Art and Life

A while ago I wrote about finding a longarm quilter that fits your style. I know when I first started quilting I lived in Ohio and just found a local lady and basically said "just a meander in white is fine" for every project. Hey, forgive me, I was new and just really excited to see anything finished! I know better now. The quilting can change everything about your quilt!

My longarm quilter Teresa from Quilts2aT got together and made a wall hanging from the scraps leftover when I made 2 matching queen quilts for my bedroom.

Guestroom 

I had a few of the 9 patches leftover and put them together thinking it might make a good crib quilt, since there is also a crib in there. After bringing it over and hanging it on her design wall, we started talking about it. A lot. There was so much negative space. Too much negative space actually. This wasn't a killer piece on my part. It was sparse. It was missing something. We talked about the best usage for the negative space. Working on a quilt with someone can be like working on a painting with another artist. You paint a portion, hand it over, they work on it, maybe you get it back to add more, and so on. You know what the other artists aesthetic is, but you can't predict what the finished work will look like when it is all done. What she did was stunning. 

From far away you can see it is a lot of white space.

Closer you can see the ghost 9 patches. We called it The Canterville Quilt. Oscar Wilde fans, here is your giggle for the day. 

Movement and rests, quilting can be musical

I love the bubbles

Freehand, so every swirl is an individual

See? Amazing. We entered it in MQX this past week. We didn't win any of the prizes Wednesday, but yesterday Teresa walked by and Toby Lischko was pinning her faculty ribbon on our quilt!

yeah! We got a ribbon!

Toby Lischko and Teresa at MQX in Springfield.

How cool! Happy sewing!

Swaps! Lanyard idea

I am a leader of a Brownie Troop, and my girls are ga-ga over swaps. As we prepare for our first camporee of the school year, we will be making swaps at our next meeting. So each of them would have a nice lanyard for the swaps I made these for them. You can let your girls sew these, it honestly takes only a few minutes for each one! For the swaps, check out Pinterest. Just a warning, there are a million and you can spend all day (OK, a few days) lost looking at Girl Scout Swaps!

Yes, the s'mores swap is the hands down favorite!

The lanyard accessories are available really cheap at craft stores and Walmart in the kid craft section.

Start with a strip of fabric 2 1/2 inches wide by WOF (42-44) long. Put a key ring around the fabric. It is just easier to do this now before you sew and move it around than try to thread it through at the end. Then carefully take your fabric around to one side, careful not to get it twisted. Place ends crossed, right sides together like the photo and pin the ends like the photo.

See where the pins are? You are going to sew on that diagonal. If you have ever done quilt binding, this will be super easy. Sew on the diagonal as pinned. Then trim to 1/4 inch.

Take this to the ironing board, press the seam open.

Then fold and press the whole thing in half, moving the ring around as you go. This is tricky since it is a loop and not a flat piece of fabric.

Then open it up, folding the two ends into the center.

Fold again on the center you pressed first, so the ends are neatly tucked in.

Press like there is no tomorrow! Then take to the machine and stitch as close to the open end as your can.

Find the seam where you made the circle, and pull it down to the bottom. Fold around the ring, and sew about an inch up from the bottom.

All you have to do now is add your lanyard clip and you are done!

For the name tags, I took a blank business card stock and printed their names on them, then used thick packing tape to laminate them! I used a standard hole punch to add the hole at the top and that was it!

Now off the Pinterest to see what other Swaps we can do...