RJ Ward Design

Many (not a few) years ago - let's just say it - 18 years ago a pattern came out on the Internet from McCall's Quilting. The pattern was "Christmas Wreath" and it was November, 1995. In 2001 (from the date stamp on my printed sheet) I came across this pattern. The wreath was made up of lots of half square triangles in an assortment of greens and reds. In true fashion I looked at it and dove right in. I didn't have a clue to what I was doing. I doubt very much any of these seams were true 1/4" seams. I winged it with fat quarter bundles I got from my local Jo Ann's.     Looking at this WIP brings me back to when my children were young and in some sort of school program. I had hours to myself that I had not seen in awhile so I jumped into those itsy-bitsy HST's with enthusiasm that I've never had before.   I was an extreme amateur tackling something that truly only someone who's actually done this before would do. My points aren...

This quilt top has been a long time coming - a year to be exact! I've learned so much and I have to thank Craftsy for sponsoring a year long Block of the Month. Amy at Stitchery Dickory Dock provided me with a visual and printable handouts to be able to go at my own pace and learn new techniques that I've never even thought of doing before.   The one thing I definitely learned is I will not be making anything that has to do with hexagons! I hated the hand sewing to make the hexi's and the attachment of them on the block. Hand sewing is just not my thing!   I also learned on the curved piecing that I do need to use spray starch on one of the pieces. This picture is actually my second block of the same thing. The first one was so crooked and out of shape it was quite embarrassing. By starching the curved piece and keeping the top piece flexible I was able to handle the curves much better and get an accurate measurement. I've said it before and I thi...

  The Craftsy 2012 Block of the Month just might be a finish by the end of the month. When I signed up for Shanna's "A Lovely Year of Finishes" I honestly didn't think that I would get all those blocks done. Out of 20 blocks I only had 6 (3 months) done!     I now have 10 more done! Yeah! I have 4 more to go and of course I have saved the Hexi's blocks for the last. I've also cut out the pieces for the curved piecing blocks so I can get to those ASAP. You can see all of the blocks over in my Flickr page.   It's funny how once you take a picture you see things that you definitely would do different in a block. There are a few blocks that I have done that I've made a mistake on or the color combination is terrible. I'll be ripping one block out that is upside down and redoing it (if you see it don't point it out, I already see it), and one of my original blocks I have to re-do because the background is totally different. ...

  I kept going back and forth over to Shanna's blog Fiber Of All Sorts to decide whether I wanted to join her new group and be accountable to all my unfinished UFO's. Then she sent me a message to join their flickr group called "A Lovely Year of Finishes". I have quite a few but the one that I jumped into last January with both feet because I wanted to learn to quilt has appeared to be a project that I got tired of. I joined the Craftsy Block of the Month 2012 and stopped when she got to April. I'll be honest I love to cross stitch but I really hate hand sewing. Hexi's to me is hand sewing and I just stopped because I don't like to hand sew. I just received a new email that 2013's BOM is out so I really need to finish this top.     This was the Balkan Puzzle Block from February that I never talked about. Luckily I have done a few more months in the past year and on Saturday sewed June and July's blocks. To finish this UFO I have to...

  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...

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...

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 fr...

  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 ...

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 a...