Magpie Quilts

Blocks so far (3 quarters) , a photo by Magpie Quilts on Flickr. Here's the blocks I've received so far in this online block swap - one more set to go and then it will be time for a new colour scheme!

Little tins are everywhere, from cough drops to candies, if your house is like mine, you have no shortage of tins. I brought back this tin of butterscotch candies from my recent trip to Holland along with some typical Dutch printed fabric.  Trace on the backside of your feature fabric around your tin.  Layer your feature fabric and a backing fabric right sides together. Sew a little larger than your tracing - I used 1/4 inch. Cut a slit in the backside and turn right side out through the slit.  Stuff with fiberfill - not too firm, but not too soft.  Glue bottom of tin with tacky glue or use your hot glue gun. Push your filled pincushion into the bottom of the glued tin firmly.  Let dry and put the lid on. You can also add a magnet on the inside of the lid to keep your needles. There you have it - a cute pincushion from your sweet little tin! --Ann

Just finished another round of the Mini QT swap on Flickr. This round's theme was true-mini. Here's the one I made for JanBran: Flowers are free-motion machine quilted. A closer look. And here's the one she sent me (and all the goodies): Love the little embroidered blocks! And here's the one I made for my Etsy shop, just because I liked making the first one so much: Mini-Quilt for Sale The next round is for Halloween themed mini's - I am sitting that round out as I've signed up for too many things and can't make the commitment.  Have you ever done an online swap? What's your favourite type of swap? --Ann

One of the techniques in the book for adding texture to a painted piece was to crinkle the fabric up. Crinkled fabric drying on lawn (subliminal message: you do not see dandelions in my lawn!) Dryed and pressed fabric that was crinkled  And finally, after a long day of fun in the sun, it was time to clean up. I still had a few pieces of fabric left and we still had some mixed fabric paint left, so we improvised and finished everything up rather than throw anything away. Top fabric - fingers were dipped into the paint and then sprinkled over the fabric. Some of the mixed paint was opaque and some transparent - can you tell which is which? We also had some cute elastic shapes that we put on top of the fabric for sun-printing - these worked quite well. Middle fabric - sponged leftovers onto fabric and heavily salted. Love the way the salt provides texture to the finished pieces. Bottom right - last piece of fabric was just dipped into the remaining containers one corner ...

The book Sky Dyes (Mickey Lawler) was the starting point for me as we began to paint fabric. Her first "recipe" was for a soft blue summer sky filled with white wispy clouds. I took my spray bottle and lightly misted the fabric and then mixed up my blues - a little Cobalt and a little ultramarine with a little water. I didn't really use enough water as my skies turned quite a bit darker than I intended. (See samples 1 and 2 in the photo!) Because the first sample was so dark, I added some $dollar store stars, but the wind blew them off, so the effect is not quite as sharp as it could be. I also added some opaque pearlescent pearl on sample 2 for the clouds and it gave a cool sparkly effect.  Sample 3 was supposed to be a sunrise sky. The colours turned out ok and I sprinkled this sample with coarse salt before letting it dry. Fabric printing with Knex The fourth sample was mostly to see the effect of sunprinting - putting something on top of the fabric in the sun...

Yesterday, a couple quilting friends came over to experiment with fabric paint in my backyard. We had a beautiful sunny day and set up some tables to work on. This was my first time to use fabric paint and although I knew we'd have a good time, I wasn't sure that I would end up with any pieces that would be usable in my quilting. The paints we used were Setacolor from Pebeo. Non of our local quilting shops carried them, so we found some at Colours Calgary . The fabric I used was just a white Kona cotton. I bought 3 meters and prewashed it so there would be nothing to interfere with the fabric paint. Ironing the washed fabric before painting.  We set up a few tables in the backyard. One table had all our supplies and each of us had our own tables for working on. This set-up worked great for us. The work tables were covered with either a drop sheet or a disposable plastic table cloth to protect them from spills (and we did spill!) The supply table  Because the Setacolor...