Life in the Scrapatch: Paper Pieced Blocks

Showing posts with label Paper Pieced Blocks. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Waving My Flag!

"Life is a Song ... Love is the Music"

This is my flag.

A bluebird for happiness.

A song in my heart.

This little glass bluebird is one my mother gave to each of my children when they were young,

For this photo this little glass bird is sitting in the snow in front of my forsythia bush.

This is a silk garland added for color as there are no blossoms here anywhere, yet,

not even crocus or hardy pansies. It is still too cold.

I took these photos standing in an icy mud puddle when the sun was shining a few days ago.

Today we are getting more snow ... oh, no!

No bluebirds in my bush, either, but I do have plenty of sparrows in my bush.

This is my message.

These are my fabrics.

The two large music prints are from
"All That Jazz" by Sheri Small for Windham Fabrics

Actually these are my daughter's fabrics as she purchased then a few years ago

when we were on a quilty adventure together.

My beautiful daughter is my inspiration for this project.

This will be a Mother's Day Gift for my Mommy-To-Be daughter,
whose due date is Mother's Day.
My daughter plans to be a stay-at-home-mom for her Sprout.
This as a gift to her to take with her to plant in her garden
to remind her of her gift.
My daughter is a gifted musician and teacher and conductor.
My wish is that she may continue to share her gift with others always.

As my longtime followers know, last August
I blogged about may daughter's wedding at

The Cathedral of the Pines,

Rindge, NH

On my Daughter's Wedding Day,

... music played ...
(These lovely ladies are two of her very best flutist friends.)

... as she glided down the long aisle from the top of the hill ...

... she would have passed this stone bench nestled in the gardens ...

So I programed my Janome ...

... and let her stitch!

I stitched these in a variegated rainbow thread
and also a shaded dark turquoise blue thread.

I have decided that the darker thread reads and photographs easier.
This is King Tut "De Nile" by Superior Thread.

The blue thread is the same colors as the three blue Kona Solids

that I used making this paper pieced

"Blue Bird of Happiness."

The paper pieced pattern I used may be found in this book,

"For the Birds" by Jaynette Huff.

I also made three paper pieced music notes.

Here is the green one in progress.

This music note is from Right Patterns

and my be purchased Here

Here is the rough layout of my Flag-In-Progress.
I decided to add a pretty cream background fat quarter I had in my stash of
"Sweet Serenade" by Basic Grey
to lighten the background of my flag.

I did some improv piecing again for this project using some of the scraps and pieces.

Katniss helped.

I fussy cut the fat quarter and the large print music fabric to include certain parts of the design.

Butterfly helped.

"Birdievision" outside my sewing room window has been

keeping my quilty kitties very busy in the daytime.

So Butterfly was very sleepy when she stayed up late a few nights while I worked on the layout,

patiently waiting for me to all it a quilty night.

My flag on a stick measures 13" by 19" including the top hanging sleeve.

I enjoyed making this flag and am looking forward to giving to my daughter

for her first Mother's Day.

Please visit all my friends who are waving their flags today ...

March 26th

Living with Purpose

Life In The Scrapatch (you are here)

Devoted Quilter

Made By Me In Red

Quilting Quietly

Thank You,

Mdm Samm @ Sew We Quilt

and

Thearica @ Pig Tales and Quilts

for this wonderful blog hop!

Giveaway Time!

To say thanks for reading and following I am giving away ~~~>

These two Fat Quarters of
Sweet Serenade by Basic Grey
and one of my the embroidered strips
I made and did not use in my flag

To be eligible to win his giveaway:

please leave one lovely comment!

I will mail anywhere in the world.

You do not need to be a follower to win.

You do need to leave an email address where I can contact you to let you know if you are the lucky winner and to get your mailing address.

My blog does not allow anonymous comments to keep away the robots.

If you do not have an ID to leave a comment, you may email me

at the address under "Contact Me" at the top of my blog

and I will enter your comment for you.

