i've been very productive lately

Almost another whole month has gone by without me posting. I have not only gotten sucked into the Instagram world (whole-heartedly) but I've also become very productive. I know I should probably post more about what I have been doing, but I just keep finding more projects and investing the time into my sewing instead of blogging.

I have a lot of secret projects at the moment that may or may not be printed, but what I can show you is a pillowcase that I am really proud of! I made this pillow for my secret partner on Pillow Talk Swap IG Stlye. Unfortunately, the person who I designed the pillow for and sewed it for, went MIA (missing in action). She not only did not post when she was sewing for her partner, but also removed her mosaic of what she wanted sewn for her. <<shaking head>> Well, there are always going to be flakers in this world aren't there. Schade. Schade. I hope this pillow will find a new home, but it may just stay with me. = ) Who knows?

Down the Foxhole 18" Pillow from easypatchwork

I love Elizabeth Hartman's Fancy Foxes pattern and this is what my partner had in her mosaic. I thought I would make it very bright and cheery and a little quirky with some of the faces spinning in circles.

Down the Foxhole without Border

I designed the block using EQ7 and changed the sizing of it to fit a five inch block. This illustration shows the main center with the nine foxes. I added a 1 1/2" border strip all the way round making it 18" square.

The fabrics used are mostly from Micheal Miller Fabrics - Gem Tones from just one charm pack. You can not get a whole fox face out of one charm the way I sewed mine together. The ears on mine are folded over with one whole piece of fabric sewn on the diagonal for added dimension.

As you can see, I that pretty striped orange fox didn't make the final cut. Even though the fabric is so beautiful, it didn't look that impressive as a fox for this pillow. It might become a mug rug though.

The white is actually from Zen Chic with cute circles called Modern Background, Ink Zen Silver, XOXO. The black is a simple solid from Kona.

I even added a little piping to it to make it pop right out. This was my first try at piping in a pillow too. The black fabric is from Sweetwater for Moda called Elementary Equations. This was my fabric of the year 2015. I used it several of my makes and totally love it!!

After the the pillow top was finished, I decided to quilt it with a Monofil (transparent) thread. I have tried to use this thread before, but with little success. This time, I worked a little harder at adjusting my top and bottom threads to get the perfect balance so the bobbin thread doesn't show. I also quilted using a straight lines every 3/4 inch.

 

And I used a little bit of Tula Pink fabric I had reserved for another project for the back. It was the perfect size when I cut the WOF in half on the fold line. I also managed to line up the pattern to make a smaller wave through the middle. I love it when a plan comes together.

 I am very pleased with my result! I will proudly keep this one, if I am allowed to. = )

And if not, I hope it is loved and cheerished in its new home.

Thanks for dropping by after a very long absence! I'll try to get better about posting more often, but then again, I won't be able to sew as much...okay, I have to find a happy balance! Thanks again fro dropping by!

autumn pillow and mini tutorial

Good morning everyone. Well, another few weeks have gone by and still no new posts from me. I am such a bad, bad girl. ;-) I've been busy like all of us; just using the extra time I have to sew instead of blogging. Since we are in the middle of fall, I thought I would share my beautiful, autumn pillow that I made for my sweet Pillow Swap Four Seasons partner, Betti from Bettis Stitches on Instagram.

What do I want to say about this pillow?.... It was really fun to make!

If you know me, you know I like a good challenge! And this time, I wanted to sew something really small. I took the traditional maple leaf pattern from EQ7 and designed my own pillow using the fabric line Tucker Prairie from Moda. This was my original design from EQ7 with a triple border. You can see from the final pillow, I removed the second patchwork border; I thought it was a bit too much in the end and was a little too loud or "unruhig."

My fabric pull came together rather quickly. I wanted blues, oranges, yellow-greens and purples. This may not be your "traditional" fall color palette, but I wanted the colors to jump out and be vibrant. I wanted to ground the entire idea by using low volumes for the background. I didn't purchase any new fabrics for the front of the pillow and most came from designers such as Tula Pink, Brigitte Heitland for Zen Chic, Carolyn Friedlander, and Sarah Watts if you want to recreate this. The outer border fabric was still undecided at this point.

