In The Pink

I have finished up my new "Stuffle", made using Tula Pink Monkeywrench fabrics.  I love it!  All the wild colours and prints are a great pick-me-up on a wintry day.  25 different fabrics were sewn together in curvy strips to make one large piece of patchwork.

It was fun to use my Tula Sunrise thread collection from Aurifil for the piecing.

An assortment of heavier weight threads were selected for the quilting, especially 12 and 28 weights.  I want the bag to be durable.

This zipper is perfect!

The zipper and straps were sewn using 28 weight thread.

 The ends on my original Stuffle used only 4 colours, but for this version I used all 24;  the 25th covered the button used in the centre.

 The ends went in very easily.

  Of course Polly had to check out the lining.

 As pretty as it looks in the snow...I think it would be even nicer on a beach somewhere :)

If you would like to make your own Stuffle, the pattern is here, fabrics (as well as that gorgeous zipper!) are available at Mrs Pugsley's Emporium, and the threads are available online from my thread store.

Op Art Heart

Optical illusions intrigue me...even the simplest ones done with line drawings.  These are the kind of things we did in grade school art class, with straight lines framing a shape, and the lines curving upwards within that shape. Anything we can draw, we can also stitch!  At Hallowe'en, I did a severed hand.  In person, it really does look like the hand is raised up off the fabric.

With Valentine's Day almost here, I decided to try a heart.  I drew the shape and then added straight lines, spaced about 3/8" apart.  The fabric is a scrap of Island Batik almond, which has a pinking/purplish marl of colour through it.  I then layered it with batting and backing and pin basted the layers.

In the needle, I used Aurifil 12 weight cotton, (2265 Lobster Red) and a size 16/100 Topstitch needle.  My bobbin is loaded with regular 50 weight Aurifil, and my machine is set up for free motion stitching. 

Ideally, I should have used a ruler/ruler foot, but this was more of a "let's try and see if this will work" project, so I wasn't terribly concerned as to whether my lines were perfectly straight.

I don't think the effect is as pronounced as with the stark black thread on pure white used in the hand, but you can see that the heart does stand out from the background.

I decided to cut this into a mug mat size (although that's clearly not a mug pictured...)

It took about 20 minutes to stitch, so it was a quick and fun project and may just end up in a Valentine's basket of treats.

We are Auri-FILLED!

We are having snow again today and I was anxious the delivery man would not arrive with the new order of Aurifil threads.  But he did!  We have restocked some of the favourites, and have added a few more items to our ever-growing inventory.

New in are small spools of 50 weight cotton Mako, in an assortment of colours.  These will take awhile to get added to the checkout, but you are welcome to email if you are looking for a colour. We may have the perfect shade! These are small spools in comparison to the larger Aurifil ones, but still hold a generous 220 yards of thread. 

Collections are popular, so we have added Strawberry and one simply called The Bright collection to our offering.  You can see pictures of the threads inside on the website, as well as the other collections currently in stock.

No doubt you've see the Colour Builder series;  three spools in a coordinating palette to help build your thread stash. So far, we just have Carrara, which has black, natural white, and a medium grey.

This brilliant selection of colours are the best-selling shades: white, beige, light grey and black.  You can't go wrong with these.

You can find all these threads here.  We deliver across Canada, and local pick up is available.  Thanks for looking!