Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Unknown Sunflower block

This is an unknown sunflower block that is asking for help in being identified.
I met a very sweet woman who would like to finish a project that her, now deceased, sister started. This is a story that has played out numerous times in families all across the world and I am happy to be a small part of the process of completing this labor of love.
Sis was very organized as far as labeling all the bags with letters and numbers along with the size of the blocks contained within. The only thing missing is the actual pattern.
As far as we can tell, there are 12 flowers: 6 of the gold and rust and 6 of gold and black. We are guessing 12 since we found 12 completed blocks with a stem and 2 leaves. None of the sunflowers have been completed but a dedicated few were able to puzzle a block together to allow a plan to be put into action. I wrote some directions for her to follow as phase one but I am sure we all agree that knowing where you are going is extremely helpful.
Any help in locating a pattern would be most definately appreciated.
Thank you!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Beading 101

Saturday I taught a beading class at my local quilt shop. I wanted a project that was fun and small enough that it would get finished someday. The ornament is a great motivator and can definately be accomplished by Christmas. It started as a 3" square that I then stamped in setacolor paint with a holly stamp I made myself using fun foam and a wood base. Bead the holly following the outline, add your vines using DMC floss in a stem stitch, bind, and finish with a beaded hang and tassle. Voila, instant gift made with love.

The class seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and I had lots of yummy beaded show and tell for them to ooooh/aaaah over. I think we all know and agree that is the most important part!

Below is another example of how to dress up a simple block for yourself or a gift. A simple 9 patch with each square cut at 3" ends up at 8" square to fit into a purchased 8" square frame. I quilted it with an X design in each of the red squares and then beaded the white squares. Depending on how much beading you choose to do, you could reverse this and have 5 hearts.

Both of these ideas are simple, fun, relatively quick and allow you to take advantage of all the wonderful beads out there that are calorie-free candy!
Enjoy and happy beading.