Our Quilt Guild just held a Paint Chip Challenge!  What’s that, you may ask?  Each participant got a paint chip and some simple rules—use three of the colors on your paint chip plus black or white.  Okay, I’m up for that.

Here’s the paint chip I got.

I chose to use the two on the left and the lightest one on the right.  Imagine, I had fabrics in my stash that worked great!

I had seen a tutorial for a cute table runner on the Knitty Bitties blog, so decided to make one.  It starts with half-square-triangles.

Once they were sewn together, I added wide rickrack.

I think the colors are pretty true to the paint chip.

Once the rickrack and borders were on, I layered everything, using the dark purple solid on the back and a scrap of cotton batting that I had left over from another project.

I knew I’d need three threads to quilt with.  I just don’t like light thread on dark fabrics and dark thread on light fabrics!  Once again, my stash—thread stash, that is—came through!

I just did some straight line quilting on my Featherweight.  I used my foot as a guide to quilt a 1/4″ from the edge of the triangles.  For the other rows of quilting, I used the Frixon pen to mark the lines and loved it!

I trimmed away the batting, cut the backing 1″ larger than the top and just did a double fold, bringing the back to the front for the binding.

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to stitch the binding in place so I experimented with a couple of stitches on my Elna.  I decided on the middle stitch, a triple zigzag,but once I started on the actual runner, I had trouble with consistency of size.  So, after about 12″, I decided to tear it out.  Ugh!

Do you know this little trick?  After you’ve cut your stitches with your seam ripper, you can use a lint roller to pick up all the tiny treads!  As you can see, I had a lot!

In the end, I used the buttonhole stitch, and it worked great.

The finished product!

I’ve been saving the selvages from my fabrics and I’m getting quite a bin full.

A long time ago I made this fun Quilt In A Cup, but I haven’t done anything else–until now!

It’s really fun to see my name and Anna Lena’s on the selvages.  I’ve been wanting to do something with them, but it seems like there’s never time for a project that isn’t FOR something–to support a fabric line, for a class, for a book.  So, a few days ago, I decided to heck with everything else, I’m making something with my selvages!  The result is this little bag.

It was more of an experiment than a real project, and I’d do some things differently if I did it again. But it’s kind of cute and I did learn a cool thing when quilting the orange polka dot fabric for the bottom.  If you look at the polka dots just right, they make a perfect diagonal line!  So, I sat down at my Elna and just followed every other line of dots to do my grid quilting, and it worked perfectly.

I think you can see it better from the back.

I’m going to remember that for a future project!

I think I’m in love

I’ve spent the last few days appliqueing circles–not my favorite thing, but not that bad, just time consuming.  The number 7 stitch on my Elna made it quite easy.  And, it’s paid off.  I love the results!  This is the sample I’m doing for Quilt Market with my new fabric line called Sweet Pea.  Eventually it will be a free pattern.  I posted about the line on the My Quilt Village blog this morning, but I didn’t have all the blocks done then.  At this point, it’s just up on the design wall.  I still have to decide on borders, but first, I’m off to get these blocks sewn together!  

My new fabric line has arrived. Yeah! This is my first line with Timeless Treasures Fabrics, and I’m soooooo pleased with it. The colors came out just like I wanted. I’ve been designing 1930′s repro prints for a while now, and with this line we’ve gone a little more hip with the colors. They’ll still work for those people who want to recreate the look of vintage quilts, but they are also young and fun and chic! The blue is a little bit dusty, the orange is true (that’s me, true to my orange!), the green is a little bit apple-y, the purple not too red and not too blue and the yellow is sharp and crisp. I’d love to know what you think of the colors.

As always, I’ve done a panel, but this time, it’s not blocks or a wall hanging, it’s an apron panel – the Saucy Circle Apron! Circle aprons are so flattering, and I think this one is adorable, although while I was trying to arrange the ties for the photo, I kept getting images of the Trix bunny in my head!

It’s done with the Daisy May print and has the Duo Dot for the apron strings. You can make this apron from the pre-printed panel. All you need is a little piece of fusible interfacing for the waist band, and everything else is printed right on the fabric – including the instructions!

If you want to make it reversible, you can buy two panels or an extra yard of fabric and have two aprons in one! It took me just an hour and a half to stitch this one up. Here are some photos I took along the way.
I used one panel of orange and one of green, stitched them together, turned them right-sides-out and top-stitched.

Then I did the same thing with the apron strings. The top-stitching is important so the apron still looks good after you wash it, and it doesn’t take any time at all. (If you’re not doing the reversible version, you only have to hem the edges!)

I don’t have a lot of experience garment sewing, and it always amazes me that you can stitch something round to something straight and it works! Here I’ve pinned the waistband to the apron. The anti-pinning voice in my head says, “You can do it without pins.” But the anti-ripping voice is louder and says, “If you don’t want to rip, pin!”

Once that’s stitched on, it’s just a matter of flipping it over to the other side and stitching again. More pins, please.

Almost finished! It’s just a matter of slipping the apron stings in the end of the waistband and top stitching everything.

Wasn’t that easy! If you’ve been thinking of having a handmade Christmas, think about a few Saucy Circle Aprons!

I’m Karen Snyder and I approve this message!