Appleton Dance

My "Snowbound" quilt showing raggy top edge and part of raggy seams on reverse I recently found a printed panel from the 2004 "Christmas X-citement" line by Sandy Gervais for Moda tucked in a plastic bag with pieces of coordinating flannels and a Gervais pattern titled  "#254 Winter Landscape"  that used the panel. Sandy Gervais' "Winter Landscape" quilt Here is a picture of the "Winter Landscape" quilt Gervais designed for the panel. The pattern is still available on her "Pieces from my Heart" website, and the panel can be purchased on eBay. I set the package aside because the panel was so cute and I thought I might do something with it before it got buried for another decade. As luck would have it, mid-Michigan was blessed with three snowstorms in three days last weekend, so I pulled out my panel to see what I could do with it while I was snowbound. I took a cue from the pattern and decided to cut the ...

Casey's Cat original at Caseville, MI on Lake Huron When I visited my friend Casey's cottage on Lake Huron, I was greeted by this calico cat that resided in a knotty-pine bedroom, snug under the eaves overlooking Lake Huron.  I took a photo and tried to reproduce Casey's cat for my own. Casey's Cat redux 2017 by Linda Theil i started by drawing the pattern below; overall the cat back is about 10-inches high, including 1/4-inch seam allowances. The edge along the fold is 8-inches long. Caseville Cat pattern: cat back is 8-inches along the fold and four-inches along the bottom. Here is a list of materials I used to make the cat. Materials: Bosal or Pellon Flex Foam : 1/4-inch foam padding typically used as stabilizer for totes and purses scraps of cotton prints; I used 5-inch squares from Charm Pack: "Grand Traverse Bay" by Minick & Simpson for Moda. 12-inch square of coordinating Minky, flannel, or fleece for cat back. 12-inches ...

Jake, summer 2017 at Warren Dunes State Park, Michigan by Linda Theil I made Jake's Christmas present this year using  Blurb's  bookmaking program  BookWright . I've used this free, and easy-to-use, program to make many books that are available on-demand from the  Blurb site .  I took photos at the  Warren Dunes State Park  in southwest Michigan this August, so I put together a picture book using these and other photos that Alisa and I had taken over the summer. Alisa helped me put the pages together with photos, dates, and information about Jake's summer of 2017.  A free view of the entire book,  Jake Theil: summer nine 2017  is available online at the blurb site. Or click on the image below to view. Jake Theil: summer nine 2017 By photos by Linda Theil

Folded box made of pages from Fons & Porter "Scrap Quilting". I have been making these Origami boxes for a very long time. They are beautiful and elegant and very easy to fold. Start with two squares of paper of any size and by making the box twice, you have both top and bottom that fit easily inside each other.  The Fons and Porter Love of Quilting TV series featured a box made of pages from a quilting magazine in the "Tips" section of program # 3001 titled "Diagonally Set Log Cabin Quilts" . I thought this would be an excellent way to highlight these wonderful little paper boxes that are such a pleasure to create. There is a very good video of how to create this box at "Classic Origami Box" on Instructables.com, and "Easy Origami Open Box" . I have shown my process here with a page from the Fons & Porter special bonus issue, "Scrap Quilts". I have developed a simple mnemonic to help me remember how to m...

"Interlocked Squares" quilt block as used in the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild logo Completed "Interlocked Squares" block using method described in this post. I found a version of the "Interlocked Squares" quilt block -- similar to the block used in the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild logo -- on the Field Guide to Quilts  site. The AMC Quilts site also had an  "Interlocking Squares" piecing guide . The AMC site used a piecing plan different from the Field Guide site. The AMC site featured a snowballing technique that I thought simplified the piecing process for this block considerably. I used the snowballing technique featured on the AMC site to lay out a sixteen-inch "Interlocked Squares" block that exactly replicates  the block used in the GAAQG logo shown above. Here is a graphic of the block on 1/4-inch graph paper. Graphic A: Layout for 16-inch "Interlocked Squares" quilt block as used in the GAAQG logo  ...