April Showers

Can you feel it?  It's coming, Spring is just around the corner. Actually today is the first day of Spring, but someone forgot to tell Mother Nature and the Weatherman.  Even though the weather is still a bit colder than normal, the little birds outside my window are getting more vocal in the mornings.  Earlier in the week while getting the mail I noticed that some of my spring bulbs are starting to peek through the mud and muck.  Can't wait to feel the warm sun on my face!  Of course with Spring comes lots of rain, it's better than snow, right?  Well in the spirit of Spring and my new found love for mini quilts, I designed April Showers.

The finished quilt is about 12 x 18.  It could be used as a placemat or mugrug.  I'll be using it for a wallhanging.

Can you see my quilted raindrops.  For some reason I just couldn't get a good picture of them.

 I drew them on with a water soluble marker,  and FMQ them on my domestic machine.  

Machine attached the quarter inch binding.  Oh there's those raindrops!

 The binding fabric before cutting.  Walmart clearance fabric from 10 yrs ago.  This is one of the first stash pieces purchased.

To make the quilting lines on the umbrella I used a dinner plate.  Wishing now that I had put some ricrac on the bottom edge of the umbrella.

The backing is one of those impulse buys, and then you wonder why you had the impulse.  

 So would you like to make one of your own?  If so you can find the templates here along with some general instructions.  In this PDF there is no setting template, only applique templates and measurements for the background fabrics.   The templates are already reversed for raw edge applique.   The picture below shows what you will get.  Enjoy!

I'm linking up with Connie over at Free Motion by the River.  

Hop on over and see what other quilters are excited about!

~Lea Anne~

Pin It

Bigger is better

When it comes to chocolate and money bigger is better.  In this case big is bad. While working on a small wall hanging yesterday I ran into an issue.  So I thought I'd share with you my results.

 The longer stitches on the right looked sloppy,  shortening the stitches on the left gave a smoother finish to the little scallop.

By enlarging this picture it's going to run into my side bar but I wanted you to see the difference in stitches.  (Maybe I should rework my blog template also) This is a small blanket stitch, about 3 threads wide and 4 or 5 threads long.   You can see on the right my progression . Reducing my stitch length every few stitches until on the last scallop it looks smooth and more defined.  On the left side you can see the entire scallop is stitched with the smaller length.  Satisfaction!  Don't even bring up the shadowing, I seen it and decided on this project to leave it.

Did you know that tomorrow is the first official day of Spring?  In celebration of Springs arrival I'll be sharing a free wall hanging pattern with you.  Yep it's the one in the pictures above.  

~Lea Anne~

Pin It