Tiny pincushion Tutorial

Tiny Pincushion Scissor Attachment Tutorial 

Finished size 1.5" x 1.5" with a 10" ribbon for tying to scissors.

I'm sure if you've been reading this blog for any length of time you'll know my love of tiny things. So here you are, a tiny little tutorial to make a tiny little pincushion. It's just too darn cute and pretty useful for that little sewing kit - you won't have to tote along a big pincushion with this tiny one tethered to your cute little scissors! 

Cut:

• 2" x 2" square of patchwork
• Two pieces of 2" x 1.25" solid fabric (backing)
• 10 or so inches of a narrow ribbon
• A bit of polyfil

With right sides facing sew a scant 1/4" seam along the long side of the backing fabrics leaving a 1" gap in the middle (back stitch on either side of the gap).

Press seam line open.

Stack patchwork square and backing square together with right sides together. Fold the ribbon in half and tuck it inside the two layers with the folded point sticking out of one corner (I taped mine to the middle of the patchwork piece).

Sew around all four sides using a scant 1/4" seam allowance making sure to catch the loop of ribbon at one corner. Clip corners close to the stitch line and trim edges slightly.

Turn right sides out using a chopstick or other point tool - I use my seam ripper to carefully pull the corners out.

Stuff with polyfil and sew up the gap by hand.

Use the attached ribbon to tie it to your favorite pair of scissors and gather pins and needles as you sew.

Enjoy!! :) 

Sewing with Mary

The other night my friend and co-worker Mary came over to sew. She recently received her shipment of 50 beautiful zippers from Zipit on etsy... so she was dying to give zipper sewing a try!

 

We made (wait for it) box pouches. lol. I think I've made at least a dozen of these in the past year! Mary was using a zebra print plastic coated shopping bag as her fabric, and I was using a bag from Micheal's that featured a more masculine color palate of squares.

um...3am pictures?

Mary did pretty well with her zipper sewing. Really excellent for her first try! She didn't even break a needle!

In all it was a great evening of box pouch sewing!

The only downfall of the evening? Staying up way too late when we both worked the next morning!

Guess what??

I'm going to be a guest on Clover & Violet's Summertime Adventures Tutorial Series Blog Hop!!

(the little secrets that I've been working on will soon be out!)

I'm really excited to be a part of this series which will take us right into Summertime with some great tutorials! I'm up in the first week so watch here for that! 

Here's the Schedule:

Travel Sewing Kits:

May 1 - Sara {Sew Sweetness} & Rachael {Imagine Gnats}

May 3 - Emily {Mommy's Nap Time}

Out and About:

May 8 - Jennie {Clover & Violet}

May 10 - Kat {Diary of a Flutter.Kat}

For the Kids:

May 15 - Missy {GraceParfait}

May 17 - Sunni {Love Affair with my Brother}

On the Road:

May 22 - Chrissy {Sew Lux Blog}

May 24 - Clara {Clover & Violet}

Wrap Up:

May 29

WIP Wednesday!

Clover & Violet Sophie Beach Bag  - FINISHED!

(see I finished one thing this week!)

Please oh please go over here and read all about it - it's super awesome! I'm really in love with this bag!

Secret project #1 - no progress  Halfway there!
Secret project #2 - Stitching done - assembly needed.
Secret project #3 - just need to blog about it! x3 blog posts!
Precious QAL sketching project 2, project 1 is cut, HST's sewn and pressed.

My Precious QAL - these HST's are sewn, cut, and pressed already!

{Modern}Robin - no progress, still in the planning phase!
Bella Bella Quilt - no progress
Sew Beautiful - still missing one block

There you have it... my WIP Wednesday!

Clover & Violet's Sophie Beach Tote!

Here's a big reveal! A couple weeks ago Jennie @ Clover & Violet asked if I'd like to sew up an example of one of their patterns (there shop is here). Of course I said yes - and here it is!! Now Clover & Violet has some awesome patterns, but this one spoke to my aesthetic a bit more than the others. It is so fabulous!!

Washi tape fabric!

