Doing Lots of Hand Work

Hello Dear Readers

It's a beautiful day here in Indiana.  It's a bit cool, but the sun is shining and that makes everything better, right?  Of course it does.   I saw Patty on Tuesday, and she said she enjoys reading my blog.  It's always nice to hear that from a reader, so thanks Patty!

I've been using these winter months to look through my stash and decide what I think I will really use and what I can part with.   I have a whole lot of stash in containers in my basement, and they have kind been out of sight --- out of mind.  So that's where I've been working.  The fabrics that went into the "can live without" pile have been cut into pillowcases if they were large enough.   Some pillowcases have already been sewn and donated along with fabrics that were too small for pillowcases or charity quilts.  I've cut over 100 pillowcases, and those of you that sew pillowcases know that each one has 1 yard of fabric.  I know that's a lot of yardage, but I'm not alone, right?

I've been doing some embroidery.  I started these little baskets awhile ago right after the pattern came out.  I put them away and just recently started working on them again.  I've joined the Knotty Girls group at my local quilt shop, Back Door Quilts.  Since the group only does hand stitching, I decided these baskets would be my take along project.  And, as my friend Helen tells me - it doesn't do any good to take them along if you don't work on them.  By the way, Helen has done her 20 baskets and her quilt top is put together.   It's gorgeous.  I got a little sidetracked ……..

I think I have enough basket bottoms sewn to do 16.  I might make 4 more and do a 4 X 5 setting.  Some quilts are fine being square, but I mostly like to see a rectangular quilt unless it is a medallion style.

It was fun picking out the fabrics, and I fussy cut the fabric whenever I could.

The basket below is the one I'm working on.  It's almost finished.

You can see in the photo above that I'm using a product called Transfer Eze to do my embroidery.

Transfer-Eze (no affiliation) is an easy way to transfer an intricate design onto your fabric.  You simply place the design in your copier and a piece of Transfer Eze in the paper tray.  Then you peel the backing off of the transfer Eze sheet that has been printed with your pattern and stick it to your fabric.   The sticky part is very light, but if your needle begins to drag all you have to do is clean the needle.  Those little bottles of hand sanitizer come in handy for this.  It's available at your local quilt shop or from an on line source.


This is the Antique Baskets pattern.  The pattern was copyrighted in 2015.  That's just over 4 years ----not long enough to be officially labeled a UFO.

In this post, I wrote about a trip that I made with friends up to northern Ohio to the Sue Spargo store. Helen made these amazing blocks using wool and fabric and beautiful threads.  She has started me on these patterns, and this is my first one.  I don't usually do much folk art, but this will give me a chance to work with some of the beautiful threads I've been collecting.   I think that will be the fun part.

That's a lot of what I've been working on.  I'll show you the rest in a few days.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today.