September 25, 2017September 25, 2017 by Angela Porter

Fabric Inspiration Autumn

Featured, Sewing
autumn, burgundy, fabric, flowers, inspiration, leaves, season
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September is almost over. I always say, “When the kids go back to school, it is almost Christmas!” Time just flies the last quarter of the year. Holiday planning starts now! It is time to design and find fabric for our holiday projects for our homes and thoughtful gifts for others during the last months of 2017.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
– Albert Camus

Personally, the earlier I order fabric for holiday projects, the more I enjoy doing them. Holiday sewing is a great way to show your creative side and the options are so many. Fond memories of handmade things are always fun. Someday all the decorations at my house will be hand made.

Fall brings cooler weather, sweaters, handmade comfy scarves and jackets and an occasional whiff of burning wood from neighboring houses (hopefully my own).

I love fall. I love warm, dark colors and a soft quilt or blanket to cuddle up in while watching those great football games. Especially if I can sit in the stadium! Cool weather and cinnamon colors beckons me to sew cozy things! How about you?

Today, I am offering inspiration for you to follow my passion for fabric. Its great news!! Trust me!

SewingMachinesPlus.com has begun providing fabric online and in their brick and mortar store in California. If you haven’t yet looked on their website, you need to!

Let’s get going!

First visit www.sewingmachinesplus.com & on the Search Bar at the top, enter “fabric”. You can also visit the fabric page here.

Since I enjoy shopping for sewing, my desire is to fly to California and visit this mega-store in person, to see their highly rated products and experience their friendly employees and customer service, but for now, I want to preview a few things with you that I really like! Hopefully, you will be inspired to place an order for sewing products for your stash or to get a head start on the season of giving!

The first fabric I saw, and promptly ordered was:

Stonehenge Gradations Chips – The color is Bright Iron Ore. A quality fabric made by Northcutt and has colorations like stone.

A beautiful package of (forty two) 10 x 10 inch precut squares in Browns, Golds, Cream and gradient neutral colors which look like different pieces of colored stone.

A beautiful package of (forty two) 10 x 10 inch precut squares in Browns, Golds, Cream and gradient neutral colors which look like different pieces of colored stone. This was a perfect choice for me as I have designed our new home in neutral browns, cream and beiges. This reminds of of swirling marble or granite and a harmonious accent to neutral décor.

I am thinking about a table runner or napkins for our dining room table right in time for autumn dinner guests or anytime of the year paired with the appropriate colors for that season.

Burgundy shades with the creams for late winter events.

Or pair with the same brand in Burgundy shades with the creams for late winter events. Drumroll! Picture please!

There are (forty two) five inch squares in this package. I suggest perhaps 2 or more packages depending on the size of the project. Look for the Brights- Amethyst and Lagoon Colors as well. Fabuloso!! Rich looking colors!

Precuts are done in different sizes by the manufacturer and sometimes the shop and work great in many applications. Since they are already cut, it helps considerably when putting together projects.

For a larger taste of these pre- cuts that can go together in perfect harmony, go ahead and visit the website. Take note of all the various cuts that are available in other fabric designs. Pick the ones you love! Ask the experts about yardage on the ones you really like (I have to ask that question myself). And then, comment on my blog and tell me what appeals to you. Make the project and send us a picture. We would love to see what you make!

I’m going full circle for a while. I have ordered the fabric, started designing and will hopefully share with you what turns out to be a great addition to my handmade collection! Dream, design, shop and create!

Having a creative life is: sew good!!

Speaking of tastes, I just received a call from my husband *who is upstairs organizing his man cave*. It’s the usual question at 5:00 p.m Friday night, i.e. what’s for dinner!

Take care dears. See you again soon!

September 14, 2017September 14, 2017 by Connie Smith

Confetti Quilt-Art for Your Walls

DIYs & Tutorials, Featured, Sewing, Tips & Tricks
autumn, bright colors, confetti, DIY, fall, how to, leaves, mosaic, quilt, trees, wall hang
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Speaking of fall projects, I’ve recently come across a quilting technique that would be fantastic for creating a beautiful piece of autumn to use for wall décor. The problem, though, is that the technique used to build this work is a bit advanced, so it’s something I’m going to have to put on the back-burner for a bit until I potentially get the hang of more intricate workings of specific sewing processes.

The overall idea is out of my comfort zone right now, but it’s still something that seems like a great enough idea to share with those reading this blog post. Maybe you’re more advanced than I am in the sewing world, and this would be a simple project to you to bring fall coloring to your home’s interior. If so, gather your fabric and tulle, and get to working!

Project: Confetti-Quilted Wall Hanging

Tools and Supplies:

Sewing machine, scissors or rotary cutter, fabric (some for shredding purposes), tulle, and straight pins

The Idea:

Creating a work of art from bits of fabric

See all of these leaves? Those are tiny bits of fabric placed on the piece, or confetti fabric!

It would be easy to label this a mosaic-type project, and in a way it is because it’s a bigger picture that’s being constructed by smaller pieces. But the incredibly small sizes of these pieces are tiny enough to compare to confetti being tossed in the air, so the confetti name is actually more fitting than the mosaic title—especially since the confetti can bunch up and overlap on your design in contrast to the side-by-side nature of a mosaic piece.

This is an idea that can be put in practice to make a full quilt, but the number of times you’d have to go through the process to create enough blocks for a quilt sincerely escalates the amount of time you spend on a project. Considering fall is so close, using the one-block notion for a wall hanging is more reasonable—and it’ll create a one-of-a kind piece to show off to your home’s guests.

