Uncategorized – Page 9 – Sew Bittersweet Designs

Sponsor Highlight – The Intrepid Thread & Giveaway

207 Comments / Uncategorized / By Melissa Dunworth

Happy Friday Everyone! Only 9 days left until Christmas – have you finished your sewing and shopping yet? I am mostly done – still need to take care of Anne and my dad.

If you want to get me something special you can start at The Intrepid Thread! Julie carries some of the best fabric lines available and constantly has new lines rolling into the shop. The last 2 weeks alone she had NINE lines hit the shop! Can you believe that?!? I swear – if I owned my own fabric shop I would be in sewing heaven.

I had the pleasure of meeting Julie when I was home in CA last month, she lives not to far from where I went to college. We had a nice lunch and Anne promptly fell in love with her. She is a wonderful spirit and a pleasure to work with. I ordered some yummy Rendezvous from her on Black Friday and it was at my doorstop the next Monday – all wrapped up in tissue paper, with a bow and a handwritten note. Julie always goes the extra mile.

Here is a just a small taste of some of the yumminess that hit her shop this month:

Art Elements by Pat Bravo — Art Gallery Elements by Pat Bravo

Domestic Bliss by Liz Scott — Domestic Bliss Charm Packs by Liz Scott

And my personal new favorite:

: Half Moon Modern by Moda Cotton Quilt Fabric

I know what I want for Christmas, do you?!? Well how about I give you a chance to make your Christmas fabric wishes come true?

Julie is offering one of my readers a $25.00 gift certificate to her shop, The Intrepid Thread, good for anything in the shop!

Does that sound like something you might like to have for Christmas?

You must be a follower of my blog to enter

1. Go to The Intrepid Thread shop and tell me what you would buy if you won (1 Entry)
2. Spread the word – blog, tweet or facebook about this giveaway, leave me a link (1 Entry)

That’s it! Two possible entries. I will leave this giveaway open until Friday, December 23rd and I will have the plugin And the winner is… pick the winner. I will announce the winner on Christmas Eve – someone is going to have a little extra something in their stocking this year, will it be you?

Good luck!

NOTE: Don’t forget, I am one of the bloggers who is going to lose Google Friend Connect in March 2012, please take a moment and follow me via Bloglovin’, Facebook, RSS or networked blogs. You are important to me and I want to be able to stay in contact with you! Check my side bar for all the best ways to stay in touch after GFC goes bye bye!

Sponsor Highlight – Fat Quarter Shop & Giveaway

203 Comments / Uncategorized / By Melissa Dunworth

If you are here from the Quilting Gallery Blog Hop Party – WELCOME!

If this is your first visit to my blog, my name is Melissa and I am a stay at home mom and army wife. I love to quilt and sew and it is my nap time passion. I have regular tutorials and giveaways from some pretty amazing sponsors – like today’s from Fat Quarter Shop. Please take some time to look around!

I would like to take a moment and introduce you to Fat Quarter Shop. They have been one of my sponsors since I launched my blog and they are wonderful to work with. I learned on Monday that they recently got in a new shipment of fat quarter bundles and I wanted to show you some of the new yumminess that is available!

There is so much to love about Fat Quarter Shop: fabulous customer service, fast shipping, and amazing selection!

One of my favorite things is their notions section. There are so many toys (a.k.a. tools) they carry that I would love to get my hands on! I recently had an opportunity to write a tutorial for the Notion of the Month – Triangle Papers. I have to tell you that I am in love!

With the 3 inch finished triangle paper – I was able to make 20 triangles in about 20 minutes and then whip up a fabulous little block – check out the tutorial that is up on Jolly Jabber.

Here’s the giveaway…a roll of half square triangle paper – you pick the size AND two 1/2 yard cuts of fabric. (That’s enough fabric to make 80 3″ finished HSTs!!! A wall hanging!!!)

The winner will also get to pick the fabric from two lines of fabric at Fat Quarter Shop:

Froggin by Sue Zipkin or Always by Deb Strain

You may be asking yourself, how do I enter?!? You must be a follower of my blog to win – check my sidebar – there are lots of ways to do this!

Leave a separate comment for each:

Tell me what your favorite fat quarter bundle is that Fat Quarter Shop carries. (1 entry)
Tweet or Facebook about this giveaway (tell me your twitter name please) (1 entry)
Blog about this giveaway (bonus entry)

The winner will be chosen by The Winner Is…wordpress plug-in and will be open until December 17th. I will announce the winner on December 18th.

Make sure you come back on Monday for a second giveaway in conjunction with the SewMamaSew Giveaway Day.

Have a Happy Friday!