First I started planning - I had to wait for these fabrics to be delivered - but they were well worth the wait! I had really wanted to use Heath in steel grey instead of the natural solid... but I just couldn't swing a trip downtown to the Needle Shop for some -- so natural it was!

 Next pinwheels happened. 32 pinwheels to be exact. In retrospect I maybe should have used Thangles... since they ease the headache of drawing those lines down the middle for HST's. But all in all I'm really pleased with how perfect the points lined up! (I used some of the charm squares that I received from Marilyn in my DQS12 package for these pinwheels - perfection!).

 I stayed up rather late a couple nights in a row for this one. (pardon the night time pictures!). Once I got started I just didn't want to stop! This project really surprised me in that once I had the outer part of the bag layed out (picture below), I really wanted it to be a baby quilt... even though it's not really my normal style for a baby quilt - it's so cute!

Sorry for this terrible picture - but it was so precious hanging there!
I had to take a picture of it!

 I quilted mine using an organic crosshatch; then I added a sweet FMQ'd string of loopy hearts above the pinwheels. 

Yes, I had to use a screwdriver to pry off the not  right snaps.

Next I tackled the inside pouch. It was late at night and I had a lot of trouble trying to set those snaps. It was my first time trying snaps... it took going to bed and trying it in the morning for it to work right! 

Look how beautiful they are! So perfect!

 Here's a shot at the zippered pouch snapped on. Aren't those snap panels so clever? I would never have thought of doing that - but it'll sure be handy with the size of this bag. otherwise it would be impossible to keep track of it!

Now here we are with the bag all finished! I even made a fancy covered button - who knew they were so easy to make??!! Why hadn't I tried them before? 

Click image to see the larger version -
check out those FMQ'd hearts! I'm in love!

If you're wondering the size of this bag? It's huge! the boxed side corners finish at about 7" wide... it would easily hold a couple towels and stuff for the beach, and for my pictures here I stuffed it with an 18" pillow! I've decided that this bag will be my official "bring show & tell quilts to the guild meetings bag." I'll also use it to pack things into for our numerous trips back home to visit the family! I can't stop oohing and ahhing over it!!

Because I'm going to go sew instead of writing the 3.5 blog posts that I have going in my head...

So instead enjoy some of the lovelies that have made it to me in the mail recently. (yes I realize I'm quite spoiled.)

BOHEMIAN! Here's the first bit of it - which came from Emily / CanyongurlEmily

Then some more (bits of all the fabrics in the line!) from Jenny / JennyWeldingCaps who challenged me to make something absolutely fabulous with them - I will! 

All the Bohemian stacked up and pressed! It's looking impressive! 

Another bit of Bohemian - this time a FQ from Georgia / GeorgiaMcDonald -- this came all the way from Australia! And it came with some yummy chocolates too! 

I've also recieved a fabulous pouch from my Pretty Little Pouch Swap partner Kristya / {quiltergirl80}

And a remnant piece of Little Folks from the ever so sweet Sally!

And here's the bit of grey that I left on Emily's sewing table - that she returned to me all wrapped up like a pretty gift! 

Thanks all of you generous quilters! You're fabulous and I promise you'll be seeing some Bohemian amazingness here soon!!! 

A little sneaking...

Sometimes I like to stalk people - no not crazy stalk - swap stalk. Meaning I like to look at their likes and fabric favorites, and what they could use that I could make.

Or maybe after 7 million times of hoping a swap mama would pair me up with Elaine, I'm taking it on myself.

Yes. Surprise! Elaine, pretend you're my auxiliary Pretty Little Pouch Swap partner. Or pretend that you're pretty awesome and I have your address because I'm sneaky.

Whatever you want to call it. Elaine is a pretty awesome person and deserving of a little pampering - especially since she's the only blogger to ever warn me ahead of time that she was going to announce that she's pregnant (so I had time to deal with it - if you don't understand then you've never spent 3 yrs trying to have a baby). That definitely merits a baby gift!

So I hope you love it Elaine, a sweet little flannel blanket for your new baby (perfect size for swaddling), and a little pouch just for you. Enjoy!
(Read Elaine's part of the story here - and see pics of that blanket!)

