A Little Stitching...

I took a Laura Heine class with my larger quilt guild (Pride of the Prairie) last Saturday.  We worked on the Tomato pin cushion collage.  The teacher was GREAT!  Her name is Linda Lambert, and she has been teaching these classes for several years now.  I learned more in this class than any other quilting class I've ever taken.  I have a LONG way to go before my collage quilt is finished, but here is what I got done during the class.

where I stopped at the end of the class 

me, working on my tomato

teacher Linda, in a blouse she made using the collage technique she was teaching

I have lots more things I want to add to my collage, including 'threading' the needle, a doily, etc.  Not sure when I'll get a chance to work on this again, since I have several things that need to get done before I can finish this.

Another thing I worked on this week was butterfly blocks for next year's Missouri TOGA raffle quilt. We're supposed to bring our finished blocks to this years TOGA.  I made 3 - 12.5 inch blocks for the raffle quilt.  I also made 3 smaller blocks for myself. These are paper pieced.  You can find the patterns here. (I enlarged the pattern to get the 12.5 inch blocks).

Pepper block

Cricket block

Gidget block

3 - 5.5" blocks blocks for me

Remember the oversized sewing notions I've been making (previous 2 blog posts) for my little quilt guild's Annual Tea?  Well, hubby finished the 2 wooden needles I asked him to make, and I got them painted.  All my oversized sewing notions are finished now.

pack of hand needles shown for size

I'll be using all of these oversized sewing notions for the Tea, then (hopefully) for this year's Lyon's Farm Fall Festival (waiting for the vendor forms to be mailed out, they are really slow).  I'll also be using them in my booth at my large quilt guild's quilt show March 14-15, 2026.  Put this show on your calendar.  It is ALWAYS a GREAT quilt show!  I attended this quilt show before I ever joined this guild.  The quilt show was why I joined this guild.

I still have a few demo's to prepare for the Missouri TOGA (Treadle On Gathering & Academy) in June.  If you love vintage sewing machines, and want to travel to Missouri, come join us.  The link above will take you to our MOTOGA page (easy to join).  We will be meeting in Ava, MO June 19-21, 2025.  If you search my blog, you can find out more about TOGA's.

Updating Oversized Sewing Notions

In my last post, I told you about the Quilter's Tea I'm decorating for my little quilt guild.  Well, I've finished the oversized notions.

My friend, Carole, suggested that I add labels to my spools of thread.  I took photos of several different ends of some of the wooden spools that I have.  I printed them out to fit the tops of each of the spools.  I used Mod Podge to attach the labels.  Again, I have a spool of Aurifil thread in the photos for scale.

The three largest spools have lids that come off, so that the spools can be used for storage.  I used the next smaller lid for each spool except for the smallest, where I used a plastic lid (from a jumbo can of Nestle's Quik).  The smaller lids fit inside each canister.

with lids off spools

I spray painted all of the 'buttons', then threaded them.  The small buttons will be attached to ribbon and used as a garland.  The large buttons are chargers.  Again, I have a spool of Aurifil thread in the photos for scale.

I sprayed 2 coats of paint on each button (more for the yellow).  The 2nd coat of paint on the blue charger crinkled on the edges, and looked bad.  Even sanding didn't help.  Since I had lots of extra yarn around, I glued some yarn to the edge of the charger, then spray painted the yarn. I think it gives it a nice texture.

yarn glued to the edges

I don't think you can see the original color of the yarn (NOT blue ;).

I did do some sewing, but I didn't take any photos.