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...

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...

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 ...

Who would have thought for $6 I can buy a Canvas Dropcloth from Home Depot and make outdoor pillows from it? Not me! So far I've made 4 other pillows from 1 dropcloth. Here are the directions to make my newest pillow for the front porch. The pillow's finished size is 12" square. I cut my Canvas Dropcloth into 3 pieces: 1-13"x13", 1-7"x13" and the last one is 9"x13". The pillow will be an envelope style because I am covering other pillows that usually stay on the porch (one of these days I'll show what's underneath). I used my serger before I hemmed the 2 smaller pieces. I traced some heart die-cuts that I had on some Steam-n-Seam and ironed it onto 3 different pieces of scrap fabric. I then placed the 3 hearts on the pillow front and used my invisible marker to mark where I wanted to sew the banner line. I then used my blanket stitch to outline the hearts with red thread. At first I just sewed on the lines for th...

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 ...