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Hi everyone, today (and the rest of this week) I am the guest blogger at QUILTsocial.com. I will be featuring 7 projects and my theme for the week is: " How to Make Your Holidays Sew Much Easier" . Go on over to QUILTSocial.com each day there are some great gift ideas and holiday decor, complete tutorials, lots of information about the notions, fabric and some free pattern downloads. Enjoy and I sincerely hope you holidays are sew easy!  Projects all this week at QUILTsocial.com Todays project, See image below: "Ornament Pot Holder" and Microwave Mitts, great easy gifts for coworkers, neighbours, friends, family and the cooks in your life!  Happy Monday!
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Sometimes I am "sew busy" I don't think I know how to think straight. Thank goodness for paper and pen or notes on my I phone or I would be lost! I have a lot going on with recent travelling (see yesterdays post), long arm work , charity projects, affiliate work, quilting, sewing, teaching, trunk shows and now more writing and blogging! I am not complaining as all of this is the best job ever ❤️ You all know that I have always blogged with quiltingintheloft.com, but now I am going to embark on a new writing adventure. I am so excited to announce that I will be writing, sharing projects, demonstrating great tools and fabric as a guest blogger for QUILTsocial.com. To get my guest writing started, I just recently unboxed some notions from H. A. KIDD and Company Limited and fabric from Northcott Fabric. These products were sent to me as they are the subject of my upcoming blog posts in November with QUILTsocial.com and I cannot wait to show you what it is I am doing with all of this! The post them is .... drum roll please...... "How to Make Your Holidays Sew Easy" . Check out the pictures of the fantastic sewing and quilting tools sent to me from H. A. Kidd below:  H.A. Kidd Sewing, Crafting and Quilting Notions, just wow! Check out what luscious fabric Northcott Fabric have sent me below :  Northcott solids and prints Oh My! Can you imaging what holiday ideas I have with all of this to make your holidays "sew" easy?
I will be sure to post a link to the blog posts (one whole week!) once they are published so that all of my followers can see the whole week of posts, helpful tips, product reviews, patterns and....... it is all FREE to QUILTsocial readers! Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions, you can comment on each blog post. I invite you to" Make Your Holidays Sew Easy" and be sure to check in with QUILTsocial.com in November! "To quilt and sew is fantastic, to share is divine"- author me, lol Happy Wednesday!❤️ Of course I am thankful my my passion for sewing, quilting and for pumpkin pie (and all things pumpkin)! I am also extremely thankful for a lovely family and cute as a button grandson. I am thankful that as a family we can travel to see the beauty of Canada with recent travels to BC and travels to see talented athletes, architects and artists who inspire us all. I am sharing some photos below in chronological order starting with my travels to BC Sept 25- Oct 3 and then a weekend short trip this past Thanksgiving to Pennsylvania. I'm back to Ontario now refreshed, energized and inspired by all I have done, seen and loved.
Stay tuned as I am back to work and I look forward to utilizing all of this inspiration for future work and sharing in blog posts! Happy Tuesday! ❤️
The kids are back in school Yay!!
Fall is the perfect time to cozy up with a new craft project that is just for you. Craftsy has put ALL classes on sale! 
Over 1,000 classes available! Get better at what you love to do! Take a class at these savings while you can, do it at your pace through this online class platform while the kids are learning new stuff at school. You deserve it too! Sale starts today and ends 09/09/2018 Happy Friday ❤️
Love to make things?
Obsessed with creative pursuits like I am? Cooking, Quilting, Sewing, Yoga, Dance, Gardening Photography, Art, Craft and so much more. I am thoroughly enjoying my free trial and now on to membership. Yay, Loving it! Bluprint is such a great learning platform for online classes and it will "Spark" your creativity for sure! Support and Inspire yourself as a "Maker" like I did by getting a Free 7 Day Bluprint Trial, you can do this by clicking on link below and enjoy! Happy, Happy Wednesday :) 
I know crafters and DIY'ers are buzzing about why Craftsy.com is rebranding? I cannot answer this question and I do not have an MBA. I do believe maybe it's all about business and guess what?---- We all need to work , we all need to keep crafting alive and accept progress. So if Bluprint keeps crafting alive and thriving, so be it and I am all for it.
