Appleton Dance

By Linda Theil I asked Alisa if she wanted a cosmetics bag to go with her set of Spencer Ogg Packing Pods and she said, "Duh!" I had made her a set of the lightweight packing pods with a "layer cake" of ten-inch squares of Robert Morris reprints from Moda, and blogged about the make here at "Spencer Ogg Packing Pods" . Diane Spencer Ogg also offers a free pattern for a "Cosmetic Pod"  along with a video tutorial on her YouTube channel that I wanted to try. Unlike the lightweight "Packing Pods", Spencer-Ogg recommended a sturdier fabric to give the little cosmetics box/pod some structure. She also said the pattern could be made in larger sizes by increasing the size of the free printed pattern. I had some of the Robert Morris ten-inch squares left over from making Alisa's packing pods, that I could use to make a matching cosmetics pod. I had to piece the ten-inch squares to make a piece of fabric large enough for the one

by Alisa I recently made a small quilt for myself! I saw  this Instagram post by Kelly of  @jeliquilts  back in the Spring and I just fell in love. The inspiration is much more beautiful -- and quilterly -- than mine. I immediately went looking for that rainbow fabric. It is a Kona Cotton jelly roll from 2017 that was a tricky to find. I found the  Kona Cotton New Bright Palette Rollup  on an Etsy shop where it is now sold out. Missouri Star still has it on their site as "out of stock" so I do have hope they will restock. Meanwhile, the charm packs are available. If you are searching for this, be aware that there is a Kona Brights Palette with a slightly different color selection. I love this Kona New Bright one, but I'm sure there are tons of solids that would look just as lovely. My original plan was to sew 30 of the strips in the 41 strip pack together to get a 42 x 60-inch center panel and then border that six-inches all around and end up around 54 x 72-inches, and th

by Linda Theil I bought a panel with four "Botanica" placemats by Michel Design Works for Northcott and a "jelly-roll" of 42-inch by 2.5-inch strips of all the fabrics in the "Botanica" line so that I could use the strips to make a quilt-as-you-go backing for the "Botanica" placemat panels. I needed a fifth placemat, so I used scraps of the ginko leaf pattern from Michael D'Amore's "Daily Zen" line for Benartex to make the backing for the fifth placemat. I had to match the pattern to get a piece big enough for the back. Nice job, huh? Quilt-as-you-go is an easy technique for making placemats since the quilting is done along with the piecing. Each placemat on the "Botanica" panel is 21 x 14-inches, so for each placemat I cut a piece of quilt batting in that size, and spray basted one placemat from the "Botanica" panel to one side of the batting with Spray-n-Bond Basting Adhesive . I chose t