This toy flower garden is soft as a pillow and a great way to bring spring and summer inside, especially with 2 feet of snow outside. The four flowers pop out when pulled and can be replanted over and over.  It takes some time to put together so its a great rainy day or group project.  The instruction sheet is clearly written and working with stretchy fleece is so easy; especially when sculpting the ‘flower’.   Here’s the garden with one of the flowers pulled out.

The flowers each have 5 petals but you could add as many as you want.  One pattern piece is used so cut as many as you want your flowers to have.

Hand stitching the flowers into the stem and then the bulb is free form and takes some practice but working with fleece makes it easy.  If you’ve ever done any soft sculpture work you’ll use those skills here.  Be creative.

Check out the Toy page for more information.

Check out my Animal Crackers Box on the my Toys page.  It’s so much fun to make and only takes about 2 hours once you have your fabric panel, lining and selected an animal fabric.  (The actual animals that fill the box take longer, but I made them while watching TV one night.)

Enjoy the time making them and then matching the child play with it.  A good friend and I ‘craft’ on Tuesday evenings and we were both able to get one completed, except for the crackers -  but we did get them started.

The fabric panel comes without the ‘animals’ so you can pick an animal fabric then cut them out and iron them on with double adhesive. This way every box is personalized.

See some of the ‘crackers’ I’ve made.  If you make two or more of each a matching game can be played.  I also cut them to the animal shape but a more cracker shape works also.

Note:  I had the fabric panel printed by Spoonflower. Please check them out by clicking on the link on the left.

On my drive in to work each day I usually have to stop at the light where several streets converge.  Rt 52 splits into Pennsylvania and Delaware Avenues to go around a small park and a couple blocks of the DuPont Company offices.

The Brandywine building faces me as I sit at a light that is so often red.  It is an office tower that has curved edges giving it the appearance of a semi-round building.  It has the creamy concrete color like many office buildings; but the way the dark paned windows are set in and the light hits the curves it creates an interesting block design.

I like patterns and so I drew up these ‘window blocks’ as a 5 inch quilt block.   It’s comprised of just 5 pattern pieces for 9 parts per block.  There is an endless number of color/print combinations.

Check out the patterns in the world around you.  See if you can create a pattern from the shapes that present themselves.

And let me know if you’d like the pattern for my Brandywine Block.

Many of my family and friends enjoy sewing and crafts as much as I do.  One of my oldest friends, Susie had held onto some fabulous Hawaiian fabric for many years looking for just the right project.  She decided to take a stab using my quilting frame and machine to make about a dozen placements for some special people in her life.

Loading the fabrics and batting onto the frame took most of an evening, leaving only a short time for actual quilting.  We rolled about 4 yards of the Hawaiian print  on as the backing and 2 yards of the funky fish fabric as the top.

Getting everything straight and pinned took some time as it was her first quilt on the frame.  She chose my Dancing Violets pantograph in a 6-inch height so we took time taping and marking it.  She was able to get 2 1/2 rows completed on one bobbin.

We decided loading a quilt on the frame is best with 2 people; especially good friends who have a good time doing it together.   It took another 2 hours to complete on additional evenings but the results were just as she expected.  After binding the edges in black she was able to send a set off to her Hawaiian pen pal of many years.   She’ll be back to finish up another set now that the quilting frame is empty again.

For Christmas my Mother made my grandson a ‘bow tie’ quilt.  To make it even more special I created the quilting design and quilted it, and his Aunt Tracy put the binding on it ~ making it a four generation quilt.  The repeat of the pattern makes the quilt look like a puzzle.

I have a Viking Mega-Quilter with the Inspira Quilting frame,  used the 5 inch pattern, and by having a partial overlap the pattern created the overall  puzzle appearance.

The pantograph is available in sheet form and if anyone would like it for computerized quilting I’ll be glad to have digitized.

I’m now in the process of using this design again for another of my Mother’s great grandsons.   Here it is shown on the quilting frame.