Three Kitchen Fairies

Shades of Grey @ Fat Quarterly

Fat quarterly and Daisy Janie teamed up to challenge 10 of their readers in a Shades of Grey fabric challenge. Each of us received a sampler of the new Shades of Grey fabric line by Jan DiCintio to make a craft/quilt design inspired by her new beautiful fabric line. 

I came up with a quilt pattern that later turned into a pillow. I had fun working with the design: I sketched it, them I made my templates and cut my fabrics. I played, and played with them until I found a nice balance between the grey fabrics designs and the solid fabrics that were included in the package… and saw it together. The pattern is coming soon here at 3KF.

My project is posted today at Fat Quarterly, and a bunch more lovely projects will be unveiled in the following posts. I highly recommend to keep visiting Fat Quarterly for inspiration, and maybe more challenges for its readers.

 

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Clamshells report

 

About a month ago I posted about the beginning of my clamshell quilt project. I've been cutting shells from time to time, which by the way, is incredibly relaxing. It's a happy fabric scraps project, and I'm happy to report that some blog friends (and my next door neighbor, hi Liz!!) have generously shared with me some of their own little pieces of fabric for this quilt. A big thank you to you!!  What I love about using my friends' fabric scraps, is that I'm getting to play with fabrics I don't have at all in my stash, or that I wouldn't picked out myself, and this will give my quilt a wide range of colors and prints. 

So far so good, the progress of this quilt will be slow but sure. Since the book doesn't talk about the amount of clamshells needed for a specific quilt size, I'm planning on working on 20" by 20" blocks and take it from there depending on the amount of fabric I have for it.  The instructions in the book say to machine sew the shells with monofilament thread, but I'm hand stitching the shells together. I don't like the idea of sewing cotton fabric with plastic thread, sounds… unnatural. On the other hand I'll need a hand stitching project handy for a long trip coming up this fall. I'll tell you more about it as it comes closer.

So this is my progress so far, and I'm enjoying it. 

 

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DQS 11update

So far... not so good. Who would have told me how difficult this pattern is!! You wouldn't say it isn't appealing, but wow!! It's so hard to make the leaves meet together. I think I had a bit of trouble with the instructions in the book. If I follow them by heart, I'll end up sewing through the edge of the leaves when piecing the squares. Then, the seams will be way thick to be ironed open (or even worse to the side). What I tried here was to make the leaves come as close together as possible. I was so tired last night that I actually saw the whole quilty without realizing there were tiny spaces where four leaves were supposed to touch. I unpicked the whole thing and put it together again!!! A bit of a perfectionist here...

I still have to fix a couple of gaps in the first and second blocks from left to right. Hopefully for tomorrow, I'll be able to post it finished and maybe even the begining of the hand quilting part.

Back to work!

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We love French knots

Embroidery is one of the crafts that comes to me as one of my first childhood memories. This memory doesn't even have words, it's just the feeling of the satin stitches of my bed sheet from when I was a wee one.

When I knew the lovely Bari J was looking for a embroidery story for her new blog "We love French knots," my mind automatically when back in time, and collected a bunch of memories about how I fell in love with this gentle art. Next morning I shared my story with Bari, and she liked it.

Last week my embroidery story was featured in her new blog We love French knots. Many of you know what I'm talking about. But if you haven't check it out yet, let me tell you that you're in for a great treat. It's all about embroidery, not only her embroidery but the embroidery community. Go visit "We love French knots" and enjoy this place of {modern embroidery inspired by grandma}

 

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A pattern without a name.

I started this pattern at the beginning of July and I'm feeling really good about not having neglected it. This time around I set some goals by dates on paper,and I worked around them so that I get to finish my projects for sure. 

 

Let me tell you a bit about this project. This pattern started as an appliqué pattern. I drew this pattern as a mirror image and then changed a few things to pretty it up. I picked out my color floss carefully, and I insisted in trying them out by embroidering on one side of the pattern with one color floss and on the other side with another color just to see which color worked better. Then I chose one color and unpicked the least favorite, crazy but it worked for me. I learned a lot about the fabric thread count: I decided to use this fabric because of its color; big mistake!! I should have checked the threat count or at least looked at it closely. The count was so poor that it was really difficult to sew the stitches in the right place.

 

One last thing I can tell you about this project is that I started it when early July temperatures were still enjoyable, so the tender greens appeared in the foliage around the owl. I finished it today when the August heat is keeping us indoors, and going to the park is overrated. Without thinking too much about it the autumn colors started to appear. I will be making this embroidery pattern available to you through my esty store very soon, I pinky swear! I still have to think of a name for it, suggestions are welcome. In the meantime I invite you to enter my blogaversary giveaway, thanks to all my readers for their lovely comments and good wishes on my blog. 

 

 

3KF third blog-a-versary, and an amazing giveaway!!

