December 08, 2011

Zombie Mama

A lot of you asked what I was going to do with my selvages. This is what!


I totally intended to enter this bag in the Bernina fall bag contest. The pattern is from PMQG's own super-kind super-talented superstar, Monica of Happy Zombie. Monica's advice was to shoot yummy shots of the bags with something in them. I dutifully did that.


I love this colorful little bag. I made a practice bag originally before diving in with the selvages. My daughter calls it her bag.



We glamour shot that one too. And then I forgot to enter the contest.


So that's about right, the best laid plans! Getting ready for Christmas, waiting impatiently for my husband to get back in town, hoping to sew with the quilt guild this Saturday... Thanks for all the sweet comments on my posts lately!

December 02, 2011

Pots will be held



These potholders will live in Kansas City soon, thanks to the Portland/Kansas City MQG potholder swap. I made one for my partner and got to make some angel potholders too. I wanted my potholders to be thickish and also to have some FMQ. So I made two separate quilt sandwiches for each potholder and bound them together. The tops are foundation pieced log cabins (with batting as the foundation). And the backs are plain to show some free motion quilting.


Any guesses how I got such lovely geometric patterns? Oh, I can't keep a secret: print tracing!


These are the backsides of two of the quilted pieces.

Below is how I used the Ty Pennington print to make the circles. Wavy line around the circles one way, then a wavy line back the other. Whenever I wanted to add a flower I just went inside the circle off the wavy line I was on, and went back to the wavy line after tracing all the "petals".


Looking at my fabrics for print tracing potential is kind of fun. It's a new way of perceiving them. Here are some I pulled out that I think would be great for this technique.


I've read that some people do entire quilts this way but for me the technique is perfectly suited for smaller items. What do you think, is it something you'd try?