AccuQuilt Studio - Die Cutting at the retreat!

Hexagons in two sizes - all cut from one charm pack!

This post has been hanging out in draft form for a while... it's time to polish it up and post!

For those of you who don't already know, I've met some pretty cool people in this quilting community. One of these people is Ebony, owner of LoveBug Studios, as well as about eight million other awesome sites/projects/etc. Ok I'll get to the point, Ebony has an Accuquilt Studio Die Cutter - yes that's like the Accuquilt Go that people talk about - but in giant awesome proportions - and she brought it with her to our guild retreat last month so we could all play!

For being a blog post about the Studio cutter, you'd think I would have taken a picture of it... lol. I guess I didn't. I did take pictures of the zillions of ways we used it though. 

For those of you who aren't aware of the awesomeness of the Studio - it uses various dies to cut fabric into precise pieces quickly. This is especially useful for shapes like circles and hexagons, as well as cutting down massive amounts of squares, strips, etc. 

Throughout our retreat weekend many of us made use of the cutter (it has a name by the way, Mr. T). I cut a ton of circles (with fusible already on them - so I just have to iron them in place and topstitch!!). I made tiny hexagons with fusible too, as well as regular hexies.

Emily chopped down a ton of smallish scraps into perfect squares. Her stacks were towering by the end of the night!

Beth cut down a huge amount of solids!! Isn't this stack so lovely??!! She's already finished the quilt from this stack! 

Isn't the Accuquilt Studio pretty awesome? Also awesome? The fact that Ebony is pretty much the expert in die cutting for quilting! Fantastic! Thanks for sharing your time and your machine with us Ebony! :)

PS - To anyone who might be on the fence about future guild retreats - they're fabulous and you should put your deposit down now! :)

WIP Wednesday in a Checklist

Secret project #2

• secret project # 1 halfway done
• secret project #2 one more step, then done (need some sunlight to take pics!)
• sort of secret project #3 ... no progress but ahead of schedule still

• New project, an awesome bag - waiting for fabric!! Fabric arrived today! I can't wait to get started!!
• Secret gift - almost ready to send! Sent!
• PLPS - need to mail Sent!

The top row are all new!! :) Thanks Emily!!

• My Precious QAL - gathering ideas / waiting for the mailman. (oh my goodness - it seems like super awesome sewing people all around are more fabulous than I could explain... aka I might be getting some more bits of AMH Bohemian! ---Some came today! I'm formulating a blog post about this as we speak!) 
• DQS12 wrapping up - mama duties are nearly finished. Waiting for those last quilts to be recieved, everyone in my group(s) have mailed!
• Pouches for Roseann... no progress, but lots of ideas!! And... more bags purchased... yes - think zebra stripe!
• Bella Quilt - just a little progress, fabrics cut and paper patterns drawn for the next round!
• {Modern} Robin - we've swapped for April, now to work on my ideas for our last round!!! I have some good (and teeny) ideas!
• {Sew} Beautiful bee quilt - on hold, one more block is coming!

I'm not going to do the math there--- I've got a lot of projects up in the air! :) It's pretty awesome! 

Oh and by the way -- I finally figured out just what I was doing wrong with those tabbed zipper ends! I made a pouch recently, and the ends were just right and square!

Linked up to WIP Wednesday!

Because quilting friends know how to be fabulous!

Last week I went over to my friend Emily's house to sew for a bit (actually we sat around and talked most of the time... but still). When I arrived she explained that I had left some grey fabric on our table at the retreat last month and it had made its way home with her! lol. Literally it's a scrappy funny shaped piece of fabric, but in Emily's eyes it deserved a pretty little ribbon to tie it up so sweetly! Ok ok, I'm sure she did this so it wouldn't get lost in her stash... but it's still too cute for words!

So how about you? If you're passing a bit of fabric to someone else do you tie it up all nice? Or do you just chuck it into an envelope and call it a day? 

This girl loves the pretty of a nicely tied up little piece of fabric! 

Winner Winner!!

Last week I got an unexpected email from Maureen, saying that her first contest winner hadn't gotten back to her - so she'd pulled another name... it was me!! 