They are also expanding life style categories and allowing viewers to see a lot more cooking, BBQ, yoga, family, dance, fitness, yoga, home decor, entertain, wood working, jewellery making and so much more. What I do know is that with the internet being what it is, this is a way to stream all kinds of content, expand on content and get it out to consumers and that is a good thing. Sure beats TV to me!! Basically, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment has a majority stake in Craftsy since May 2017. So the "Unlimited" portion or ongoing subscription portion of Craftsy.com will now be "Bluprint". Bluprint will also expand it's repetoir of classes, tutorials, crafting how- tos to multiple lifestyle categories and I believe this is exciting! Craftsy.com will still exist for "a la carte classes". Which means if you go to Craftsy.com you can still see individual classes and keep the classes you have already purchased. See a link to a great article about all of this re-branding here Also, there will be some new experts like Today Show's Dylan Dreyer, Al Roker and Padma Lakshmi from Top Chef as new talent showing their skills and this is certainly a very positive draw and very exciting for me! Have a Look at Angela Walters video all about the changes below:
You be the judge
Bluprint also has a great monthly offers available for a limited time if you are interested in more content for the whole family where you can learn a new skill, Craft, DIY, be engaged, entertained and pursue your passions check out the link below:
Have a great friday and a wonderful weekend❤️
 Happy Summer! Doodling in colouring books is all the rage. It is said that colouring is relaxing and therapeutic. I think summer is not only a time to relax and reflect, but sometimes that reflection can lead to more creative, outside of the box thinking. So why not doodling by machine? I made arrangements with a friend (Marg) to get together and try a new technique that I am calling " Doodling". You could call it "Zen doodling" by machine (it was fun and zen relaxing) and then you add colour to it. This project has repetitive patterning somewhat similar to Zen Tangling in pen and ink. Today I am going to share what I did, see below.  Draw your thoughts /doodle, designs, daydreams on 100% white or light cotton "quilt top" using a frixion pen (it heat erases with the iron) Sandwich your quilt top with batting and backing at this point, make sure to baste your layers!  Free motion doodle on top of your drawn lines with a heavy weight (40wt or heavier) black cotton thread, Free motion foot on and feed dogs down.   As you can see some of my pen doodles I did not like so I did not doodle them in by machine **Caution -use removable ink like a washout marker or frixion (heat erasable pen) to mark doodles on your fabric  Black thread doodling completed! Time to add Colour!  I used fabric pens and intense pencils, check out the resource list at the end of this post for where to find supplies  more colouring...  Check out my crazy backing fabric. Its effective at hiding all the dense black stitching! So very recommended  I added a black binding as it frames all the crazy colours, designs and allows your eyes a chance to rest TA DA! My finished Machine Doodled Quilt!  "My Secret Garden" 18 x 21" Resources (what I used):
Black thread from Connecting Threads Inktense Pencils Aloe Vera Gel (to spread out the ink from the intense pencils (use small paint brushes for this) Frixion Markers (to draw the designs on the fabric) Fabric Markers 80/20 Batting (2 layers recommended but well basted, makes your project have great texture) 505 Quilt Basting Spray Additional Resources Needed: An iron (used to remove any unwanted Frixion Pen lines) A ruler for grid patterns in the background A Sewing Machine in good working order (feed dogs down) A free motion foot Some Free Motion Experience A creative mind Allow yourself the time to do this! In the end it was a very enjoyable technique and I am sure I will try this more. I hope you try it (if you do send us your pictures to show and share) and have a wonderful week! ❤️ A Domestic Engineer is the one who executes household chores; they are a member of the family that does this as a part of their responsibility. A Domestic Engineer can carry out anything from cleaning to doing everyday jobs for the family. (Source: www.bestjobdescriptions.com) Yesterday, I had to take a break from my quilting/teaching/blogging/pattern designing jobs to be a domestic engineer! But this time the "household chore" was jam making. I am sharing this with you because I can and because it was a fun diversion :) I have made lots of jam in the past and it was like getting back on a familiar bicycle. But wow, does it ever take a lot of sugar! I actually cut down a bit on the sugar and gave it more time to boil and gel set. This time of the year gets busy with holiday plans, family visits and our garden and we have tons of black raspberries. See a pic of some of them below:  Too many black raspberries what to do?  16 cups of black raspberries = one big pot of jam!  5 pints and 7 jelly jars! Enjoy all the fruits of your labour today and give yourself credit for all the work you do for your family whatever it may be!