I first made the four bigger leaves in the center which finished up at 4 1/2". Each of my corner blocks were cut to 2" and finish up to 1 1/2". (You could construct the entire block from a nine-patch using 1 1/2" blocks for each of the nine segments if you want to make this pillow.)

After I made my "big blocks" out of the way, I started with sewing my teeny tiny leaves. I actually found out that the leaves go together very easily when you know two principles - traditional foundation (paper) piecing and sewing on paper "sew-all-at-once" method.

Each leaf took about 15 minutes to make. I made about 30+ one-inch leaves for this project.

MINI TUTORIAL

First of all, cut out your template along the dotted lines, making sure to keep both adjacent sides of A and B together. Using a good light source, fold exactly between sections A and B; you will be sewing on line A6/A7 to B1/B2 later. (Templates are discontinued. You can also make your own.)

Sew Section A exactly as your normally would on paper using a smaller stitch than usual. I use 1,5 stitches instead of 2,5 when sewing on paper. Make sure none of the fabric extends over the folded line. If it does, cut it away by folding the paper in half and cutting off what extends over the fold. You may reference a previous tutorial here.

After you have made your leaf, iron it well and trim the block along the seam allowance line. The block should measure 1 1/2 inches. Use the blocks however you wish.

I made a couple extra blocks and used one of them in a pin cushion for my swap partner. I added a one inch border on each side ending with 1/2 border all the way around. The pin cushion measures 2" in total. ;-)

END OF MINI TUTORIAL

After I made all of my mini leaves, I arranged them together for a matching border. Yes, it is matching. AND there is one leaf that is a little wonky!  Can you find it?

 

I didn't notice my wonky leaf until after I sewed the border on! I showed it to several people and no one noticed! I did take the time to change it, because I would have have been a eye sore for me in the end.

I finished the pillow top by sewing on a 3" finished border of black around the center and first border to make the entire center pop out. I chose a matching butterfly and black print from Westminster Fabrics. It has the same yellow as the leaf on the front. I know I took a picture of the pillow from the backside, but I must have deleted the photos. You can jump here to Betti's photo of the backside.

This was as selection of possible fabrics I did buy to finish up the pillow. I used the yellow butterfly for the back and the black checkered for the outer border. I didn't like the bottom fabric with this pillow. It had a strange hue to it.

After everything was made, we went on location for a little photo shoot. ;-) I took the pillow along with us to Tuscany where we spent our summer vacation this year. When we weren't having fun by the pool, I stole a few minutes to tote the pillow around and take some nice location photos. ;-)

Thank you for joining me for explanation of my autumn pillow for Betti! I really and truly had a lot of fun making this pillow. I learned that I love to sew small! I hope you discover you like to sew small too. It really is achievable as long as you know and use a few special techniques.

You can download an entire sheet of one-inch maples leaves to try yourself just how easy they are! If you don't want to pay for the sheet of templates, you can always make your own. ;-)

Hugs,
Karen

summer's over!!

HELLO Everyone!!! No, I am still alive and kicking! I just got a little distracted over summer! ;-)

I did not expect to get distracted from blogging for so long, though! At the end of the school year, things were getting hectic, no more time for sewing, party here, party there, taking on new official sewing projects, finishing up the old ones, and had simply no more time to post! Well, I am back again. The kids are in school now, and I have a little bit of me time for myself. So, I wanted to get back to posting on a regular basis. Yes, I really do! Please forgive me! The summer was fantastic, and now I am ready to "get back to work!"

Thinking about summer, I would like to share with you the pillow I made for my summer swap partner from our group, Pillow Swap Four Seasons. I kind of stepped out of my comfort zone and started using a lot of low volume (LW) fabrics. I tried to create something in the same style as her inspiration mosaic with lots of different rainbow colors, low volume prints and symmetrical design. You can see her design here:

I have to admit, my style is a bit more "low key" using more solids than LV so it was a little challenging to sew how I could design and sew something for her that I could really poor my heart out into. I took the idea from her six-pointed star and made a circle of them which is typically called "Seven Sisters." You will usually see this pattern and design made using English Paper Piecing (EPP). But, I love to piece on the machine, so I wanted a "simpler" way to make the stars and decided to make them using 60° triangles instead.

