Crayon Rollups {for Church}

Crayon Rollup

Like a lot of churches we have children's bulletins for the Worship services. It's full of fun enrichment activities for our little ones. We provide crayons for them in little ziploc bags, but as soon as I saw this tutorial Summerfield Quilts blog, I knew it was just what we needed for the crayons.

When I came across this perfect fabric for the project at JoAnn's it was time to get stitching.  The original tutorial I followed {the link is above} used a 22" length of fabric with room for 24 crayons. For these I cut it down to just 12 inches and still had room for a good variety of crayons.

All I needed was the decorative fabric, some fabric for the pocket, flannel for the middle, hair elastics and a button. A yard of the crayon fabric was enough to get seven crayon roll-ups out of it.

6" x 12" pieces cut out and read to piece together. The green strips have already been pressed in half.

Ready to be rolled up

From cutting to finish this took right about an hour or so.  Another quick & easy project.

All rolled up and ready to go.

It turned out so cute, I can hardly wait to finish the rest and see what the kids think of them.  For the complete tutorial click here.  After adjusting the height, these would be great for colored pencils and ink pens too. Wish I'd had these when my guys were little, perfect for keeping things contained.

May your day be greatly blessed!
Marcia
a.k.a. Little Pink Rose

A Chunck of a Pincushion

For as long as I've been sewing I've had these little tomato pincushions. There's this love hate relationship that I have with them. Pincushions are very helpful while sewing, but all the ones I've ever had or seen have been so light weight that I end up chasing them around the sewing room.

Tiny & pathetic tomato pin-cushion

With the lightest bump away they go. Then I was inspired....first by the cutest little chicken pincushion I stumbled across in a local quilt shop. Not only was it adorable, it had the weight I've been yearning for, it was filled with crushed walnut shells.  I snatched up a pattern to make an adorable chicken for my own sewing room. It still sits in my to-do pile.

But a few weeks ago,  this blog post from A Girl In Paradise came across my desk.  With just a couple of hours maybe less, I whipped together this chunk of a pin-cushion filled with walnut shells. 

The Chunk

Almost 2" thick

Big Chunk vs. tiny tomato
It's obvious who's winning this battle

I can already tell that there will be no hate for this pincushion, there's only lots and lots of love.  So quick, so easy and so very, very useful!!! Love it!!

Marcia,
a.k.a. Little Pink Rose

Practice = Improvement

As you already know from my last post I've been practicing these intimidating feathers. There have been points along the way that I had to remind myself of two things.... 1) This is only practice and 2) This is your personal quilt and not a customers, so it's okay if it's not perfect.  There are some places that I'm really tempted to go back and pick out the stitches and do it again.  But, I'm leaning a bit toward leaving it exactly like it is, as a reminder of where I started. It would also serve as a reminder that about what a difference patiently practicing makes. Improvement is easily seen in this practice quilt. If it had been a customers quilt, there would have had to be a lot more practice before starting on the actual quilt and then picking and restitching of stitches in several places.

For this practice quilt I divided the quilt border into four sections to be quilted independently of one another.  This is the first section. With a quick glance it looks okay, but looking a bit closer many mistakes and bobbles can be seen.  First lesson learned.....match the quilting thread to the fabric, little mistakes will be much less visible. Though if you want the stitching to stand out a contrasting thread definitely fits the bill.

Practice section one

In the second section there is marked improvement, but still several areas where I struggled with how the feathers laid against one another. Second lesson learned.....make sure the machine is threaded correctly before beginning to stitch. Improper threading does make ripping out stitches and starting over necessary.

Practice section two

I like the long feathers that fill the entire 3 inch border, but it's obvious in this third section that especially in the concave sections I was struggling to get each one proportioned correctly. The outside section of feathers was stitched second and looked much better than the inside section.....improvement is obvious.

Practice section three

Success!! On this last section I decided to make the feathers just a bit smaller and not try to fill the whole border.  I really like how this section turned out. Patient practice makes a huge difference!!

Last Practice Section

For now I'll continue practicing the longer feathers on paper until I can figure out how to get them to lay together correctly. It's about time to start a new quilt...this time a custom ordered T-Shirt Memory Quilt. I'm already laying it out in my head and looking forward to seeing the finished product.


Marcia
a.k.a. Little Pink Rose

Ringing in the New Year

When I was younger I took acrobatic classes, piano lessons and in high school played the flute. The one commonality in them all is that the teachers demanded that I practice, practice, practice.  As a kid I kind of looked forward to the day when I'd be all grown up and wouldn't have to practice ever again. 

I have to laugh at my childhood wish.....especially since I've spent the last few days ringing in the new year practicing. I've Practicing quilting stitches, some of which intimidate me and I've been practicing speed control while quilting, in an attempt to attain proper thread tension.

Practice piece marked with heat and water soluble ink....all easily removable with a blast of steam.

I'm always amazed at how different the stitching looks once the marks are removed.

During all this practice I've realized that I'm just as much of a perfectionist as I've always been....maybe worse.  And even though this is just a practice piece I was very critical of and unhappy with every mistake along the way.  Time to get back to practicing I will over come these darn feathers that intimidate me so much as well as those pesky thread tension issues. 




Marcia
a.k.a.  Little Pink Rose

Creative Quilting

More and more I'm coming to truly enjoy Free Motion Quilting.  When I first tried my hand at it with the typical stippling stitch I was filled with dread and a twinge of fear.  What if I messed it up? What if I couldn't make it look okay? What if....? What if...? 

The simple answer,  stop worrying about all the what if's and in the words of Nike, just do it! 

Since that first try, I've been practicing. You know what they say......practice makes perfect.  I'll be the first to say that there's still room for improvement, I'm far from perfect. But, I do love how the quilting on the latest quilt is turning out. 

Hope you've enjoyed the sneak peak of this latest quilt.

Blessings,
The Little Pink Rose
Marcia