Hand Quilted with Love

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I recently ordered a copy of Sarah Fielke’s new book, Hand Quilted with Love. Wow, I love these quilts. She has some simple quilts for beginners as well as more challenging quilts for experienced quilters. All of the quilts reflect Sarah’s unique color sensibility and of course, they are hand quilted beautifully. If that makes you tired to think about, you can make these patterns and machine quilt them! Here are some of her amazing quilts.

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In the introduction, Sarah says:

Try new things, be adventurous, and crack your own quilting code. Don’t be hung up on whether something is right or wrong, or on whether you are a “modern quilter” or a “traditional quilter”, or even an “art quilter”: just be a QUILTER, be creative and love what you do. It’s what I do every day – and I can tell you, I’m a happy girl because of it.

I couldn’t agree more! The internet gives us so much inspiration, but sometimes I think we can get too caught up in what others are doing rather than being true to our own sense of style. All modern quilters borrow from the past to one degree or another and you don’t need to fit someone else’s definition of what a quilter should be.

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Sarah has a very helpful free video over on Craftsy where she shows you some of her secrets for hand quilting. She also has a class over there called Big Techniques from Small Scraps, which looks like it is full of useful ideas. And for more inspiration, be sure to take a look at Sarah’s blog, The Last Piece.

Stitch Savvy

Today I’m excited to be part of the Stitch Savvy blog tour! Written by Deborah Moebes (author of Stitch by Stitch: Learning to Sew One Project at a Time), this book will help take your sewing ability to the next level with 25 projects of different levels that allow you to choose your own sewing path as you learn. The bags, quilts, clothing and home décor projects in the book are useful as well as pretty. The book is hardcover, spiral-bound, and includes a CD with printable PDF patterns.

Deborah is the owner of Whipstitch Sewing Lounge here in Atlanta and is a great teacher, which really shines through in her book. With photos of the step-by-step instructions and advice given with Deborah’s energetic writing style, this book conveys both Deborah’s experience as a teacher as well as her enthusiasm for sewing. As you finish each project, there is a section with suggestions for projects in the book to try next that utilize the same set of skills. Though I haven’t had a chance to make any of the projects yet, I’d love to make the Beaded Evening Clutch (pictured here on the cover), followed by the Knit Top and Photo Transfer Wall Art. There is a wide variety of projects, so something to interest anyone here, whether you love to make quilts, bags, clothing or pillows.

Below you can see some projects from the book, along with some of my own fabric suggestions. See, I mostly like to shop for fabric and think about what I will make. And I’ve suggested a couple of fabrics from my new Stamped collection, of course. I really do need to sew some things with it, but I need to get some more fabric first!

Of a Feather by Rashida Coleman-Hale for Cloud 9 Fabrics.

Leonard from the Liberty Bloomsbury Gardens Collection.

Triangles from my Stamped collection for Kokka.

Crosshatch by Carolyn Friedlander from her Architextures collection for Robert Kaufman.

Echino Bicycles in spring green.

Country Mice from the Nursery Versery collection by Heather Ross.

Ladybugs in red from my Stamped collection for Kokka.

Kawaii Folk Art print.

Suzy’s Dollhouse by Suzy Ultman for Robert Kaufman.

Supernova by Lizzy House from her Constellations collection for Andover.

Scaredy Cat in Pink from Kokka.

Gabbie Serendepity by Maude Asbury for Blend Fabrics.

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I hope you’ll check out Stitch Savvy and visit these other blog stops on the tour:

Wednesday, January 8:  One Shabby Chick

Thursday, January 9:  Pink Chalk Studio

Friday, January 10:  Noodlehead

Monday, January 13:  Fresh Lemons

Tuesday, January 14:  This Mama Makes Stuff

Wednesday, January 15:  I’m a Ginger Monkey

Thursday, January 16:  MADE

Friday, January 17:  Stitched in Color

Tuesday, January 22:  Creative Thursday

Wednesday, January 23:  Whipstitch

Ruby Star Wrap-Along

Today I’m excited to be part of the Ruby Star Wrap-Along to celebrate the new book Ruby Star Wrapping from the sweet and talented duo of Melody Miller and Allison Tannery. Melody made the projects and Allison wrote the text, then Melody’s husband took the photos and Allison’s husband did the layout. Those are some seriously talented couples! The book features simple and creative ideas for gift packaging, many projects using re-purposed materials or items you may have on-hand. With 30 project ideas plus variations, this book will inspire you to put that extra time into making a gift look special.

I chose to do the felt ball theme, because I haven’t done any felting in a while, and I wanted to try it again. Now, it’s much easier to buy felt balls. I recently bought some nice ones from this Etsy seller and plan to turn them into garland. But you can also make them!

This is a very good video that will guide you through the wet felting process, but truthfully, it took me about 10 minutes to make each ball and unless you enjoy pruning up your hands in hot soapy water, you might prefer to just buy them! I do think wet felting is a fun project for a craft night or a project to do with kids (wearing rubber gloves). You just need wool roving, hot soapy water and elbow grease. You can see my first couple of attempts over on A Happy Stitch, where I wrote a post for Melissa’s Fail Friday about craft failures, or as I call them — experiments. Anyway, I don’t know how my friend Laura has the patience for felting.

So…now you’ve made (or bought) the felt balls. What to do with them? Melody has some great ideas for garland and gift packaging. I had some medium gauge wire on hand, so I tried the lollipop bouquet (pictured in the two photos from Melody’s book below).

Once I’d made a little grouping of three, I walked around the house looking for something to attach them to and found our wreath. They would look really sweet as “berries” tucked into a wreath.

But then I saw that they looked a bit like balloons too and my older daughter is crazy about doll stuff, so I sneaked a Calico Critter out of her room and took this photo. I tucked the wire under and wrapped tape around it so the ends wouldn’t be sharp. Oh, I wish I could just make miniature doll things all day long.

Be sure to post your own projects from Ruby Star Wrapping in the flickr pool here and if you don’t have the book, go get it! Here’s the full wrap-along tour schedule:

11.7.12 – Anna of noodlehead

11.9.12 Amanda of A Crafty Fox

11.12.12 – Elizabeth of Oh, Fransson!

11.14.12 – Brooke of Pitter Putter Stitch

11.16.12 – Erin of Two More Seconds

11.19.12  – Jennifer of BettyCrockerAss

11.21.12 – Rochelle of Lucky Lucille

11.23.12 – Sukie of Sukie – don’t you know who I am?

11.26.12 – Elizabeth of Don’t Call Me Betsy

11.28.12 – Gina and crew of Bolt Neighborhood

11.30.12 – Ellen of the Long Thread

12.3.12 – Katie of Swim, Bike Quilt

12.5.12 Faith of Fresh Lemon Quilts

12.7.12 Lee of Freshly Pieced

12.10.12 Maureen of Maureen Cracknell Handmade

12.12.12 Sara of Sew Sweetness

12.14.12 Colleen of The Busy Bean

12.17.12 Amy of Diary of a Quilter

12.19.12 Monica of Happy Zombie

1, 2, 3 Sew in Swedish

What’s more exciting than seeing your book in print? Seeing it printed in Swedish! For those of you in Sweden, I think it will be in stores soon, with mönster medföljer! I think that means “patterns included”. For those in the U.S., you can get the English version at amazon!