Have you seen this photo?

Have you seen this photo on Pinterest linking to someone elses blog or web site?  Have you seen it on Facebook?  People keep hijacking this photo and using it without my permission.   I’ve written emails asking that the photo be removed from their site.  I’ve made the photo private on Flickr and then made it public again because my own blog doesn’t have access if it is private.

In the past I’ve uploaded and stored all my blog photos on Flickr.  That way I don’t have to upload them twice. Once to Flickr and a second time to my blog.  But with the new flickr changes combined with the misuse of this photo, it makes me want to close down my account.  Sigh.

It’s a double sided dilemma.  I can’t imagine re- uploading the photos to my blog (and then flooding the feed readers) on every single blog post since the beginning of time.

Any advice? What would you do?

Whirligig

Finished!  This quilt came together by the help of the lovely ladies in the Faith circle of the Do.Good.Stitches quilting bee.  Each person made the blocks and I assembled the quilt.  It’s a simplified Whirlgig block. Sometimes we all need EASY!  And still, I struggled to finish this one. Between life, finishing our flooring, and having my sewing room packed up in boxes and stored in the garage it was a challenge to get it finished.  Even on the last two rows of quilting my machine decided to protest and I had to give it a time out before continuing.  But it is now done!

Thank you to all the wonderful women in my quilting bee!  This quilt will be given to Restore Innocence, an organization that rescues girls from human trafficking.

Assorted stats:

approximate finished size – 54″ x 66″
blocks – 6″ simple rail fence arranged in a whirligig layout
border fabric – an old one from Lakehouse Dry Goods that has been in my stash
backing fabric – Kaffe Fassett’s Radiation print in pastel found on sale at my local Ben Franklin

We’re all winners!

My sewing room is semi-set up.  At least for the required sewing that I need to get done.  After having the new flooring installed we decided to swap the spare bedroom and the sewing room.  My old sewing room was the smallest room in the house and it was feeling really cramped!  And the spare bedroom always ends up being storage for us anyway…  until someone comes to visit.  So it just seemed logical to swap the rooms.  Now, I just need to get the closet organized!  I think I need to get a few more selves for the shelving system before we put the doors back up!  (btw, I left the color of the walls from when it was the spare bedroom)

So… my personal random number generator, aka the hubby, picked the winner of the Grip & Stitch quilting disks.  The winner is Audrey who is blogless who said…

audrey

I am just barely starting to learn to machine quilt and need all the help I can get with it!

Thank you everyone for telling me what you’ve been doing this summer!  I loved hearing about all the fun you’ve been having.  As soon as we finish putting up the trim work we will be done with the home construction projects for awhile and intend to enjoy the rest of the summer!

Charlie, Stella & the spring

My sewing room is still a wreck from working on the floors so there is no sewing going on at the moment.  Here’s a short video of Charlie & Stella playing with their spring to keep you entertained for awhile.

Grip & Stitch™ free motion quilting disks

Ellen, a friend in my sewing group developed these Grip & Stitch™ quilting disks. And I have been promising her that I would post a review on my blog for some time now. Since I have a number of quilt tops waiting to be quilted I figured I’d better do as I said I was going to do. Right?

What I have been free-motion quilting with in the past are these garden gloves.  If you are not a fan of gloves, or your hands get too hot, or you struggle with gripping your quilt while free-motion quilting, then you may want to try out these quilting disks.

The disks are made of two different kinds of foam; one on the top & the other on the bottom.  Use either side to grip the quilt, but I’ve found that the black foam seems more grippy.  Maybe even more grippy than my garden gloves?  Place the large disk in your left hand and on the outside of the sewing machine & the smaller disk in your right hand and on the inside of the sewing machine. Then move your fabric as usual to free-motion quilt.

I think one of the major benefits of these disks is that it is easier to stop to pull out pins and then start again.  No more fumbling with pulling off a glove so that you can remove a basting pin.  They are so easy to pick up and move.  I’m not the greatest when it comes to starting & stopping. I need a lot more practice!  But I can see that after quilting nearly half of my quilt, I am improving.

The other major benefit of these disks is that my hands don’t get tired from trying to grip the fabric. Instead, the disks are doing the gripping for me. Which translates into a more relaxed posture all the way around when free-motion quilting.  My shoulders don’t get as tense and I seem to be sitting up straighter so my back isn’t slouching over either!  Less tension & back stress is always good.

The only struggle I really have when using the Grip & Stitch disks is that I find it much harder to control the quilt if I want to quilt a large pattern or motif. I tend to resort to my gloves for that.  But this smaller wiggly pattern that I’m doing or anything small seems to work great!

When you get to the edge of the quilt, turn the disk on it’s edge to get right to the end of the quilt.  Ellen has a video on her web site showing them in action… being used by Lynn, another friend in my sewing group.  Lynn is an amazing quilt artist that was the inspiration behind these disks. You can see her quilts in her book Flower Show Quilts.  I will never be able to free-motion quilt like she does!

If you would like to win a pair of the Grip & Stitch free-motion quilting disks, please leave a comment in this post telling me about something fun you have been doing this summer.

I’ll leave the comments open until I can get all of the contents of my sewing room unpacked.  It may be at least another week or so.  We had the rest of our flooring installed in the bedrooms last week. Then I decided that all of the rooms needed to be repainted. And now my hubby is working on putting up the trim.  Meanwhile, I’m tackling my pile of quilt tops that need to be quilted.  I need all of the encouragement I can get!