 

Hello!! I'm finally here ready to start celebrating with all of you my blog-a-versary. Three years ago I started this little grand space of mine. I dare to say 'grand' because it has given me the opportunity to grow as an artist, a quilter, and a crafter in general. This space has given me a chance to meet wonderful and talented friends with whom I get to talk, and share the greatness of the creative process. The mosaic above is just a tiny sample of what I've been doing here. In three years I have posted 224. I have uploaded 905 pictures on Flickr; that without counting the swaps, the comments, the e-mail, and the best part: fabric shopping.

As this day approached, I decided that in this occasion I wanted to celebrate big time. Not only I want to celebrate my ability to keep up with this project, but also your recurring visits to my blog, your comments, and your advise in my sewing projects and in life in general. You are the ones that make this blog such a special part of my life.  

That being said, let me introduce the six generous sponsors that have graciously accepted to join us in this celebration with lots of wonderful prizes for this massive giveaway. Here we go:

The Sometimes Crafter is sponsoring us with her lovely Amanda Knitting Bag pattern from her new pattern store.

Nicole, from Follow the White Bunny is sponsoring us with a $10 gift voucher for embroidery patterns from her delicious store.

Chikipita has graciously joined us in this celebration with two lovely cupcake wine stoppers. Aren't they adorable?!?!

Another lovely etsian friend, Sew Deerly Love is sharing with us an eight fat quarter bundle!! How awesome is that!?!?

The Fabric Shoppe is generously sharing with us an Alexander Henry fat quarter bundle.

And last but not least, Fresh Squeezed Fabrics is participating in this blog-a-versary giveaway with a $25 gift certificate. Awesome!!

Wow!! thank you so much to all our generous sponsors for making this blog-a-versary such a great event. I, myself feel like participating in my own giveaway for a chance to win one of these prize.

No catch on this giveaway, just leave me a comment. Since there is lots of prizes, I'm going to leave these giveaway open until Friday, August 12th, 2011. This way we'll have plenty of time to spread the word and have lots of participants. In the meantime I'll keep posting usual. Winners will be picked via random.org, and I'll match the winners to the prizes in the order the generator picks them out.

Thanks again for these three years, and please feel free to join me on Facebook, and Twitter for lots of sharing, chatting, and blog updates.

Truly yours:

Paloma

 

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Doll Quilt Swap.

Credits here

I've always admired the pictures of the DQS flickr pool, wishing to someday come across the sign up days for the next round. Well, this time I made the cut!! I'm super excited to start working on my partner's quilt, and to start looking at the massive amounts of inspiration on their Flickr group. One of the requirements is a photo mosaic. In my defense I only can say that I'm expecting to be surprise (in a good way ...) Here is my mosaic, these are some my favorite pictures, they are mostly quilt related. I also included some non-quilting related pictures that still inspire me because of their colors, the composition, or just because they make me smile. The possibilities are endless: applique, hand stitching, lettering, buttons, trims...

On a unrelated note: my embroidery pattern is still going as a freebie. Have you downloaded it already?? there is only four more days before it goes to my etsy.

 

 

Long overdue

 

Long, long ago, I participated in the Hoop up, Stitch, & Send swap. I embroidered this sweet little pincushion pattern for one of my partners. Since it was well complimented on Flickr, and it's one of my original patterns, I decided to make it available to everyone. But time goes by, and little projects are sadly put aside to give place to one more project. I think it's call procrastination...

For the last couple of days, I've been debating between either giving it as a freebie, or listing it at my etsy store, and think it deserves to go for free for a while. Here is what I decided to do: for one week this pattern is available as a downloadable pattern. Then after seven days it will be listed on my etsy store. Sounds good?

Click here to get your freebie. Enjoy!!

Edit: A whole week went by. Now this pattern is listed here.

Than you!!!

Alphabet Glue

 

Last week we were the lucky winners of a giveaway at Follow the White Bunny: Thank you Nicole!! I say "we" because the price was for the whole family  (I would say...) a copy of the Summer edition of Alphabet Glue. I was very curious about it when I saw Nicole's post; to tell you the truth,I was short on summer crafty activities for my girls. I took a look at it as soon as I received it, and I'm fascinated by this e-zine. This wonderful publication has a good amount of crafty activities to make with school-age children, and to stimulate their imagination and creativity. What I like the most is the book listings which are rated by school grade, it makes very easy to pick out a book from the public library.

 

 

Last night we gave it a try and it worked its magic. My two older girls (10 and 8 yrs. old) tried the Story Starting Jar, not a peep for at least an hour... I helped my 6 year old to get started with it, and we had fun together making a silly story about weird bugs that ate bluish grapes.  It's better than watching TV, don't you think??

On a different note: my giveaway is still going on, today is the last day. You can join us here.

 

New pattern

 

Despite the craziness of this week, I was able to keep going with my plans and I started stitching a new embroidery pattern. I'm dying here to show you the whole design!! I think this pattern is a bit more "mature" (embroidery-wise mature) than the rest of my designs, but I'll finish it first. I'm still having a bit of trouble making it presentable to the public as I'm trying really hard to find the way to draw really nice circles. I'll figure this out soon.

On a different note, my giveaway is still open, I really hope you participate as it's kind of short on comments :(

Happy weekend!!