Swap Partners Announced

Check your email inboxes, you should have received an email from me with your parter information.

Kris and Heather
Michelle K and Mary Pat
Jen W and Sinta
Jen S and Synnove
Mary S and Wendy
Mary W and Carol
Cheryl and Michelle R
Joy and Francine
Raelene and Sandy
Darlene and Chrissy
Mary B and Mary K
Michele A and Michelle N

Please contanct me with any questions.  A special thanks to Sew Lux Fabric and Gifts for the coupon code for our participants. 

Announcing: Dandelion Quilts Mini-Quilt Swap 2012

1.  Piece and quilt a mini-quilt. For our purposes, we will define that as a small quilt anything under 35 inches in width/ length and anything bigger than 15 inches in length/width.

• a mini quilt is not a mug rug (I love mug rugs but this is not a mug rug swap)
• must use quilt shop quality fabrics
• must be quilted and have a binding
• sized between 15 and 35 inches
• this swap is intended for confident quilters, if you are new to sewing or any part of producing this quilt please sit this one out

2. Mail it to your partner by Thursday, May 31st. Please only sign up if you feel you can make the deadline. No one enjoys not receiving a swap package when they put a lot of effort into theirs. If an emergency happens, be kind and let your swap partner (and me) know when you feel they can expect to receive their package.  If you were late shipping from my previous swap, please do not contact me to sign up for this one. 
4. After you have received your package, please email or snail mail your partner a letter thanking them.
5. Have fun.
6.  Anyone that ships EARLY by MAY 18th and lets me know via an email will be entered in a drawing for a prize by our sponsers, Sew Lux Fabric and Gifts.  Chrissy and Linda have generously donated some nice goodies for us.  If you haven't ever shopped at Sew Lux, please click on the link and check it out.  They have great prices, great specials (sign up for their newsletters), quality fabric, and a very nice blog with cute tutorials.

I am limiting this swap to about 30 participants.  When I have enough, I will close sign ups and contact everyone.  Don't fret if you don't hear right back from me, I will contact you with your partner information as soon as I close. 

If you are interested, email me this information:

SUBJECT LINE:  Mini-Quilt Sign Up
1. First and Last name (I will not post last names on my blog.)
2. Your postal address.
3.  Are you willing to ship internationally?  yes/no
4. Your blog address (if you have one, it is not a requirement)
5. Your email address.

My email address is available in my blog profile. Feel free to email with any questions.

Update: we are filling up fast, I already have many swappers signed up. If this is a swap you do not want to miss, don't delay signing up. I will try to close sign ups early Sunday afternoon and get partner info out shortly thereafter.

Quilting away

Trying to finish up this baby quilt. I love the backing fabric.

Mini quilt- lil twister style

I finally had the chance to try out my new tool, Lil Twister, on this hunky dory material. I was pretty pleased with my first go at it. I think I'd like to get the ten inch one for baby quilts. It went faster than I thought it would.

Those of you who wanted another swap, get thinking of mini quilt projects you'd like to try. I will be launching another swap the 15th of April with a new theme and an awesome sponsor. I can hardly wait.

A mug rug mini tutorial

I had some Bliss scraps so I thought I would whip up a mug rug. This was a great project as it took about ten minutes from start to end. First,cut your fabrics:
Focus fabric(mine is blue): 6 x 8 1/2 inches
White accent stripe: 1 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches
Medium ric rac : 8 1/2 inches
Scrappy stripe: 4 - 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 squares
Backing and batting: cut to match your finished top I think mine was 8.25 x 8.5 but you should measure yours first

Time to sew! Stitch the four squares together end to end. You will sew them on the 1.5 side RST. Repeat until you have all four together. Press.

Next, sew the white stripe on. Again RST, lay the stripe on top of the scrappy stripe, align the 8.5 edges and sew a quarter inch seam. Press open.

You only have one more seam left and your mug rug top will be finished. Take your white/scrappy piece, your ric rac, and your focus fabric... Sandwich the ric rac in between the top of the white stripe and the bottom of the blue focus fabric (RST). Pin. Be careful to have the top edge of the ric rac pinned in the new seam. Stitch a .25 inch seam. Press open.

Your top is done. Do a little sewing room dance! Cut your backing and batting to match. Now you need to assemble the entire rug. Lay your batting piece down, top it with your finished top piece (very important- top needs to right side up), then place your backing piece right side down (very important). Pin all around the edges. See photo. When you sew, leave a 3-4 inch hole on the center of the blue edge for turning right side out. Stitch a quarter inch seam around, clip corners for a better result (be sure not to clip the seams), turn it right side out, pin hole shut, top stitch around the entire square. I added three lines of "quilting" to add a bit of security to the batting, but you may quilt as desired.

Look at final piece picture for guidance. I would have taken more pictures during the project but the tutorial was an after thought. I hope you like it.

Tote Along Tool Caddy by Sherrod Studios

Kim Sherrod is a personal blog buddy of mine and I was really proud of her when she entered MBS's Sliced competition. Kim designed this really cute bag for carrying all of your quilting tools and gadgets to classes. The bag is called Tote Along Tool Caddy. You can purchase her pattern at her Etsy store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/sherrodstudio

She asked me if I would be willing to test her pattern and of course I jumped at the opportunity. Great pockets, great use of stabilizers, easy to follow directions, cute buckle embellishment. If you have been wanting to try a bag pattern this would be a great one for beginners too. I made this in one afternoon.

This bag has lots of gifting possibilities. This is going to be a Christmas present for buddy's teacher next year,and I know she will love it. I did add five inches to the strap, just as a personal preference as a teacher to have a longer shoulder strap when carrying a bunch of folders home. But Kim's original strap length was generous too.

Finally doing some sewing

Having a pretty blissful first day of spring break here....