidery.  Do you like the path from Florida to DC with the Star for DC?

Sorry, Guys.  I could not post a podcast this week.  Don’t worry, I am not a podfader.  I can list a ton of excuses, but I will explain fully during next week’s podcast.

In the meantime……

I finished another applique block for my Frolic quilt.  They are supposed to be snowshoes, but I think they look like maracas.  lol.  It is not my fault, it is the pattern.  When you look at them out of context, they just don’t look like snowshoes, but next to the other snow people, snow flakes, and holly branches they look more in place.

Things I learned during this block:

• Layering is great and it does save time – I didn’t stitch the parts that would have other pieces placed on top of it.
• Pinning helps keep everything in place when you insist on not using fusable or glue.
• Especially pin the larger pieces
• Cotton thread is great, but shreads after a while – only use 12-18 inch pieces and watch out for the shreading of the thread.  Tie off before the thread breaks.

I think my daughter’s favorite medium is Paper – she loves paper crafts and is always raiding my scapbooking supply.  Look what she made for Easter.  We don’t decorate eggs at my house, but she wanted to and figured out a way how.  During Easter Linner (lunch/dinner) she gave everyone an Easter egg.

Sorry, folks.  I recorded my podcast this morning and all was going well.  I finished and click stop on the recorded and BOOM!!  The computer shut the program down and nothing was saved.  I searched for a recovery for 30 minutes; by that time it was too late to re-record because the baby girl would be awake soon.

I am working from home tomorrow – so I will try again.  Luckily I use notes and can remember most of what I talked about.  If all goes well, I will have a new show for you tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, I finished another block of my hand appliques project “Frolic” and I started on the forth block.

Wow, what a busy weekend!  Soccer game Saturday morning, lunch after game, about five hours of freelance work, post to blog (twice , record and post podcast, finish up freelance work, do my sister’s taxes, lanudry, dinner, play “Sorry!” and “Candyland” with the baby girl …..I think I am glad it is Monday!

But through all of that, guess what I found time for. . . . . . . . That’s right!  You guessed it!

I FINISHED SEWING THE CHENILLE ON MY LOG CABIN QUILT!!!!!!!!

By this time next week, I should have a finished quilt top!!!  Woo Hoo!!!