Another Great Way to Use Up My Stashed Fabric

      I started a second quilting project today.  I made my first scrappy string block using a paper towel as the foundation.  This was fun to make.  I will have to take some time to cut fabric strips, but that's as easy as sewing the block together.  I will make the center strip white on all the blocks so when I put the blocks together a border will be created with the white strips.  Very cool.

     And I'm still working on my scrappy 16-patch blocks.  I have 12 made so far.  I need 23 more for this quilt top.

     I have the fabric for my paper pieced stars (wallhanging) and it's been washed.  I just have iron the fabric and print out my paper piecing patterns to get started.  You can see the pattern and the fabrics here.

I Finally Finished My Scrappy Big Star Shower Curtain

   I had a hard time getting a good picture because the bathroom is so small with no window and I have to keep the door shut to keep the kitties away from the toilet paper.  But here is a picture of my shower curtain that I made from my stash.  I made the first border strips 6" long and how ever wide I wanted and the second border strips were 7" long and how ever wide I wanted.  The entire shower curtain is about 77" square.  It turned out better than I thought it would.  I'd like to make another to cover the shower doors in my master bath, but with different fabrics.

Found A Quick Way To Make My Shower Curtain Quilt

   So I'm sewing along on my tote bag projects and watching videos on the computer and I found a great way to make quilty shower curtain.  I love the Big Star quilt pattern and last year I made a quilt using the pattern.  I made the stars with 10" and 5" squares.  So easy and so much fun to make.  This is a picture of the quilt top before I sandwiched it.

   So I went stash diving yesterday to find big pieces of fabrics to cut 20" squares for my shower curtain star.  My star measures 52" x 52".  I'm going to add borders to make it bigger.  I want it to measure  at least 68 x 68".  To finish it I will add a backing fabric, do some straight line quilting, and put 12 buttonholes at the top to hang it.  Not a good picture, but it's not finished yet.  

   I finished all my tote bags.  I made four of them.  Super fun and really useful.  It was kind of hard for me to get a picture of all of them together.  Now I have some tote bags that match my bedroom curtains.  Fun stuff.

     

   I also finished my potholders that will be my hostess gift for Thanksgiving dinner.

  

    

Bead/Sewing Cat Picture Project

  I found this pretty picture on the internet.  This is an art drawing by Laurel Burch.  It's called "Flowering Felines."

   Ms. Burch drew colorful pictures of cats, dogs, horses, sea life and plant life.  Unfortunately, Ms. Burch passed away several years ago.  I found her work after I bought my bengal kittens, Taffy Morgana and Merlin almost 10 years ago.  I was all into cat everything and I knew I had to have some Laurel Burch cat stuff.  I bought a few pieces of jewelry, two pair of socks and three bags, but I never had anything by her to hang on my wall.  This picture is going on my wall with a few enhancements.

   Here are the two pair of enamel earrings that I cherish.

   Back to the picture.  After looking at Flowering Felines for a while I decided that beads were the way to go.  I wanted this picture to shimmer when the light hit it.  I printed the picture onto a fabric sheet made for my ink jet printer.  I used Avery 3384, 8 1/2" x 11" printable fabric sheets.  It worked very well in my HP ink jet printer and it printed right the first time.  When you use this type of product you have to make sure you put the fabric sheet in paper tray right so the picture prints on the fabric side.  The other side is glossy and has the adhesive to make the sheet an iron on.  I did a quick print test to make sure I put the fabric sheet in the paper tray the right way.  I mark a piece of paper indicating which way the paper was set in the paper tray so after I print I can figure out which way my fabric sheet should go in.  It only takes a minute to do and is worth the trouble to get the picture printed right on the fabric sheet.

    After printing my picture, I ironed it to a piece of muslin to stabilize it before I started adding beads.   The piece was stiff and I could not put it in an embroidery hoop.  I also had a hard time finding the exact spots I wanted to put my beads from the back side of the work, but I used a flashlight to pin point the exact spot I wanted to put my needle in from the back and that helped a lot.

     I did all the beads in the cats first, then I added the orange borders and finished beading the dots outside of the cats.  By the way, I thought sewing the orange borders on through the fabric sheet would leave an adhesive residue on my sewing machine needle, but it did not and it was really easy to sew through.  That was a nice surprise.  I used gold metallic embroidery thread to put the beads on and it was a real pain to work with.  I had a hard time separating my threads and keeping them from shredding while I sewed, but I wanted shimmer and I thought cotton embroidery thread would dull the shine of the beads.  I used multi colored 6/0 glass beads by Craft Designer that I found at Joann's Fabrics.

   The beading was done and it was time to frame this.  I bought the frame at Walmart for $5.00.  It was a 10" x 13" floating frame and the black part of the frame is actually clips that secure the piece to the glass.  Super easy.

Up close of the  beads.

   Cost for my picture was about $15.75.

   Done.