Wednesday, June 27, 2012

I won!!

On May 24th Quilting Bloggers challenged us with a contest and great give-away.  All we had to do was blog about why we love Quilting Bloggers and ask our followers to add their quilting-related blogs to the Quilting Bloggers Directory.  For me, this was an easy task because making the choice to join Quilting Bloggers was a good one for me : )  Not only have I found and read great blogs from others all over the world but also noticed that the interest in my blog increased . . . so it is a win-win!

Okay . . . . I bet your wondering what I won, right?  I was thrilled today when I saw the e-mail telling me that I won a 6-month gift certificate to The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims!!! 


I love this show and the web site.  It truly is like an online magazine and packed full of information on just about every quilting technique imaginable.  The shows are wonderful, and I have learned many new things by watching them.  Right now I am doing the happy dance for having won this great prize.  It really made my day! 

Many thanks to Michele Foster of Quilting Bloggers.

Until next time . . .
Debbie

Monday, June 4, 2012

Scrap Therapy

Since I am unable to sew for a few more weeks, I decided that this would be a great time to sort and organize my fabric.  I have a bad habit of cleaning off my cutting table after a project by throwing all of the left over fabric scraps into a plastic tote.  When I walked into my fabric storage area the other day, I was shocked by how many totes were stacked in there and decided that now is the time to sort through it all.

Recently, I purchased a magazine called Quilt your Stash!, and in it are some great projects from Joan Ford's ScrapTherapy program.  The magazine is from the publisher of Threads, and I found mine at my local WalMart.


In this magazine Joan Ford explains her 7 steps of quilting your way through your fabric scraps.  She explains that she pressed and cut her scraps into three sizes that played well together:  5 inch, 3-1/2 inch and 2 inch.  As you work through your stash, keep telling yourself it is 'okay to throw away.'  I know, it's difficult for quilters to waste anything but my new rule of thumb is if the scrap is less than 2" x 2", I throw it away.  Once you get your scraps cut in these manageable sizes, you can store them in shoe boxes or small plastic totes and by doing so you will have a lot more space in your sewing area. 

After cutting, I am sorting my pieces by color, theme, etc.  For example, I have all of my colors in labeled boxes and all of my 1930s fabrics in another box, Christmas fabric in another box and so on.  It is so liberating to get these scraps under control, and I am now actually able to see the floor!!

To learn more about Joan Ford's ScrapTherapy program and her great patterns for using up your cut scraps click HERE

I hope all of you have a great week and that you carve out a little time here and there for sewing and, yes, maybe even some time for reorganizing your own scrap stash.

Until next time . . .
Debbie