Design: I started playing around with the below design in EQ7. I usually design all of my quilts using this program. My first design hat a border, because I like a "clean" area to attach the backing fabric when sewing pillows. In the end, I changed my mind and added another row of LV triangles.

My first challenge was finding low volume fabrics! My friend, Mara, in Greece helped me out with those fabulous LV you see in the picture below. I didn't have any, and she was kind enough to offer me those beauties from her personal fabric collection. The solids are from a Kona rainbow charm pack.This was my initial pull and starting point.

After I had the design, I broke out my Mini Hex N More ruler I bought from Quilt et Textilkunst at last year's Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe. I cut 2 1/4" strips and broke my ruler in! These are so cool!! You really have to get one! (I also have the large Hex N More ruler, but haven't put it to great use yet.)

I pulled a few other coordinating fabrics for the stars. Once again, this was my first choice that I really liked. I didn't use all of the fabrics and changed my mind throughout. ;-) If I made the pillow over today, I think I would have used this yellow print in the middle instead of the one I used. I think smaller prints work better with the 2 1/4 inch triangles.

I laid out my stars to see if they had the right contrast and "pow" appeal. I was content with these fabrics. I let them stay on my design board for a day or two.

 

Next phase, cut out over 200 pieces from over 30 different fabrics (!).

Sewing: I carefully layed them out on my flannel design boards. I didn't have room for all pieces on one board in the beginning. ;-) Then I started sewing the rows carefully together one after another. Triangle quilts are really rather simple. I have sewn four or five already. The true key is to sewing successfully is to sew every odd row to the right starting from the left. Start your even rows by taking the last triangle in the row and sew them to the left or upside down. Then they will always nest!

After the rows were finished, it was easy street from there. ;-) Do you see the turquoise star? What is your opinion about it? Does it work?

I wasn't so sure about it. I looked at the setup after dark and noticed it was rather light in value.

The next day I found a better coordinated for the blue. Now all outer stars are brighter than the middle star and equal in value.

Of course I didn't throw out that lovely star!I used it to make a mug rug! Every pillow needs a matching mug rug, doesn't it?

Quilting: I first wanted to do an inner outline quilting on the whole pillow, but thought I wanted to bringing another design element and made 60° angles through the middle of the pillow. I am happy with the end result, but I am not happy that I chose to use Vliesoline H640 on this pillow! It gives it way too much depth. I learned my lesson here. ;-) Today I might even be brave enough to use black thread for the quilting too.

Seven Sisters Read the Newsprint for Rita

For the backside, I wanted to make something more in my style and went with Rita's idea of the hexagon, pulled through my scrap bins for yellow fabrics, improvised pieced until I got those great triangles, and sewed together in strips until I got even bigger triangles. I sewed the different solids in from the front as a border, the added the black until it was big enough for the backing. I offset the star on purpose if you were thinking it went wacky by mistake. ;-)

Back Side of Pillow of Seven Sisters Read the Newsprint

Bottom Zipper for a Two-Sided Pillow

And I love the label I made for Rita! I transferred the design onto t-shirt transfer and ironed to a white piece of fabric and sewed it into the inside of the pillow.

All in all, I am extremely happy with the way Rita's pillow turned out. It wasn't exactly my style (meaning low volume prints), but it challenged me to be creative. I truly hope she loved the pillow, because if she doesn't she can always send it back! ;-)

If you are inerested in swapping pillows with a fabulous group of ladies, we still have a few vacancies open for an energenic and creative patchworker. More information under the tab "Pillow Swap Four Seasons" above. We have an online form in the pillow swap Flickr group.

Thanks for dropping by. I hope to be around more in the future as well!

Big hugs,
Karen