Design Wall Daisies

Top of the morning quilty friends!  Hope you each had a wonderful weekend filled full of whatever makes you giggle.   I didn't get to stick to my weekend plan of quilting on the frame.  As soon as I touched my quilting machine ...she broke.  Oh well what can you do but whine to Mr. Podunk, ask him to fix it and move on.  This was the perfect opportunity to work on a UFO.  There's plenty to choose from in various stages of completion.  But the one below caught my eye.

A cute little stack of 50 or more mini dresdens.

If you've been hanging around my blog for awhile you probably remember my Daisy quilt.  Not sure why this one became a UFO because I LOVE IT.  It might have been the applique.  Due to the little dresdens being randomly placed on the quilt top over seams it's a little bit of a pain to machine stitch them to the quilt.   It was a even trickier to glue baste them in place as the quilt hung on the wall.

 All basted and ready to stitch.

 Awe now look at that, so springy and cute.  Why did I ever stop working on this?

~ Lea Anne ~

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How low can you go?

 Working with scraps can be quite the challenge.  You can't just grab a nicely folded piece of fabric and make a few quick cuts and start stitching.  The picking and cutting of fabrics can take days sometimes.  This year I've been working on keeping all my scraps sorted by color instead of throwing them all in one large tote.  So far it's working out much better.  My daisies are coming together quickly with my new system in place.

The biggest problem now is throwing away fabric.  Every quilter has a limit to what they will keep.    The dresden blades are about 1 x 2 inches unsewn.  So that tells you my scraps can be very small.   I've managed to get the first round of chain stitching done.   So how do you decide what to toss?

Here's my rule for scraps.  Below is Kay Bucklelys Perfect Circles.  These are the best thing since sliced bread if you love doing applique.  My set has been used to the point they need to be replaced.  You can find a perfect circles tutorial here. Well anyway this is how I decide if its trash or scrap.  See the little circle on the fabric?  That's the smallest circle template, so this tiny piece of fabric is saved.  Now I know you're thinking when would this template ever be used?  

Actually I've used them several times.  Here's my favorite!  The center block is block 2 from Erin Russeks My Tweets BOM.  Sorry it's no longer a free BOM but it can be purchased here.  

So how low can you go?  

Linking up today!   You could too!  It's always fun to find new to you bloggers and see what's stitching around the world.  Click right HERE to Bee Social.

~ Lea Anne ~

Freebies from Erin Russek@Onepieceatatime

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DWM - Making my own plexi template

 Last weeks DW blunder has been fixed.  Well as much as it's going to be fixed.  The center daisy will be the oddball.  The design plan was for all the blocks to look like the center one but due to my lack of paying attention to detail... the plan changed.  I'm not complaining, that's just part of my designing process.  Starting with a idea, then building upon it.  Okay so that's a line of bull, but it sounded good.  It's really me being stubborn and not wanting to take apart another block and not wanting to add more UH-OH units to the collection I already have.  

If you've been following me for awhile you know that I'm a huge fan of white backgrounds.  While putting the blocks on the wall it struck me that there's a lot of white space.  Great for showing off quilting, but it just didn't set right with me this time.  My first thought was to trim away some of the block.  That would mean adding more to the scrap bin, so that option was quickly tossed aside.  Option B was to add more color, thus using up some scraps.  After tossing around a few ideas for a day or two I decided more dresdens.  Small 5" dresdens.  My dresden ruler doesn't go that small.   What I wanted was a dresden blade that had just enough room to press the quarter inch to the middle.  The store bought ruler I have only goes to 1/2".   So I searched the internet for a free template with no luck.  With a little help from EQ7 I printed a template, glued it to a piece of plexiglass, scored it, snapped it, and sanded the rough spots.  TA DA!    Now cutting the small pieces will go so much faster.  Did you see the little dresdens in the picture above?   

Just a quick question for bloggers.  I've been tagged for the Blog Hop Around the World.  I need to tag 3 more bloggers to join in the hop.  My search for bloggers has hit a brick wall.  Would you like to be tagged?  This just means writing a blog post.  The hop is basically a way to meet new to you bloggers or find out more info on your favorite bloggers.  If you like to join in the fun leave me a comment on this post and I'll send you the blog hop information.

Linking up!

Judy@patchworktimes

And

Connie@Freemotionbytheriver for linky Tuesday

and

click here

~ Lea Anne ~

FREEBIE 

Click here for the free pattern from CarterQuilter

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