Travel Tray

Once again I find I'm pleased to have been clued-in about a blog freebie. Thanks to something shared on this blog, I linked to this blog for instructions to make a Travel Tray.

A travel tray is basically a mini quilt that you take along in your suitcase. When you want something for your jewelry, keys, eyeglasses and the like, you fold and snap together the corners to make the quilt into a tray.

This is how I intend to use mine.

Snaps or Velcro at each corner help form the sides. I opted to use snaps, concerned that Velcro might snag other items in my suitcase.

No big surprise, my tray is the one made with palm tree fabric.

All of these have a solid yellow fabric interior. The designer recommends using a light solid so you can see everything - even the smallest earrings - you've dropped in the tray.

Lovin' this freebie. You too?

Snow - October 10!

Drat! It's only October 10 and look what we woke to this morning. Snow, already! This is our back deck (those are brown chairs), and some unhappy potted herbs at the lower left.

Guess the only thing to do is slunk off to my sewing room for a whole entire day of staying put and being productive. Now that doesn't sound like such a bad idea...

Friday Flaunt - More Snowflake Medallion

I'm making relatively steady progress on the Snowflake Medallion quilt. Most recently I've added four more rounds to this square quilt. It's now 56-1/2" X 56-1/2".

Using the no waste method (see tutorial at left), I made 56 flying geese, and appliqued eight purple flower blocks. Also, there are a total of 64 1 cm appliqued circles!

Three narrow fabric borders came next, with the last two being mitered. I took extra time - with much practicing of sewing and unsewing - to make the mitered stripes match-up.

I'm lovin' the looks of this.

Four more rounds, yet to be added - two of them pieced, one with additional applique. Stay tuned until 2010!

(Each Friday, bloggers who belong to Quilting Down Under chat group post a flaunt of their productivity. Visit Cinzia's blog to find links to all 19 Friday Flaunt-ers.)

Grandchildren

Not that I'm a proud Nana, or anything like one, but these are the two sweeties - Celina and Tay - I'll see in person when I get to Australia. Aren't I blessed?

To my delight, Celina is already showing herself adept at quiltmaking. She'll be one of my best helpers at the next Stitchin' Mission in Sydney (Darling Point, to be specific).

In the News

An article about Stitchin' Mission, my quiltmaking ministry, appeared in today's Des Moines Register, on the front page of the Iowa Life section. I'm thrilled that Stitchin' Mission, and the quilters who participated in the most recent class, are receiving this recognition.

To God be the glory.

The article can be read online, here.

Noah's Ark Embroidered Blocks

With a new bub in the family, I've naturally turned to baby thoughts like, "What else can I make for baby?" Embroidery sounds good, especially because I can travel with it. (You know how I always like to have hand work to travel with!)

I've been inspired by Aussie quilters who are making some gorgeous pieces combining stitchery and patchwork. Friends here gave me advice, and bloggy Julie in Oz shared her insights and experiences with embroidery.

An aside: Julie and I swapped emails and Skyped. If you haven't tried Skype-ing yet, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's quite remarkable to not only talk - for free! - with someone on the other side of the world (Iowa, USA to Queensland, Australia), but see them too. Though I Skype with family almost daily, it's still a marvel to me that it's even possible.

After shopping for and gathering everything, I'm undertaking another new project with these supplies:

1. DMC embroidery floss - two strands separated (term: "stripped"), pulled from the skein and threaded into the needle with the thread grain.
2. Needles - Foxglove Cottage, size 9 embroidery/redwork needles, by Jeana Kimball
3. five inch spring embroidery hoop, used with the ring on top and the clamp on the bottom
4. white Kona cotton fabric backed with
5. something equivalent to "Whisper Weft." It's a white, 24"-wide, super-lightweight, woven fusible used for interfacing collars, backing t-shirts for quilts, and embroidery. You use this, or another layer of fabric basted to the embroidered design so you can carry threads across the back without shadowing on the front. (What an "ah-ha" moment that was for me when I figured it out myself!)

Bub's nursery theme is Noah's Ark. I saw this embroidery in a quilt at our Iowa State Fair, and I searched it out on the Internet. Inexpensive too.

I started embroidering on the smaller animal pairs, deciding to save the big ark design until I feel comfortable with the fusible backing, and my stitches.

I'll have to say that I always thought the most commonly-used embroidery stitch was the stem stitch, but since talking with Julie, I decided to try the backstitch. I used the "poke-stab" method. This is where I push the needle in from the top side of the embroidery, then move my hand to the bottom of the embroidery to push the needle up from the bottom.

Feeling confident, I moved on to another animal pair.

They are pretty small. Less than four inches square.

For them being such little blocks, it took a lot of time to choose floss colors. I resorted to looking on the Internet for photos some of the animals because I didn't know the colors of their beaks, bills, or hooves!

I'll probably backstitch all the blocks for this quilt, unless I come across places for other stitches. A good online resource for stitches is this one by Sharon B.

So now I've begun two embroidery projects, the other being "Snowmen from A to Zzzz." Sounds about right to me.