RJ Ward Design

  I finally tried my hand at making a Cathedral Window Pillow. I've wanted to make my mom something for a long time and with Christmas right around the corner it was the best time to do it. I followed along with this tutorial from Moda Bake Shop by Angela Nash of My Three Sons . The only thing I didn't do was the binding. To be honest I've never done binding before and I didn't want to add to my stress level of getting this pillow done. (The first two pictures are from my phone.) As you can see from the picture above I went with the "Lake View" pillow.   The hardest part and most time consuming is all the folding of the fabric. Since this was my first try at making such a time consuming project on such short notice my corners certainly are not as precise as they should be.   I looked all over Flickr to see what I could do about all the corners of the blocks. Some corners looked pretty good (not perfect) and some I could see right through

I was featured on Craft Gossip ! My first love of crafting has to be counted cross-stitch. I started doing cross-stitch right out of high school. 14 count Aida was the cloth of choice! Using those counts and cloths didn't last long when I came across all the different colors of linens, thread counts and patterns. I subscribed to Better Homes & Gardens Cross-Stitch & Country Crafts Magazine many years ago and when I saw the beautiful counted cross-stitch patterns of different stockings I knew I wanted to do it. I didn't even have children yet when these patterns came out so I saved them. Once I started to have children I set out to make each one of them their very own unique stocking. There is alot of back stitch in these stockings because of all the details so I would put the stockings aside when I grew tired of doing them. I dug them out of a box a few years ago along with their patterns and went through them line by line to find where I had not finished them. On

First off I have to show off the wonderful bundles of fabrics I won from Victoria Findlay Wolfe at Bumble Beans Inc. . It was a month ago and like usual blogging takes a back seat to my life. :( Photo from Victoria Findlay Wolfe   The fabric is from Newcastle Fabrics. I love it! Victoria is a busy women always sewing and quilting gorgeous quilts. She has a new book called 15 Minutes Of Play along with a blog hop thats finishing up on the 10th. Go check out the hop here.  Can't wait to make either a quilt top or some bright pillows for my girls. Thanks Victoria!   On to Christmas sewing. My sewing machine also doubles as an embroidery machine and every once in awhile I'll add embroidery to plain pieces. I added some bells and a beautiful wreath to a table runner to jazz it up. I bought 6 9 ft. long table runners at Pottery Barn a few years ago and have been slowly shortening them to 4 1/2 ft. and making them into seasonal runners. This is the rest of my stash of ta

Now that I think about it I'm really getting into making things with my Dresden ruler. I just love how uniform and simple they look in my table runner . They are versatile when making my Turkey's.  Now they look even better in my new project, a pillow.   I bought the fabric as remnants at my local quilt store. They didn't have a very great selection of Christmas fabric left so when I saw these on the counter I scooped them up knowing I could do something with them. I love the colors!   Since I'm still learning and haven't been sewing lately quite as much as I would love to be I did a blanket stitch around the whole outer edge with a zig zag stitch around the center. Quilting is not my forte at the moment and I had some DMC Perle Cotton in Black and some Kreinik Red Metallic Floss I decided I would just stitch around the outer edge. The end result is so much more than I could have imagined.   I made the pillows pretty basic with an envelope style

Thanksgiving seems to get lost in the shuffle everywhere you look. I see Halloween and then BAM! we're right into Christmas. Since I have alot of decor that is more geared towards fall than Halloween I like to keep it out but I noticed that I don't have a Thanksgiving Tablerunner or some pillows for outside.   You have to love Pinterest for all the beautiful ideas that are just a click away. The turkey layout was inspired by a pin from here. I had the bright colors left over from Spamalot and the tablerunner was pre-made from Pottery Barn. We usually head to our cottage for Thanksgiving but since it's still over a week away this gets us excited for Thanksgiving and spending time with our family.   The pillow above is just appliqued onto a canvas drop cloth that I made into a pillow form from Home Depot. I love having the porch decorated!     The acorn pillow has been pinned to my Pinterest account since the beginning. I pinned it from here but did

