Machine Applique

A week or so after I finished the hand-stitched applique pillow, I made this two-foot square wall quilt for my bathroom. The colors match my shower curtain and towels, and the dragonflies I appliqued on this quilt were traced from the dragonflies on my shower curtain. I had such fun making this quilt over Labor Day weekend. I never realized you could make a whole quilt in one weekend. Granted, it is a very small quilt! But still...

I tried my hand at machine appliqueing the two dragonflies on this quilt. You set your sewing machine to do a very tight zigzag stitch, and it looks like a satin stitch all around the edge of the dragonflies. I practiced on a small dragonfly on scrap fabric first, and then I just went for it. I was a little fearful of messing up my quilt, but the stitching went fine. I dressed it up by adding some irridescent bugle beads to the wings of the dragonflies, and randomly added some assorted seed beads around the perimeter of the quilt as I hand quilted it. This was lots of fun, and I love the colors!

Learning to Applique

I have been taking another break from paper crafting to do some more quilting. I decided to try my hand at some applique. I saw this bird pillow in a quilt magazine and decided to see if I could do this. I found out there are several different types of applique, and many variations on those types. This pillow uses a hand sewing method, sometimes called a slip stitch or blind stitch, where you fold under the edges of each cut out piece and sew it to the background fabric so that the stitches don't show on the front. I found it tedious to first trace the pattern from the magazine onto freezer paper, then cut out the shapes, then place the shapes on fabric and trace around them again, and then cut out each shape from the fabric, leaving an extra quarter inch all the way around to be sewn under later. But, I did enjoy making this pillow overall, and I like the way it looks on my bed. Eventually I'll be putting a new quilt on my bed (first I have to hand quilt it, very time consuming!), and this pillow will match the colors in that quilt better. I also plan to use more of the pink and green paisley fabric to make dresser scarves in the bedroom, so it will all tie in together nicely.

Glitter!

I just bought a glue pad and a glue pen and some glitter and wanted to play with them. I stamped this image from Club Scrap and then used the glue pen to highlight a few areas on the petals of the flower and to dot the center of the flower. Then I sprinkled two different shades of glitter over the glue. The scan does not show up the shininess of the glitter, which makes a nice accent on the card, but you can see the darker areas on the petals where the glitter was used. Then I used 3 matte brads, and I'm not sure matte was the right way to go. It may be too much contrast against the glitter.
Glitter is fun, but messy! But I will be playing with glitter and stamping again.

For the Birds

I was having a little fun with birds today. I love all the new bird images that are coming out in the craft world these days. This was a quick little card where I tried out some punches, an embossing folder, and a bird stamp.

The corner punch is Martha Stewart; cuts and embosses a fold line to make an actual photo corner.

The little brown bird was stamped twice with different inks and cut out.

The stamp is an unmounted stamp from Club Scrap's Birds of  a Feather kit.

The flying bird is a Martha Stewart punch.

The embossing folder is from QuicKutz, my first folder of theirs. I am a bit disappointed that the image is not embossed deeper. Other brands have a deeper embossed image than this. So I tried to ink the grass along the bottom and did not do such a great job of it. But I was just playing around, and didn't decide to ink it until after the whole card had been put together. So next time I will ink the panel first, and if I don't like it I can make another and try again.

The blue card base is paper from Club Scrap's Birds of a Feather kit, and the green mat is from Club Scrap's Refresh kit. The light green paper is SU, Green Galore. 

Matching up different papers

Here was an attempt to use up some paper, and try to match up some miscellaneous patterned paper from my stash with some Club Scrap cardstock. I think these went well together.

Fun cards

Here are some fun cards I made using Club Scrap products. It was part of a challenge to mix and match things from multiple kits. I used papers from 4 kits and stamps from 3 others. I really like the fun color combination.

Sympathy Card

Here's a sympathy card I made out of Club Scrap paper and stamps.