As a extra thank you to my followers, you may leave a second comment

telling me how you follow my quilty adventures.

This giveaway closes on April 3rd at Midnight DST

I will use a random number generator to choose the winning comment.

I will announce a winner on April 4th.

Thank you for visiting!

My quilty kitties and I hope you will visit our quilty corner again soon!

:)

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Hugs and Kisses XO ~ Pieces of My Heart

Hugs and Kisses XO to You!

When Madame Samm announced

this years' Hugs and Kisses theme

and I saw the pretty paper pieced patterns that she and Soma from

Whims and Fancies

had created for us

the image of ...

... an old fashioned fancy heart box

popped into my head.

I knew that I had to make one of these!

So I gathered materials.

The heart box is actually a tin given to me by one year by one of my sons
as a Valentine Day gift that I have been saving to use again.

Lady Katniss was very interested in this project.

Very, very interested!

Teeny tiny pieces!
I down sized the pattern by 50% to fit the top of the heart tin.

Here are my arrow pieces before I cut the paper apart and sewed them together.
I used the traditional method of paper piecing that I was taught, sewing
through the paper pattern and removing the paper afterward.

I am really happy with how my heart came out.
My tin is only 9 inches across so I had to resize the pattern I chose for the top.

My finished heart is only 5 inches across!

I cut it to size for the top of the tin box and cut some batting to pad the top.

Then I looked for some bits and pieces to embellish the top.
These are all little buttons and things I won in giveaways that have been tucked away in my sewing room waiting for the right project.

I cut a heart shaped piece of batting to pad the back of the top
and I echoed stitched around the heart with perle cotton.
I stored the thread and buttons in the tin while I sewed.
Of course, Lady Katniss helped.

I found some pretty fabrics from my stash ...

... and used a sew and flip method to frame the heart.

Some of them I pieced before I sewed them to the heart.

Here is my top before embellishing.

Here is the padded back.
There are three layers of batting at this point ...

... and I added one more when I added the ruffle.

There had to be a ruffle!
This pink gingham fabric is very old thin fabric that was left from a project that I made for My Girl when she was a baby.

I sewed on some lace and ribbon trim that I also found from a long ago and forgotten time and I added the buttons.

I hand sewed pink fabric to cover the back of the heart
before I fixed it to the tin box top.

When I attached the heart to the box, I decided that I wanted it to be removeable
so I used a velcro strip that I had in my stash of supplies.
I glued the scratchy part to the tin with heavy duty double sided sticky tape.
The sticky tape is from a roll that was given to me by the local manufacturer when I was a cub scout leader over twenty years ago and I was looking for donations of supplies. They gave me a big boxful. I am down to the last roll.
Then I hand sewed the soft part to the back of the heart.

Lady Butterfly helped.

This project has been quilty kitty approved.

Pieces of my Heart

Now my tin is filled with treasured pieces of my past
including these small photos of my children when they were young.
My sons are nine and seven years old and my daughter is five in these photos.

Of course, there were two more patterns to make ...

... sew I sewed!

These are the 10.5" of the original patterns.

What to make with these?

Sometimes simplicity is best.

So I framed these blocks with the white swiss dot

that I used as the background fabric for the blocks.

Plans are to use the varigated pink fabric in the "O" Block

that has shades from dark to medium pink for the binding.

What to make for the other side of the quilt?

Girl + Quilt!

Click here to read my post about the pattern details.

The pink and yellow floral fabric in the center plus is my favorite fabric in this quilt.
It reminds me of the roses in the curtains that my mother placed in my room
when I was a little girl.

I am quilting ... quilting ... quilting ...

I quilted organic free style hearts around the XO.
Now I am adding a fill design inside the heart
and I have other quilting plans for the space outside.

I have come down with a sore throat and a winter cold and I am achy and moving slow
so I will not have the quilting done and the binding on for a day or two.