Nettie Sews and Lucky Quilts: blog hop

Showing posts with label blog hop. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Dust Off a Book Blog Hop - Sewing Mat

I decided to join in with Bea for the Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop. I'll admit, I have purchased too many quilt books through the years.

I finally did give some of my old books to a church located by my office. The church gives everything away to area residents. The quilt books that I gave away were mainly ones that created quilt blocks using templates. I have never enjoyed sewing with templates. There are many more time-efficient techniques than templates to create quilt blocks. Here is the book that I decided to sew my project from:

Quilt Petite by Sedef Imer .This book is not really, really, old - the copyright is 2016. This book contains quite a few small quilts, such as doll quilts and place mats. But I have never sewed anything from it. So I decided to sew this Sewing Machine Mat.

The pieced section of the mat is set on point, which I do like. I had a charm pack of this Leila Boutique Farmer's Daughter fabric, plus I had some fat quarters for the bigger sections.

This is my finished Sewing Mat, along with a Thread Catcher. I had some black and white striped fabric that I cut on the bias for the binding.

The book said to sew a snap to the left pocket to hold the thread catcher. I used this type of a magnetic snap because that's what I had on hand.

This is how I covered the back of this magnetic snap. Of course, I was concerned about putting my hand in and out of the pocket and getting scraped up. So I sewed 3 small rectangles together and added this heart label, just because I had it. I did hand stitch it down because it was too hard to put through my machine.

This is the inside of the thread catcher, also, showing the back of the snap. I did not want to leave it this way, it is very sharp.

So I made another little patch and added this "sweet" label.

I just used some leftover low-volume prints for the back and pieced them together. I chose this "Sewing Heals the Soul label. I thought it fit since I made the Sewing Mat.

Here is my new Pfaff sitting on my new finished Sewing Mat. I am able to have my cutting mat on my table and still have this sewing mat fit in my workspace. It will look nice once everything is cleared off, but, in reality, that does not happen often. I am glad I finally sewed something from this book. Also, I'm glad I was able to use this fabric because it has been sitting in a basket for quite a while.

Thank you Bea for Hosting this fun Blog Hop. Please visit everyone else that is participating in this Blog Hop. They have some awesome quilt projects to show you.

March 3

March 4

March 5

March 6

Monday, December 4, 2023

Cookies and Quilts - what could get any better?

The Virtual Cookie Exchange is here. I will start off with the cookies, Yum! I love the Sugar Cookies recipe that a friend from work gave to me. I made one batch. They are a soft cookie with cream cheese icing.

Christmas Cookie Cutter Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 cups confection sugar 2 1/ C flour

1 C butter, softened 1 tsp baking soda

1 egg 1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp almond flavoring

Cream sugar and butter. Mix in egg and flavorings. Blend in dry ingredients. Refrigerate 2-3 hours. Divide dough in half and roll out on floured surface to desired thickness. Use cookie cutters to cut into shapes and place on lightly-greased baking sheet. Bake until delicately golden - baking time depends on thickness of cookie. Approximately 8 minutes. Can sprinkle sugar on before baking. Or let cool and ice with cream cheese icing.

I have had this tea towel with a Sugar Cookie recipe on it for quite a while. It has not been used and needed some prettying up. The tea towel started out like this. Just rather large and not so fun or delicious-looking.

I trimmed it down to a smaller size and added some 2 1/2" squares - well, just because... It now looks like this. I probably won't use this too often to dry the dishes because once it gets used, it will quickly become not-so-pretty. This should brighten up my kitchen a little just by hanging it over my oven handle.

On to my quilt project. I received the fabric and pattern from The Sweetwater Company for this table topper. I really just loved how the pattern had all of these Christmas trees on it. The rectangles are from a charm pack, plus some are cut from yardage. I made a plastic template from the tree pattern and cut them all out.

Christmas tree table topper

The Christmas trees are appliqued onto the rectangles. I used the blanket stitch on my sewing machine. The white fabric has little dots of snow on it, which I liked. It's hard to see in the photos, but some of the fabric in the charm packs, like this black-colored one, have snow, also.