The advantage of confetti

The beauties here are that you can pick the size of the confetti art work, you can choose the image you want to depict, and you can even use scrap material from other projects that have little to no value for other concepts. These confetti dots are tiny, so it doesn’t take extended amounts of fabric to create them. You might want to keep that in mind as you trim up your fabric for other projects and stash away the scraps and remainders in some kind of a confetti-quilt container. That way, you can build your supply for a confetti project that pops in your head, giving you the ability to start constructing immediately rather than having to search for fabric bits.

For a fall project, this is a good option because autumn comes with a great deal of outdoor imagery, like trees filled with colorful leaves or pumpkins placed in front of haystacks. Through the outdoor elements comes the prospect of movement and wind, so having the confetti scraps present to drizzle across your project can give the viewer that sense of movement in a display that’s random enough to highlight the notion.

Working with layers

You can layer the colors and fabrics to boost that realism until you have a strong tree covered in a series of leaves that are dropping to the ground and flying away, a pumpkin patch with dust and leaves blowing past it, a scarecrow that’s caught up in seeds that are breaking away from crops and sailing by… Lots of ways exist to put this idea into practice, and each has a look of intricate realism that’s sparked from the confetti approach.

The process to perform this task seems basic, if intricate, and so long as you keep the confetti pieces in their places with straight pins, tulle, and early sewing, you can make sure everything stays close enough to the arranged order to highlight the scene as you intended it above your mantle or over your couch—or wherever you choose to place the finished work!

Inspiration is key

If you want to find inspiration for what to depict in your confetti project, try going for a nature walk to look for signs of autumn’s approach, and when something particularly seasonal catches your eye, freeze that memory in your mind (or snap a photo) to remember it. As the month rolls on, nature itself can give you plenty of sights to choose from to be the main scene of your confetti project!

So, if your skills allow you to handle this intricate of a project, start looking for that autumn image to commit to a wall hanging!

September 4, 2017 by Connie Smith

Bringing the Autumn Vibe into Your Home

Featured, Sewing, Tips & Tricks
autumn, fall, Halloween, holiday, pumkin, seasonal, table runner, trick or treat
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Out of all four seasons that we experience throughout the year, my absolute favorite in regard to nature is autumn. A part of the reason for that is I live in mountain territory, and when the leaves start changing colors, it’s hard to find something that compares to how beautiful that is. It’s enough to try and think of ways to embrace the same visual within my home so that the beauty of fall can decorate my inside world as well.

Because of my love of the season, I took to the Internet to find projects that would create that autumn vibe, and my initial thoughts about it seem to be backed up again and again through other sites.

All you need to do is to make sure you’re bringing the right elements into your sewing projects to represent fall. Sure, there are more specific notions of pumpkin-shaped pillows, but even something as basic as choosing the right fall traits to add as embellishments can make an ordinary throw pillow, blanket, or wall hanging represent the season.

Color pallet

For one thing, you should definitely consider your colors for fall projects since those bright, vivid hues melded together are synonymous with the season. Orange, yellow, red, and remnants of green are all a part of the typical fall-grasped leaf, so make sure you choose fabrics and embellishments that showcase those colors. Remember that fall leaves are often a series of these hues, so mix and match them in your projects to have a full autumn experience with your sewing project.

If you only have white fabric, try dying it to create the autumn theme. Anyone who has seen the final product of a tie-dye shirt knows the process leads to a series of patterned and blended colors, so you can use that general idea to mingle autumn colors on your fabric. You can blend the tips of orange in with the beginnings of the yellow, with little spots of green throughout, and the inconsistent spacing of the colors can really drive home the look of fall leaves.

Beyond your color choices, think of other seasonal elements that you can use to display autumn throughout your home. Pumpkins, candy corn, acorns, haystacks—all of these things can be used as inspiration for your projects through finding ways to represent their likenesses in sewing projects. A new quilt could look lovely with a scene that’s covered in fall elements, like pumpkins lining the area where haystacks and classic barrels are stationed. If you ground that setting in fall colors and embellishments of candy corns and acorns surrounding it, you’d have a creation to bring out of storage every fall to embrace the season.

You can shape your throw pillows, as mentioned, like pumpkins—or candy corn, acorns, fall leaves—and these little additions of autumn can boost the fall vibe in your home.

Reason for the season

One specific fall project is this leaf table runner. All you’d need to do is cut out fabric with a leaf pattern using fall colors—maybe dying them for that mixed feel—then sew them as individual leaves. You can add in the details of lines and spots of variation with fabric pens to give your leaves a more realistic feel than just a series of plain fabric. From there, you can sew them together in this slanted pattern to bring a bit of fall from one side of your table, mantle, or shelf top to the other. With the right skill and effort, this project could be finished well before the official beginning of fall later this month!

This idea of embracing fall in your home can be applied to your kitchen as well by thinking of fall themes for potholders, in your bathroom through an autumn-inspired wall hanging, and any other room where a fabric splash of fall goodness would be fitting. Just let your imagination run with you, and you can come across a way to embrace the beauty of autumn in every single room of your home through the right colors and right embellishments!

Better still, once it’s time to put away your fall decorations, you can be clearing space to make room for your Christmas decorations, meaning you can trade one seasonal method of décor for another without having to do much rearranging. Keeping with the seasons by using beautiful, self-made details—with little fuss—equals a great situation from beginning to end!

Be sure to start brainstorming what elements represent fall to you, and go get the right fabric and supplies for bringing those projects to life!