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 thro...

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 ru...

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 st...

Update: I won the CSI Project's Pick of the Week! I'm so thrilled! If I see something that I really like I tend to hoard file it away for a later project. That is the case with the 2 Christmas Cards below. The boating picture was received by my husband's aunt and uncle many, many years ago. Since we have a cottage and love to boat it just seemed appropriate to keep this card. This card turned into something special when I opened it before I started this project to realize that my husband's uncle has been gone for over 10 years. It now holds even more special meaning to us. The snowman and little boy was a picture that I just thought was the cutest card. Don't all children feel that sense of connection when they have finished making the most memorable of snowmen. I finally had my husband cut out a piece of oak that he had in his garage to the appropriate size for my cards. I wanted the wood to be a little bigger than the card. At first h...

Quite a few years ago I tried my hand at Needle Punch Embroidery. I've had this cardinal laying around finished (along with tons of other projects) deciding what I was going to do with it. At first my initial idea was to frame it. I have a mat cutter but to be honest I have no idea how to use the darn thing. When I was on a sewing/crafting binge it finally came to me just to make a pillow. I have enough cross-stitch pictures hanging and even some that need to be hung and finished. The hard part was already done. I had already blanket stitched the Cardinal to the red felt. I had in my stash of fabric that nice green fleece that just happened to match perfectly. I made the pillow into an envelope style so when the holidays were over I can go back to the original pillow that matches the chairs. I love this pillow! I really think I need to make 2012 the year of finishing up all my projects that I have started, framing all the cross-stitch pictures that I've taken ...

It all started with my 14 year old son stating the fact that our dog Bailey and everyone else for that matter had a bigger stocking than him and how much he'd like a new one for Christmas. I found a pattern on Embroidery Library's   Project page for a Rag Quilt Stocking. I really didn't want to go that route but I did want the pattern piece to trace my fabric onto. I went through all my fabric stash that I've bought including 4 yards of neutral canvas I got at a thrift store, various other Christmas fabrics that I've had for years, and remnants that I've purchased. I used the canvas for the cuff and lining because I wanted the stockings to be stiff without using interfacing. I used my embroidery machine and embroidered all our names before I did any stitching. Can you tell which one is our dog's? My daughter loved that fabric and actually wanted it for her stocking but she got the red printed snowman instead. The boys got the army print. It's...