Appleton Dance

We Cut the Tree  by Linda Theil available from Blurb I wrote  We Cut the Tree  in 1984, the year our family moved to Howell, Michigan from our native home in southwestern Pennsylvania. The story is told from our eldest son's point of view, and chronicles the annual live-tree capture from our family's earliest Christmas holidays. The story was first published as our holiday greeting card that year. I published the story, again, on this weblog as a  Christmas greeting in 2010 . Two years ago, I began to create photographs to illustrate a small hardcover edition of  We Cut the Tree  that may be ordered from the print-on-demand publisher, Blurb. I used Tinrocket's  Waterlogue  application to create a dream-like appearance to the illustrations and used  Blurb's  online software to lay out the 20-page, picture book. The book is dedicated to our late husband and father, Stephen A. Theil, Jr. The cover features an image of a tiny...

I gave a workshop on how to install LED lights on a sewing machine at the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild Quilt Day on November 19, 2016. Here is the information I shared: Sewing machine with retrofitted LED lighting strip. Photo courtesy of Inspired LED. You may purchase a light kit that will allow you to outfit your sewing machine with a strip of bright LED (light-emitting diode) lighting. Kits are available online and at some quilt stores. We have purchased our  Inspired-brand kits on Amazon  at a cost of aproximately $30 per kit. Other brands such as  Bonlux , that we also tried and liked very much, are also available from Amazon.  The kits we purchased are designed for use on all sewing machines; they are complete lighting sources that can be used in any situation that requires illumination. The kit includes: a strip of LED lights backed with adhesive that may be trimmed to any size needed, a plug and converter that is used ...

Alisa's market tote, folded up and ready to go shopping. Alisa downloaded Purl Soho's  "Fold-up Market Tote"  pattern from their website, and ordered the "Fold-up Market Tote Bundle" of three pieces of linen to make three totes as holiday gifts. The pattern makes a large, lightweight, unlined tote with self handles that can be rolled up and tied with an attached ribbon and stored in a small space. We made all three linen totes, and Alisa liked them so much she wanted one for herself, so we grabbed a yard of fabric from her stash and got to work. We have documented our process below with slight modifications to the Purl Soho pattern Completed market tote in cotton "Comma" for Zen Chic. The finished bag is roughly 18x18-inches in capacity.You will need a yard of 45-inch-wide fabric for each tote. For her tote, Alisa chose Moda's "Comma" by Brigitte Heitland for Zen Chic (Made in Japan, 100% cotton, pattern #1...

Eight-year-old Jake really wears that apron.   Child's size Large apron pattern -- one half Child's apron, size Large (adjustable) This project is so easy that it would make a good first, sewing project for a beginning stitcher. Make a pattern out of paper bags or wrapping paper. Your pattern will look just like the pattern shown here in geometric fabric. Cut your pattern paper 29-inches long and 12-inches wide. Mark the 29-inch length with the word FOLD written large along one side. Mark the other long side of your pattern with a dark marker ten-inches down from the top of the paper. Mark the adjacent top edge of your pattern at the five-inch point. Connect the two marks with a line and cut that angle away from your pattern.  The result will be a pattern shaped like the one in the photo at the right. the top is five-inches wide; the long side is 29-inches long; the short side is 19-inches long, and the bottom is 12-inches wide. Choose 2/3 yard of cotton ca...

16-inch, four-patch "pinwheel" block designed by Sujata Shah, pieced by Linda Theil 2016 Fabrics:  Sturbridge line by Kathy Schmitz for Moda and Daily Zen line by Michael D'Amore for Benartex. I attended quilt artist Sujata Shah's "Pinwheel" class sponsored by the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild  at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor  on July 17, 2016. Shah is inspired by the work of Gee's Bend quilters and has developed a no-template method of piecing to emulate their unstructured designs. Shah's book, Cultural Fusion Quilts , is available at Amazon.com.  Shah's uses four 11-inch squares to make each block, but she said a quilter could use any size base they choose. Since I had a package of precut 10-inch squares in the "Sturbridge" design by Kathy Schmitz for Moda, I based my block on that size. We were instructed to bring a variety of backgrounds in one color and brights in another color. Since I signed up late for ...