Happy Tuesday❤️ With the world wide web we get to see and share all the work that is going on and that is simply awesome!. Kylie from New Zealand sent me a contact through FaceBook and it reads "Thank you for your double oven mitt pattern... I followed it to make a cute housewarming pressie for my Mum". So Kylie has downloaded and made my double oven mitt project, a free downloadable PDF pattern available here. Kylie made the oven mitts and a gorgeous hand towel to match. See the photos she sent me below:   Love the fabric choices too. Thanks for sharing Kylie and keep up the good work!!
Happy Monday ❤️ 
That is right crayons!!! They are a tool I personally use combined with quilting, last Thursday I showed you a photo montage of quilts completed with an abundance of crayon work and yes I use crayola crayons exclusively because the colour is vivid, gives off very little residue and is colour fast after washing (all with heat setting, this is a must, please keep reading for how to do this). I do not recommend other brands as I have tried others and they do not have the same quality results.
See photo montage of my quilts below: 
Hot Summer Fun featured on the Front Cover of Quilters Connection Magazine Summer 2016 Technique -Crayon Applique and Machine Piecing
My most recent crayon appliqué mini project is shown below:
Turning to the Sun - technique Using Fabric Transfer Pens, Crayon Appliqué and thread painted outlining
The above mini project was made for a recent demo I was asked to do for a local quilt shop.
How to do Crayon Appliqué? That is the Question
1. Find an image and transfer the design onto 100% cotton fabric (light coloured cotton background is recommended). See blog post here about pens for transfer design purposes. Colouring books with designs and web designs are everywhere but please be aware of copyright. Crayola also has some free colouring pages here
2. Tape your fabric with the transferred design to a hard surface (use masking tape) 3. Colour with crayola crayons, press as hard as you like and go over your colouring until you get the intensity of colour you want. 4. Once you are satisfied with the completed colouring, remove your design from the surface and place it on your ironing board. 5. Place 2 layers of paper towel on top of your design, coloured side facing upwards. 6. Press with an iron on cotton setting (no steam) hold for about 20 seconds. lift up the paper towel to see if there is residue from the crayons, if there is, get another 2 fresh layers of paper towel and press again for 20 seconds until there is no residue showing. (CAUTION: DO NOT MOVE YOUR IRON, PRESS ONLY). If you have used a lot of crayon, you may need to repeat this process, I usually only have to do it twice. 7. Sandwich your quilt or apply your design to whatever project you wish, the colour is now imbedded into the cotton fabric, crayola crayons are colour fast as long as you do not expose them to strong sun light and don't use harsh chemicals to clean with. You can also sew through the coloured area with no wax residue on sewing machine needles. 8. There you have it, enjoy working with this wonder tool! Who knew a child's colouring tool invented in 1903 could work for quilting? Get the Crayola Ultimate Crayon Collection with 152 Colours in a durable Caddy Case with a Sharpener below:
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
If you try this technique, please send us a photo of your work we would be happy to share and post! Have a Happy Thursday!? |
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Welcome!Hi I'm Robin and I am a professional long arm quilter, pattern designer and teacher. I am passionate about all things quilty! 
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