  Whew! What a whirlwind these past few weeks have been. It started when I went to a Drama Boosters meeting for Monte Python's Spamalot for my son's drama class and the teacher asked one little question: "Can anyone sew?" I slowly and hesitantly raised my hand. All along I've told my son to never volunteer me to sew any costumes and here I was raising my hand. What was I thinking? The teacher was giddy with excitement that she found another volunteer to help sew 11 costumes. That night she gave me a cheaply made costume from the Renaissance period that was a skirt, peasant top and vest that she liked but wanted burgundy for the skirt. Knowing that I have never heard of the play, she also instructed me to look on youtube for inspiration.   All 11 girls were different sizes so I bought Simplicity 5582  pattern and used the largest size I could. I decided that elastic was going to be my favorite way to fit all the girls with a one size pattern.  

I have been sewing but not anything quilting related. I've been sewing for my daughter. I haven't sewn for my children since they were little and I was making Halloween costumes and matching Christmas outfits. It felt so good watching her come downstairs to see the pieces of fabric turn into a beautiful dress.   This was our inspiration: Simplicity Pattern 3878 by Jessica McClintock. Her choice in color was teal. We both decided all the roses that are glued/sewed onto the dress just was not going to be her. She wanted sparkle and glitter. We found the tulle that had glitter all over it and let me tell you that stuff gets everywhere! We've had glitter all over house! The pattern was pretty much very easy to use. I found I had a few questions on how the pattern read when doing the bodice but I quickly figured it out. I had more of a hard time with the fabric being so shiny and slippery that I really had to go slow and take my time. There is boning in the dress and I wi

Wow - life certainly has a way of getting past you and I'm totally shocked that I haven't written a word on this little blog since April. Good thing this little blog is just my way of seeing my own improvement and not out to get the highest number of hits. Life certainly has been busy in my neck of the woods is one reason I have not blogged or even really sewed anything for that matter. My eldest daughter had a seizure in the middle of the night in May and my main concern has been to make sure she is fine - which she is! Medically the neurologist can not find anything wrong with her after numerous tests and are saying that this is a very common occurence in teenagers (she's 19). It can be caused by stress or even a hormonal imbalance. So . . . needless to say I'm now her designated driver along with my other 2 teenagers. So sewing and even blogging has become a back burner on my list of things to do. I have been eyeing the beautiful charm pack of Reunion from Diane

I'm behind a week with my NY Beauty QAL but I finally squeezed in some sewing time to do it. I didn't use the tutorial that was used on this block because it was pieced a totally different way that I've been doing it so far. The tutorial also didn't have any dimensions to cut the fabric so I had to measure and figure out my own way. I was very cautious the way I measured my squares because I want to be able to have enough of this fabric to finish. For anyone else that is contemplating doing this block I measured the height and width of the points and added at least 1/4" all the way around. This seemed to work well for me. On the smaller points near the end I used scraps since they were such tiny points. Of course no sewing can get done without ripping apart some seams or starting over and I did have to do that a few times. This is a learning curve for me and I'm plugging right along. So here is NY Beauty Block 3. In other news I've been honored to win

The pictures are way to dark when I took this even though the sun was still out so you'll have to see purple and white not black and white. This block went together so well. I can see I'm starting to run low on my leftover material from my girls dresses that I'm so hoping I can get these done. We only have 4 blocks more to go. All my seams have come together without a flaw and the points look really good. I can honestly say I'm improving on this technique. Here's all the blocks that I've done so far. In other news we spent our Easter at our cottage in Northern Michigan. It was so nice to be able to get away and know that in 4 weeks we'll be putting the dock in the water. The lake was so peaceful and calm. I have so many projects in my head that I'd like to start and I'm hoping I can find the time to get to them. I took a job that is 3 hours a day being a Parapro for Autistic Impaired Pre-Schoolers, so hopefully I can find the time t