Thankful Thursday

2 Comments / Uncategorized / By Melissa Dunworth

Every day I try and take a few moments to reflect on several things in my life that are good and wonderful. This helps me on even my worst days to realize just how blessed I am. There is a lot of good in my life, and while we do struggle with some issues – mainly health related in my family – I want to make sure that we spend time focusing on the good more than the bad.

Today I wanted to share with you a few of the things that I am thankful for and if you feel up to it please do the same with me.

Today I am thankful that I have a husband who supports my creative endeavors – it is so awesome when he takes the time to look at what I am working on and give me positive feedback and I especially love it when he throws in his 2 cents. You wouldn’t believe how many of his ideas are pure genius – I wish he would give me more of that, but I don’t want to push him. I am blessed to have someone who does not freak out when I go to the fabric store – instead he likes to see what I bought and hear about my next project.

Today (and everyday) I am thankful for Anne, at 2 years old she is already showing an immense interest in art – painting, drawing, sticker art – you name it! I love that she shows off her creative side regularly.

: Can you tell she loves to paint?

Oddly enough, today I am thankful that my neighbors dog woke up me. I know – totally weird! However, if the dog hadn’t woken me up I may have overslept seeing as I don’t use an alarm clock and I may have still been sleeping when Anne got up (coincidentally as I write this she is still asleep – baby girl had a rough night last night). Even the obnoxious barking dog has a place in my life today.

I hope you have a wonderful Thursday – be sure to come by tomorrow AND Monday – I have a couple of really fun and exciting surprises in store for you!

How do you bind your quilts? A few tips

6 Comments / binding, bottled rainbows, quilt, quilting, quilts, Uncategorized / By Melissa Dunworth

I have been quilting for about 10 years now and until October I have always bound my quilts the exact same way each time. I have cut 2.5 inch strips, sewn them together, folded them in half, sewn them to the front of the quilt and hand sewn them in the back. A couple of times I have skipped binding all together and just used the quick turn method (which really ISN’T that quick if you ask me!).

In October, I started working on Bottled Rainbows and I decided to do it as a quilt as you go project. This meant that instead of just having a binding around the outer edge of the quilt blocks, I had a binding around each block – that is 16 individual bindings…which is A LOT of hand work for someone who has arthritic hands.

Solution for tired hands:

When I blogged last week saying that the Flora quilt would be the first time I machine stitched a binding – I had actually forgotten about the Bottled Rainbows quilt – mainly because in the QAYG technique this is considered to be sashing – even though it is really the exact same method as binding.

I don’t have a great pictures of the binding on Fancy Flocks, you can kind of see in this picture that I just did a basic zig zag stitch on the binding.

For the Flora Table Runner I used the same Feather Stitch that I used for Bottled Rainbows, but I put the stitch right at the edge of the binding.

Finally I used it in a couple of mug rugs I made this weekend, I definitely could have hand sewn these because they are so small, but I was finally starting to really get a handle on machine sewing the bindings and it had finally become fun instead of frustrating (it takes a little practice).

For this project, I used a decorative star stitch on the binding and it turned out really cute – love the Christmas colors!

A quick break down of how I did it:

1. Make your binding strips using whatever method you usually do.

2. Attach them to the BACK of your quilt (when I hand sew I usually attach them to the front so my horrible stitching is on the back of the quilt)

3. Fold the binding to the front – now here you can choose to pin or not pin, I only pinned in half the projects I made (Bottled Rainbows and the mug rugs)

4. Select your stitch: Straight stitch, decorative, basic zig zag

5. Start sewing, if you are holding down the binding or pinning, simply make sure that you have folded the binding over far enough to cover the stitches from attaching the binding to the back you don’t want those to show after you have done your decorative stitching.

6. When you get to your mitered corners, put on decorative stitch in each corner and that will be sufficient to hold down the corner

Easy Peasy! Lyanna from Purple Panda Quilts – left me an awesome comment with a description of a technique she uses to bind quilts on this post here, check it out to for more ideas on how to machine bind your quilts. I seriously need to find the fusible tape she is talking about – that would make it SO much easier! I hope she does a more complete tutorial of her method soon!

Have a great Tuesday!

Guest Posting Today

3 Comments / Uncategorized / By Melissa Dunworth

You may have noticed that last week I didn’t have a tutorial for you – I’m sorry. I have been super busy with finishing up Christmas presents and dealing with family things that I just didn’t have the time. I do have a special treat for you today though…I am guest posting over on Fat Quarter Shop‘s blog – the Jolly Jabber!

It is a tutorial on how to use their notion of the month – Half Square Triangle Papers. I am a huge fan of these – as they completely eliminate the need for drawing lines! They save time, fabric and you don’t have to measure anything! Please take a few moments to check out the tutorial and leave a comment while you are over the too!

Hope you are having a great Monday.

Oh yeah, and make sure you stay tuned later in the week for a special giveaway related to today’s tutorial! (Hint Hint Wink Wink)