October 2011 FNSI ~ My Projects

I got started on FNSI in the afternoon since by time Friday night rolls around, I am running low on energy.

My first FNSI project was to machine embroider a t-shirt for Halloween. The design is Black Hat Society Witches from Embroidery Library. I had room in my hoop to add an additional line of text under the witches.

By time I got started on my 2^nd project, I was winding down. I got all of the parts and pieces cut, and even fused parts of the pumpkin, but that was as far as I got.  This is one of the mini wall quilts, called Little Quilts Squared by  The Wooden Bear.    This particular mini quilt is called October Scare.

I thought I would get around to finishing it today, but the day is slipping by and I have had other things to occupy my time. I still might get it done later tonight.

Thanks again to Heidi and Bobbi for hosting these monthly sew-ins, they always motivate me to spend just a little bit more time in my sewing room.

Going to the Stitching Sisters Embroidery Bash this Week End

My friends and I are attending the Stitching Sisters 2 day Embroidery Bash here in Phoenix this coming week end. 

We each embroidered similar t-shirts to wear to the event. This is the one that I will wear for the first day.

My friend,Carole, used her embroidery software to design the “Stitching Sisters” font and I combined a design I purchased from emblibrary.com . I did have to tweak it all a bit to fit into my hoop.
I will wear the other one that I blogged about previously for the second day.

I am looking forward to spending a couple of days with my friends learning some new embroidery techniques. 

I will also try to make a small tote bag to take along, but time is getting short so I may not get one done in time.

13 Quilt Shops in One Day ~ It Can Be Done!

Today is the last day of the “The Valley of the Sun Shop Hop”, which started 9 days ago on the 16^th of September.  My friends and I wanted to do the entire hop together, so we decided yesterday was the day we were going to do so. We (5 of the 6 of us, anyway) put on our matching Shop Hop T-shirts and headed for the first and farthest shop, WAY on the other side of the valley. We arrived about 15 minutes before they opened at 9:30am. We covered 270 miles and visited 13 shops before returning to our gathering spot around 7pm.

At each shop, we watched a short product demonstration before getting our passport stamped. Then we quickly perused the store and made our purchases before heading out the door to our next stop. Every store greeted us with comments on what a great idea and how cute our shirts were. They were great conversation starters, plus it made it easy to spot the members of our group as we got ready to leave each store. Before leaving, we made sure we got a group photo outside of each of the stores, trying to get the stores name in the photo (oops, one of the store photos is missing). Sometimes we were able to get someone to take the photo with all of us in it, other times we had to rely on one person from our group to take the photo.

There were 12 shops on the hop, so that left no time for stopping to eat (we all brought drinks and snacks to nibble on throughout the day), but we did make time to stop at Patrick’s Quilt & Create Studio since we were right there.

We bought copies of the newest issue of Quilting Celebrations magazine and got them autographed by Patrick. I also bought a yard of his fabric (the blue swirly pattern in the photo with the magazine), wishing I could have bought more.

By time we arrived at our final stop, about 10 minutes before they closed, they were actually expecting us! As we walked in, they told us they had heard about us throughout the day. We watched the demo on the books they are using to teach classes on some beautiful quilts they had there.  We got our final stamp on our passports and turned them in for the drawing. We tried to make our purchases quickly so we didn’t keep them too late, and were out the door by 6:15.

As a group, we made purchases at every shop, some of us just purchased at more of the shops than others did.  We were surprised that the shops were not offering much in the way of sales or discounts during the hop since we (and MANY others) were spending quite a bit of time on the road and gas money to get to their shops.  We most likely would not have reason to visit many of the shops, due to distance, if it were not for the hop.  Most shops were only giving about a 20% discount on the item they were demonstrating with no other sales or discounts evident.  There was only one shop that was advertizing a couple of other discounts.

Here is what I got:

Cutting Edge Quilts – Binding Tool

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3 Dudes Quilting – Lil Twister & Frixion Gel Pen

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Sun Valley Quilts – Holiday Panel

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In Stitches – Hunter’s Star Cutting Guide

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What a fun day! I can’t wait to get started on my new projects.

Valley of the Sun Shop Hop 2011 ~ A T-Shirt Makeover

I am not a quilter, although I have made a couple of very simple rag quilts and a couple of machine embroidered wall quilts. I love anything that involves fabric and a sewing machine. Just as much as that, I love being in a store that sells fabric, supplies, patterns, books, etc.

A few of my sewing buddies and I are spending the day tomorrow shop hopping for the Valley of the Sun Shop Hop. There are 12 local Phoenix area quilt shops participating. Registration was $5 and included a charm and a passport that is stamped as each store is visited. If all 12 shops stamp the passport, it is entered into a drawing for a Bernina 350 PE. There will also be winners of $100 gift certificates.

My friends and I decided it would be fun to make matching shirts to wear on our outing. We decided on the inexpensive craft shirts that you can get for about $3 each at Joann’s and Wal-Mart, we chose the lime green.

We embroidered “Quilt Shop Hopper” and a quilter’s heart/feather design in purple thread.

Because I used the wrong bobbin in my machine during my first attempt at the embroidery, I caused a thread nest which needed to be cut and caused a hole in the shirt.

After fixing my goof and re-hooping the shirt, I used a heart design that I digitized to cover the hole.

After the embroidery was done, I did some alterations to the shirt.

I started by folding over the neckline edge to make it more narrow and stitching it with a long wide zig-zag stitch.

I also folded up the sleeves with a double fold and used the same zig-zag to stitch the fold in place.

I re-shaped the shirt’s hem edge and used a strip of steam a seam to fold up the new hem before using the zig-zag again to stitch it in place.

(The spots are water spots from steaming the hem. I didn’t wait for them to dry before taking the photo.)

Now I am ready for the fun to begin!

September 2011 FNSI ~ What I Worked On

I spent a little bit of time just finishing up a couple of ongoing projects, then it was time to do something just for FNSI.

I started with an oversized white t-shirt, the ones that you can pick up in the craft department of Joann’s or Wal-Mart for just about $3 each, and embroidered a design onto the front.

 I really need to perfect my stabilization abilities for this type of project, but I am getting there. I intend to also do a fit make over on this shirt. I have tried it on a couple of shirts already, but have not been happy with the end result. I will try a different approach on this one and will make a blog post on the finished result.

The embroidery design I used is Dahlia Trio from Embroidery Library.

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The second project I did was to do a sample stitch out of a design that I digitized.

I am thinking of embroidering this design onto a scrub top I will be making soon. I hated to just throw out the sample, so decided to make it into a mini mug rug for my desk.

I was able to use the stitch out and practice free motion quilting (with the help of a small glass of wine).

I didn’t want the binding to be bulky, so stitched just a single layer, cut 1 inch wide, to the front and then turned under the raw edge on the back. I really should have cut the binding strip wider so that I would have more raw edge to turn under on the back.

The back side of the binding is a bit wonky, but this was a practicing my skills project. I think it turned out cute.

Thanks to Heidi and Bobbi for hosting Friday Night Sew In each month. It is truly a motivator to spend some time in the sewing room.