When I first learned to quilt, my mom, grandmother, and cousin, along with a friend of my grandmother's, all went to Sheila Belyea's house for lessons. She used to own the shop that my mom now owns. My mom had done some quilting, so I think she was finishing up a quilt she had started for my older sister when she was a baby. My grandmother and her friend were both doing the Turning Twenty quilt, and I chose Eleanor Burns's Log Cabin. My cousin also chose the Log Cabin, but she made hers out of a Jelly Roll from Moda. I chose a bunch of different fabrics, first choosing a border print with lots of color, and then making one half of each of my log cabin blocks red, and the other half purple, with a teal center. It actually turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself!
So, I finished that top. I was pretty excited about quilting. My then fiance was graduating from college in a couple of months, so I thought I would make him a quilt, by which I mean I would make a quilt that I liked, and give it to him, since we would be sharing it after we got married anyway. I ended up choosing a scrappy star quilt from the Fons and Porter Fat Quarter Friendly book. I chose a bundle of Moda Wovens, and went wild picking out fabrics for the stars, borders, and backing. I was very excited.
I washed my fabric and got it all prepared and ready to cut. I thought I would cut out all of the star pieces first, since the bulk of the pieces were stars, and it wouldn't be very exciting. Then, I really looked at the quilt picture while reading the instructions. There were 154 stars in this quilt. The centers were 2 inches finished. I had to cut 154 2.5 inch squares. Not only that, but I had to cut 1232 1.5 inch squares, since each of the stars was to have eight points. Likely I had been praying for patience shortly before that, and this quilt is what I got.
This quilt involved a lot of sweat, blood, tears, and seam ripping. I even had other people at class seam ripping for me because they felt so bad for me. It wasn't a good scene. Finally, I got the dang quilt done, several months late, but Josh loved it anyway. It was completely done by me; pieced, quilted, binding put on, and label attached.
Josh loved the quilt (as did his mom, who asked me to make her one exactly like it. I made her one with thirty bigger stars instead.), and every time we make our bed and lay the quilt out, he says, "Have I ever told you how much I like this quilt?" This is possibly because when I gave it to him I made it plain that he had better appreciate everything I had invested in this quilt. Anyway, on to the applique part of this post.
I like to embroider too, because I don't have enough other projects to keep me busy. I got a little piece of muslin from somewhere, probably my mom's scraps, and traced the words off of a piece of paper that I printed off of the computer. My freehand embroidery is not so great, so I definitely needed some lines to go by. I embroidered all the letters, and then when I was done I pressed the square to set everything. Then, I laid the piece face down, and pressed all of the edges under about an eighth of an inch. After pressing the edges under, I placed the label where I wanted it, and blanket stitched all the way around the edges. I've also heard of people using freezer paper for this method, but at the time I just wanted to get the quilt out of my sight, and didn't really know that I was doing applique anyway. How I did it was a quick and dirty method that got the job done, but doesn't necessarily look really great. My corners are unfolding a little bit, but I keep telling myself that that adds to the charm of the quilt.
So, this wasn't actually a tutorial on applique for you, it was basically me showing off a project that perhaps had a tiny tiny bit of shoddy applique. But now, I'm going to tell you about a giveaway that's happening!
A blog that I follow, French Press Knits, is holding a giveaway. So no, we're not doing a giveaway here, but maybe someday! Melynda, the blogger at French Press Knits, sells these felted slippers, along with the pattern for anyone who wants to make their own. I first saw them when Stephanie Pearl-McPhee blogged about them right before Christmas, and like many other lemmings out there, went straight to Melynda's site and bought the pattern. Stephanie, also known as the Yarn Harlot, has quite a few readers, so once she blogged about the slippers, Melynda's pattern sales went really wild. One of the sites that she sells them on requires her to email PDF copies of the pattern to whoever purchases them, and she was getting so many email requests that her email company flagged her as spam and shut down her email account. So anyway, these slippers are pretty great, and popular! :)
Melynda is giving away a free pair of custom made felted slippers on her blog. All you have to do is go to her blog, and comment on the giveaway post with your favorite color and button combo, and your email address. There are links to choices in this post as well, when I originally read it I thought I had to pick from every color and button in the world! Which is, incidentally, why I shouldn't read other people's blogs right when I get out of bed and before breakfast. She also includes different ways to get additional entries, so there is no reason that some nice person reading our blog shouldn't have a fighting chance! So, go check out that post, and her blog is pretty great too, so you can explore that as well. See you next time!
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