What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It was a productive weekend! I had several projects keyed up for a finish this weekend. A few were gifts, but one was selfishly a project I had been planning to try (just for me) for a while. I tried my hand at couching last year with some limited success with my mini Xmas trees. Couching is a technique where you incorporate decorative threads, cord, or yarn on the surface of a fabric. You stitch it in place with other finer threads. In my case, I feed my yarns in with my longarm when stitching a design. The first time ...

Hand made buttons for a seam.

hand made buttons

Paper and silk velvet buttons,a video.

pockets and embroidered buttons....

auditioning lace a a bowl of buttons

embellishments, buttons, beads,

hand embroidered buttons and beads

Ever since moving to Southern California 30 years ago, I have marveled at the region's windmills, especially the miles of them between my Los Angeles home, and the "Road to California" quilt show in Ontario, CA, that I visit annually. They look like this:

embroidery on paper and five buttons

Ribbon, buttons and embroidered snippets.

... who's got the button? I do!This huge jar of buttons represents three generations of button hoarders keepers collectors! I have inherited the button baskets that belonged to my grandmother as well as my mother; keep in mind that I already had a very healthy-sized, full, button tin of my own! In an effort to tidy up, organize and consolidate, these buttons now all occupy the same space! This

... who's got the button? I do!This huge jar of buttons represents three generations of button hoarders keepers collectors! I have inherited the button baskets that belonged to my grandmother as well as my mother; keep in mind that I already had a very healthy-sized, full, button tin of my own! In an effort to tidy up, organize and consolidate, these buttons now all occupy the same space! This

I'm been playing around with turning flat quilting templates into 3-D constructions. Here's one of my new experiments

It's 8" tall. I think it's a spinal column vase, and it started with a 2.5" template acquired years ago. 

Longtime quilters recognize this as a classic apple core shape. Google "apple core quilts" you'll find books, patterns and kits to make scrappy quilts with hundreds of pieces this shape. Especially "charm" quilts, with a different fabric for each piece.

The results are definitely charming - but never charming enough for me to want to make one ...

embroidered hexagons and oversized hand wrapped buttons

hand embroidered buttons and embroidered gingham tokens

The embroidered pink gingham is new here, this one is 306 squares as opposed to the 567 squares from this post. I actually messed up with the blue one. I...

hand wrapped buttons and stitching paper in class

pillows, pages and buttons

hand embroidered gingham buttons and stitch samples.