The back is some Christmas fabric that I had purchased as a bolt end. It was good to be able to just cut a piece off and use it. It's a little time-saving when you don't have to piece a quilt back. This quilt is approximately 35" x 35" so it worked out good using the width of fabric.

In addition to my quilt, I made some Lined drawstring bags to use for wrapping gifts. I wanted to use these panels for the bags so they are a larger-sized bag. I had framed the panels and then followed the directions.

Thanks for joining along on my Virtual Cookie Exchange. Please visit all of the bloggers shown below. I'm sure there are many wonderful cookie recipes and Christmas quilts!

Thanks to Carol at Just Let Me Quilt for hosting this great Blog Hop.

Monday, November 13, 2023

A Fall Pillow is now complete for The Turkey Trot.

I have been following many of the Blog Hops that Joan and Carol have throughout the year. They are always so much fun. They indicated that there were spots available for the Turkey Trot and Virtual Cookie Exchange so I asked that I be added to the list.

I seem to have accumulated an endless amount of projects and I'm sure some of them may fit with each topic. I have had this pillow kit from Sew Lux Fabric lingering in my dresser drawer for quite a while.

I have always had issues with sewing this Economy Block the traditional way. I end up not having a 1/4" seam on all sides. Probably because my accuracy is not too swift when sewing the triangles to the side. So I nabbed this 6 1/2" Paper-piecing block . I guess paper-piecing does use a little more fabric than the traditional method. But that's fine, I have plenty of stash sitting around. I added another block or two. It worked out fine.

Once the blocks were completed, Lucky helped to lay out the blocks in a pleasing manner.

Both the front and back are pieced with the Economy blocks. I quilted the front and back with orange thread. It has an orange zipper on the bottom. This pillow will be a nice addition to my couch for the Fall season.

Pillow front

Pillow back

I do have a turkey (er chicken) to use as a doorstop, also. I sewed this crazy birdbrain quite a few years ago. She is filled with scraps and has a cardboard bottom so she sits pretty good.

I hope you have enjoyed my little Turkey Trot. Please check out all of the other wonderful bloggers in this Fun Fall Blog Hop.

Monday November 13

Tuesday November 14

Karrin’s Crazy World

Just Because Quilts

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Domestic Felicity

Nettie Sews and Lucky Quilts

Wednesday November 15

Thursday November 16

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

It's Flower Season

Carla at Creatin' in the Sticks is hosting Where Flowers Bloom Blog Hop. So I thought I would join in. I decided to sew this Garland table runner from Table Runner Bliss.

It is a little large for this dresser, but that's ok, I need some runners for my dressers. I just used a mixture of fat quarters from my stash for the flowers. I have used a combination of flower fabric for the back.

I nearly always use my walking foot for quilting. I have the book, Walk by Jacquie Gering so I followed her instructions to quilt these "focal points" in each flower block. I was kind of attempting a sunray. For the focal point quilting, I drew lines every 1 1/2" around the bottom of the block since this is a 9-inch block. You start from the outside of the block and end the quilting all at the same focal point.

After I finished my Garland table runner, I decided to sew this Dish Drying mat. I figured that I'll add it to my Where Flowers Bloom blog hop since it does have flowers in the piecing. I just love these dish drying mats and have sewn a few of these. I use a Tea Towel for the back. This is a tutorial from Sweetwater Pattern and I do have some of their iron-on labels but I decided to not use it for this one. I didn't want to hide the cute ducks in the center block.

I was kind of on a roll with the "focal point" quilting so I quilted this mat that way, too. I think it looks kind of neat from the back. On this mat, I quilted 2 focal points.

Here they are displayed on a little ladder that I recently found.

In keeping with the flower theme, I am giving away this pattern for a mini Vintage Tulips by Thimble Blossoms. If you would like to sew this, please leave me a comment with your email address. I will have my husband pick a number after the Blog Hop and contact the winner by email.

Have a Happy Summer!

Thanks so much for checking out my Flower projects! Please follow me on bloglovin. Click below to see all the gorgeous creations by quilters participating in the Where Flowers Bloom Blog Hop. You don't want to miss them.