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October 24, 2014
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. What have you been up to lately? I recently drove down to Penn Yan with a friend to have my sewing machine serviced. Discovered that Mapquest and Yahoo maps can’t always be trusted. After having a very detailed tour of the Cayuga Lake shore neighborhoods, we eventually ended up at the shop we were aiming for. Fortunately it was a nice day, and the hillsides were gorgeous with fall colors. After dropping the machine off at the shop, we headed further on for some quilty fun. Our first stop was at Quilters’ Corners in Ithaca. I had known of this shop from quilt show venders malls, but had never been to the brick and mortar place. Wow! Lots of eye candy. So many samples to look at, and of course many different fabrics than our local shops. I love seeing the different choices that each […]
September 2, 2014
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Are you a fan of Amy Butler fabrics and patterns? I just received notification that her free pattern for her latest fabric line is now posted at her website. Here’s the link: click here. I also received notification not long ago that her latest clothing pattern: a pieced duster, is now available. She looks great in it, and I love the concept but I’m afraid I may be past the age cut off for her style. Although I am thinking about how it would look in a collection of somewhat “quieter” fabrics–batiks maybe. See what you think of her style. It would be great for you younger women out there. Looks like it would be very comfortable and could definitely take a pair of jeans up a few notches. Click here. As I worked through my e-mails today, I noticed that a theme was in […]
April 24, 2014
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Lovely sunny spring morning. Shh! don’t jinx it! Here in WNY we’re still in the “anything could happen” stage of weather. Was thinking about going out to get new sneakers today and came across this in my inbox. Love it! All of you zentangling ladies might like it too. click here Lovely idea here for coloring stitchery blocks. She has a free BOM quilt available too. click here Same woman’s site-great idea for a mother’s day gift, either the gift itself or its wrap. click here If you have an upcoming graduation or wedding for a social media junkie, then this hashtag block might be just what you need for the quilt you are going to make. (Don’t we always make quilts for those occasions?) click here
March 1, 2014
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Bonnie Hunter, our upcoming fall seminar national teacher, has just begun a quilt challenge at her blog. Bonnie is a scrap quilter. She doesn’t just collect scraps; she actually makes things with them. (a novel concept to me!). I’m going to try joining in this challenge so I’ll use up some of my scraps too. I might have to tweak the math a bit because I have so many 2.5″ strips that I’d like to use up–hers is going to use 3.5″ strips. Wouldn’t it be great (hint, hint, hint!) if a few of us joined in so we could show her our progress when she comes to seminar in September? I’m going to set aside a sewing day soon to get a bunch of pieces ready so I can use them as “leaders and enders” while working on projects for my classes. Here’s a […]
February 21, 2014
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Yesterday I finished a Phd from 1999. How do I know that date? The issue of Miniature Quilts magazine (Do you remember that one? It was a favorite magazine of mine!) where I found the directions was folded up with the nearly complete project. All it needed was a binding. Fortunately I had not trimmed the backing off yet, so I was able to do a “faux” binding, wrapping the backing up over the edge to the front. Quick finish. I wonder why I hadn’t finished it back then when there was so little needed. The project looks like a drunkards path project, with killer small curves but…it’s not. Squares were fussy cut from two fabrics: a black background with white polka dots, and a white background with black polka dots. The polka dots were about 1 inch in diameter originally, so the curvy portions […]
January 21, 2014
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Are you a pre-washer or not? This seems to be one of the BIG quilt questions that can separate a group of quilters into 2 camps pretty quickly. (Another one of those questions–Do you use steam when you press your seams? but that’s for another day) I am a pre-washer. I have had a few nasty surprises in my quilting career that took all the fun out of some projects. I almost had another one yesterday. I finished a log cabin quilt to be used as a class sample. I had used some dressmaker’s chalk to mark a garland in the outer border. When I got the whole thing done and bound, I threw it in the washer to get the chalk out, and to give it that nice crinkly look a quilt made with 100% cotton batting will get. Yep, I had used a […]
August 28, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Are you all set for the new year to begin? After all my years of being involved with education, I still think of September as the start of the new year. Shortly after I retired, I ran into a colleague who also was a former student of mine in Wegman’s. At some point in the conversation, he asked me “Does it seem odd not to be teaching?” Don’t get me wrong, I loved being a teacher but, truthfully, I do not miss it. But here is my answer to him: “This is the first September in about 60 years that I have not been going back to school. That does seem a bit odd.” I’ve been retired for a few years now, and it still seems a bit odd not to be returning to a classroom. It takes me about the amount of time my […]
July 30, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen again. Before I retired it would really frost me to start to see “back to school” ads in July. The summer isn’t even half over yet! Now I don’t mind at all because some of my best quilting supplies are bought in the back to school aisles. Probably my number one supply purchased at this time of year-in quantity-is Elmer’s washable school glue. I buy both the glue sticks and the liquid glue. It allows me to avoid pinning in many projects, and actually has increased my accuracy. The most frequent use of the glue is for “basting” my bindings to the back of the quilt before I sew them down by machine. When I first learned to stitch a binding on completely by machine, I was not happy with the way the back would look. Despite my best efforts at pinning or basting in the […]
June 30, 2013
Back again, it’s ME. Yesterday since the selection of TV shows was so dismal, I started to go back through some of the things I’ve recorded on the DVR. I was way behind on the Sewing with Nancy shows and started there. I watched two episodes of a series where Nancy super-sized some of Grandma’s favorite one patch quilts. She did the tumbler block (thimble shaped) in one episode and Grandmother’s Flower Garden in the second. Those hexagon pieces are the latest pre-cut from Moda, joining the jelly rolls, charm packs, etc. I’ll be interested to see how the designers show new quilters how to work with them. Usually the dreaded “Y-seam” puts people off. In Nancy’s technique she actually used half-hexies, (trapezoids to me the former math teacher), to completely avoid the Y-seam issue. You can watch those shows at her website I believe, since most of her past […]
June 10, 2013
Hello all, Mary Ellen here. How many times has a tech savvy, usually younger, person said to you “you know, there’s an app for that”? Well here’s an app that you might find useful if you are one of those folks who collects apps like the rest of us collect fabric. It’s an app from Schmetz needles, that will tell you just about anything that you might need to know about sewing machine needles. What size needle should I use with this fabric? on the app What kind of needle for this project? on the app What’s the difference between all these kinds of needles? on the app I often get asked needle questions while making demonstrations or teaching classes and this app answers just about all of them. See what you think: click here. I last wrote about the skirts I was making from the “Cute Skirts” pattern from […]