Jingle BOM

This is the block I posted the other day with the nasty pink stain on it.  It was on that right corner.  Can't see it now can you?!  I love that it came out!  If you want to see what other people are doing for this Block of the month you can check it out here, Jingle Belles.  There are some really beautiful blocks showing up.

I just wanted to make a quick note on which fabrics I choose and why.  For Christmas I received a bundle of Moda Marbles that worked perfectly for this block.  So I have decided to go with mostly marbles for all of it.  Since my small bundle wasn't going to be enough I recently ordered more of these colors and a couple more since this quilt is going to be Christmasy.  I also decided to order some Moda Swirls too.  I wanted to stick with fabrics that I knew wouldn't get discontinued on me since I didn't know how much to order.  I am going to wait to pick out my sashing colors and borders until all of the blocks have been posted.  I can't wait until the next block gets posted.  This one is going to be a pieced block!

WIP Wednesday

I have decided this week to try to start participating in a weekly post taking place over at the blog Freshly Pieced.  Here is the link, Freshly Pieced.  This week I thought I would share an embroidery block that I have been working on for the past few weeks.  This pattern is Snow Happens by Bird Brain designs.  After it is all done it is going to be a table runner. As you can see I only have one snowman and a quarter or so left to do. I am very excited.  

I just recently started doing embroidery and I have to say that I am loving it.  I use Stick Fabri- Solvy.  With this stabilizer I just print out the pattern on my printer right on the stabilizer.  Then I take the backing off the stabilizer and place it on the fabric.  You can embroider right over it and when you are done it all washes out.  It saves so much time and makes it so you don't have to do any tracing.  Its easy to needle through and most times I find I don't even need to use a hoop.  

So if you would like to see what everyone is working on head over to Freshly pieced and check it out.  It is a site that I have been following for awhile now and its really great!

Oops

I just recently started a free block of the month I found on the blog One Piece at a Time.  She does beautiful applique.  It is going to be an applique/pieced quilt with Christmas themes.  She just released the first block last week.  I was so proud of myself that I had it almost done this weekend.  All I had left to do was make the berries then applique them down.  As I was making the berries I noticed a small spot on my background fabric.  It looked a little bit like chocolate.  Darn it.  So I took a damp paper towel and tried to remove it.  And then being the smarty I can tend to be sometimes I took my iron to that corner to dry it off so I could finish applying the berries.  When I had placed my block on the ironing board I had a small piece of red fabric under it.  And so when I combined the applique block, the red fabric and the iron I made a huge mistake as you can see in the next picture.  The red fabric bled on my block.

I was quite distraught.  I did not want to do this block over again.  I was quite proud of the job I had done so far.  So my lovely husband, Mr. J, went to the store and got some stain remover.  He came back with a Tide Stain Stick remover and Stain Devils Ink and Crayon remover.   First I tried the Tide.  While it worked a little it still didn't help that much.  Next I tried the Stain Devils.  I had never heard of it before so I was a bit skeptical.  But now I am in love.  It got the stain out almost completely.  In fact if you didn't know it was there I bet you couldn't see it.  Here's a link to the product, here.

So now my block is almost complete.  I never did finish the berries last night because of the Super Bowl.  Hopefully I should be able to post the finish tonight.  

A-1 Dear Jane Block

I thought I would share some of the Dear Jane blocks I have done so far.

This is block A-1.  This was a straight forward easy block.  It took a little bit of time but it was entirely paper pieced and easy to do.