So I won this FQ bundle of fabulous Modernology fabric! It was provided by Canton Villiage Quilts and let me tell you - it came in the mail QUICKLY! These are some really fabulous fabrics too! Thanks Maureen!! 

***

Who knew the Parisville would match the Habitat so well??!!

In other fabric related news, I ordered fabrics from Whittles Fabrics as seen on Scottie Watch last week. Let me tell you, I placed my order late Friday night and my fabric arrived Monday morning! How fabulous is that??!! And... it was only $4/yd for modern yummy fabrics. On the downside they were out of the one AMH print that I ordered... but I can deal with that. :) 

Dear Janice...

(did I mention I named my new-to-me Juki Janice?) 

This picture has nothing to do with this post. But isn't it lovely?

I'm sorry for not oiling you sooner... please forgive the fact that I imagined you'd only need oil occasionally like my old Singers.

Today I came upon my bottle of sewing machine oil... and thought, gee, it's been a couple months since I've had Janice.... And I haven't oiled her. I knew she's needed it recently... but never urgently enough for me to go searching for the oil. I looked in the manual today - oil daily if you sew daily. Eeek! lol. I gave her a few drops in each of the convenient holes. She's running even more like a dream than before. :)

Reminder - oil your machine!

{Modern} Robin

Here we are, swapping again! Can you believe how much our quilts have grown?? If you're new here, or don't remember, Emily and I each created a quilt block, then swapped - we each added a border (or two) to the other's piece, then we swapped again, and then again. We've got one more border to go then they'll return to the original maker to be finished.

This has been a really fun project. I can't believe how well they've come together so far! And... it gives Emily and I an excuse to get together to sew once a month!

Today we sewed for just a couple hours... er... we talked through most of the time, but I got most of a bee block finished. lol. It's a wonder that we get anything done when we sew together! 

So for the next and final round - I don't know what I'm going to add... but I'll do a tiny friendship star in one of the corners... (it is a friendship quilt right? - that was actually Emily's idea, I can't pretend it was mine). I'm thinking teeny -- 3" or so... embedded in a border. 

I'm really happy with how this is turning out - so much fun! But, the only really challenging part? Blogging about a project shared with someone who has my same name. lol. In my head I'm imagining my readers thinking "which Emily was that?" lol.

Thanks for following our little journey here. :) 

DQS12 Finished!!

Dear Mona (DQS12 Recipient),

I needed a few extra days (right up to the last send day) to love this quilt and to prepare myself to let it go!

From the beginning of this DQS round I had this quilt in mind. I wanted a huge challenge and the chance to make a quilt that finished in a circle. 

I loved every minute of the challenge with this one! I do hope you love it as much as I do!

This is the most "me" quilt that I have ever made. It embodies all that I want my quilting to be, and it really shows my creative word for the year, which is "intricate." On this quilt I worked on my paper piecing skills, my curved piecing, and even drafted the paper pieced ring of flying geese myself.

I'm not sure if it's as clean and graphic as you prefer, but once I started it, the fabrics just fell into place. I sure hope you find a special place in your home and your heart for it!

Thanks for inspiring some of my greatest work!

With love,

Emily / emedoodle

It's going to be very hard to let this quilt go. :) But I'll make it through! On the bright side, my "hanging structure" worked out about as perfectly as I could have hoped!! Check out those pictures down there! CRAZY! It took me a long time to settle on the right way to go about that. In the end it was evenly spaced plastic loops, and a doubled up piece of boning threaded through half the quilt - hanging on a nail from the middle of the top. Perfection --or close to it! A circular quilt on the wall! Now I just need to make another one!

Here it is all bundled up to go. :) Good news, Mona received it today and she totally "got" it! :) I'm so happy that she loves it!!! 

Annnnd.... in equally awesome news... I received my DQS quilt Monday!!! Here she is! Such a beauty made by Marilyn!

I was hoping and praying this one was coming my way!! And it did!! Such a great little quilt - it's already hanging on my wall! And for those of you who weren't looking - notice that stack of charm squares she sent... there are some Bohemian AMH prints there! Eeek! :) Thanks Marilyn!!