Sew Bittersweet Designs – Page 6 – Sewing and Designing in my BitterSweet World

First Day of First Grade!

4 Comments / 2016 Finishes, Clothes, Personal Post / By Melissa Dunworth

Whoever told my Anne that she could grow up…I’m not happy with you! She needs to stay little and mine forever!

Seeing as I’m not going to get my way and she is going to keep growing up into a beautiful little girl, I need to come to terms and celebrate that! Today she started First Grade! I am in shock and yet so proud of her too. She handles everything that is thrown her way with such grace and poise, she is wise beyond her years. Here are our standard back to school photos in the new dress that I made her.

She told me that she wants to be a doctor, and given the amount of time that she has had to spend in hospitals during her short lifespan I think she would be amazing. I know she would be full of empathy for her patients and beyond understanding of nervous parents. That being said…she is six and surely her dreams will change many times between now and when she needs to make tough grown up decisions like what she wants to be when she grows up. Heck I’m 35 and still haven’t quite figured that out!

Dress information – Fabric is House of Hoppington by Violet Craft and the pattern is by Simplicity. It is the same pattern that she picked out last year except this year she wanted the version with the cap sleeves.

And now that school has started, I will be spending quite a number of hours with Spike, we have 5 customer quilts ready and waiting and hopefully will be receiving two more tonight. We plan to burn the school hours together until I get my little girl back! I hope everyone has a very happy Wednesday and I have a few projects to show you in the next several days that I didn’t get to share before I went on vacation last month! So stay tuned!

Quilts for Pulse – South Sound Modern Quilt Guild

2 Comments / Charity, Custom Quilting, Customer Quilt, Edge to Edge Quilting, free motion quilting, Innova, Long Arm Quilting, SSMQG / By Melissa Dunworth

The Orlando Modern Quilt Guild put out a call for Quilts for Pulse – heart quilts. My local guild, South Sound Modern Quilt Guild (SSMQG) answered the call. I donated 20 blocks to our guild and there were so many blocks donated that two quilt tops were pieced by our wonderful guild mate Teri. I volunteered to quilt one of the quilts. I feel so blessed to have gotten to work on these quilts.

I decided to do a simple all over heart design on this quilt. Partially because the more quilting is done, the heavier the quilt becomes and as these quilts were heading to Florida, I thought a heavier quilt might not be as cuddly, heavier = hotter. I also wanted to do a simple heart design that kept with the heart/love theme.

This is before I trimmed the quilt, that is a Kona White background but getting the color balance just right on this photograph has proven to be a bit of a challenge for me. Some day I will invest in editing software…today is not that day.

I love how filled with love this quilt it. It was my first time ever quilting with Hobbs 80/20 batting and the first time Spike encountered polyester batting. It went really well. I used Superior Threads Omni on top and So Fine on the bottom, the perfect pairing of threads.

Have you been able to sew anything for Quilts for Pulse or Quilts for Peace?

August do. Good Stitches Block

Charity, Do.Good Stitches / By Melissa Dunworth

This month the Trust Circle for do. Good Stitches was asked at make just one block – the block measures 22″ x 22″.

This is the Triple Irish Chain block, tutorial can be found here on the Quilting Company’s website. What I liked about this tutorial is that most of the block is assembled with strip piecing, making it go together super quickly. I could see this being a quilt you could assemble really fast if you wanted.

In other news, I have found that my charity sewing continues to be a huge part of what drives me to quilt and sew, so I will soon be starting a new adventure with a quilting friend, look for information on that next month.

This week I am hoping to quilt a do. Good Stitches quilt and get it donated before I head out of town on Thursday. Hopefully I can be super productive and get it done!

Photographing for Shows

2 Comments / Custom Quilting, Innova, Long Arm Quilting, Quick Curve Ruler, Spike / By Melissa Dunworth

The past few years I have been entering my quilts into shows, I try to enter quilts that are my own designs, but sometimes I find a pattern that inspires me, I buy it and I make it. Every now and then it is truly a beautiful thing to find that someone else has done all the quilting math for you! That is the case with the Metro Scope Quilt that I have been working on, pattern by Sew Kind of Wonderful.

Photographing quilts for juried shows is always a challenge, they want the entire quilt in the frame, and no fingers holding them. With no one home to help me, photographing large entries is quite a challenge.

In come my design walls! I haul my design walls outside, preferably on an overcast day because too much sun will wash out my quilts and not really show off their beauty.

Because this quilt is so long – 72″ – I had to prop it up so it would hang off my porch. The design walls are pinned together (my design walls are foam insulation from Lowes that are covered with batting) and propped up against my three porch chairs. Then I pin my quilt through the back into the foam. I try not to get the pins, but you can see them at the top there.

Here is a look at the picture I submitted to the quilt show after it was edited:

You can see that it shows pretty much just the quilt and the lighting has perfectly highlighted the quilting. Lucky for me this show does not require that a quilt be 100% finished to enter. I have purchased a binding fabric and just need to stop procrastinating.

I hope everyone is having a lovely Monday! I have been back at Zentangling again so expect to see some pictures of those soon!

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When everything goes wrong…you quilt!

3 Comments / Custom Quilting, Customer Quilt, Innova, Long Arm Quilting, Spike / By Melissa Dunworth

I have to say last week was ROUGH! On Thursday I went to my blog, like I do most days after I post to see if there were any comments I needed to reply to and my blog was GONE! I started calling technical support and basically got the runaround for most of the day. Finally learning that my blog had been hacked, and they weren’t going to help me fix it and until it was fixed, I was going to be down. In stepped Michele from Quilting Gallery, she is such a wonderful friend a true blessing, she took a peek around and calmed me down by re-assuring me that all of my data was still there. As I started to research people to hire to fix this problem my Uncle and Aunt reached out and offered to help me. A full week later and a major overhaul/upgrade. I am back up and running. I have no idea how many hours my Uncle worked on to get me back up, but I imagine it was quite a lot. I am so thankful for my community!

Since I am dead useless with web stuff, I decided I needed to occupy my mind and lucky for me, my mom sent the perfect project, another fun baby quilt! I was going to do a simple all over design but the artist in me came out to play and what was supposed to be simple ended up as a custom all over design.

Before I show a close up of the quilting, you just have to see the back that my mom designed. It is a giant fishbowl! I love it, it looks like the little fish are just swimming around and having a grand old time!

I did two designs, for this quilt, you can see the texture that was created on the back, here is a close up of the center of the quilt:

I’m very pleased with how this quilt turned out and my mom was pleased with the fast turn around time. I had planned to ship this on Tuesday, but my poor Anne is sick with a fever again. Poor thing just can’t seem to catch a break, hopefully she will be back on her feet tomorrow and I can get it in the post tomorrow.

Have a wonderful and happy Thursday!

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