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Stars, Stripes, and Stitches

Semiquincentennial. Say that that 6 times fast. By about the 5th iteration, you might sound like you have created your own language.

While I was busy beeing I also started to work on some patriotic goodies. Lots of folks travel during the summer holidays. When my kids were littles, one of the things I liked to do in the evening “down time” was hidden picture games. See if you can spot all of these items in the feature image.

🇺🇸 Patriotic Couched Pillows – My latest couching used Bernat Blanket Brights, “Red, White, and Boom”. My dye lot seemed to have more blue than red variegation. I chose the Free Spirit, “Tiny Stars in Linen” fabric for the pillow background. I found this gem in the Tim Holtz Eclectic Elements section of Sew Enchanting Equine in Agency, Missouri.

🪡 2016 Row by Row Appliqué Pillow – I can’t recall how I added the “Home Sweet Home” 2016 Row by Row kit from Laura’s Sewing and Fabric to my stash. Do you have any orphaned rows? These are going to become my next favorite find. If you have an orphaned row that needs a new home, I am officially taking donations! After appliqueing it I wasn’t sure what I wanted to turn it into until I made the bee bench pillow. Bench pillow worked great for this one too!

✨ Stars & Stripes Appliqué Mini Quilt – A timeless patriotic wall hanging that proudly displays the red, white, and blue. I have kitted one more set of the fusible backed wavy flag stripes, stars and a flagpole. If anyone wants to make a mini for themselves, I’ll hide it in my shop. I am not sure where to find the wavy red and white striped fabric these days. I came across this gem at the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival years ago and picked it up to use for these minis. I just used the last of my stash! If you are a quilt shop and have a good one that would work, comment and let me know. There are tons of cute stars and stripes font embroidery designs on the market to compliment the flag.

💧 Freedom Laser-Engraved Water Bottle Flask – A bold red insulated water bottle engraved with a patriotic Freedom design, perfect for road trips and a day outside.

🎆 Glitter Blue & Transparent Blue Ruler Reels (Large, Medium & Small) – Keep rulers close at hand with sparkling binding reels that are as practical as they are festive. Some people have asked me if I can make whole sheets of reels. Yes. Absolutely! I love it when I can maximize the used of my materials. The material for the sparkly blue reels that you see here was picked up during Smokey Hill Designs “Smokefest Tour 2026”! Everytime I post the name of the event, folks that know me do a double take. I have a good time curating the perfect raw manterials for my projects, and Independence Day calls for sparklers!

🗝️ Patriotic Quilt Block Charmed Keychains – Mini quilt-inspired accessories that bring a touch of Americana wherever you go. Red is a great color aid to carry with you to the quilt shops to help you identify overpowering fabrics in your selection. I have plans to make some green ones too to help with light / dark relationships as well.

⭐ Star Zipper Pulls – The perfect finishing touch for project bags, totes, pouches, and jackets.

🧲 America 250 Years Fabric Magnet Sets – Celebrate 250 years of American history with handcrafted fabric-covered magnets featuring patriotic designs. I collect charm packs to help feed my fabric obsession and work with samples from an entire line. Lately, I’ve been turning minis like the Moda charms I picked up at KC Maker Studio and Fabrics into fabric covered magnets. I’m hoping to be able to cover sewable buttons soon.

📐 120″ Flexible Tape Winders(Gold & Sparkling Blue) – Keep your tape measures neatly stored with these 120″ flexible tape winders.

✂️ Thread Cutters (Gold & Sparkling Blue) – Stylish, portable thread cutters that add a little sparkle to every sewing project. These upcylce your used 45mm rotary blades for thread cutting. My favorite blades to re-use are the pretty irridescent and gold plated blades.

🛠️ FlexReel Organizer, Base & Reel Plates (Gold & Sparkling Blue) – Build a beautiful, coordinated thread management system with interchangeable components that keep your tools organized, accessible, and ready for your next project. I love my gadgets.

HAPPY QUILTING!

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Bee in my bonnet

Have you ever wondered why we have so many idoms and metaphors related to bees?

I’ve had a bee in my bonnet for some new designs inspired by the colorful pollinators. The hexagon, or beehive structure was a natural selection for creating strong cutouts in my product walls because they reduce the wall density and material usage while maximizing the structure left behind to carry loads. It works out perfectly for some of my newest 3D printed designs. It was a little harder to pull off the hexaons on my couched throw pillows and the fine laser cut details of the bee took forever to applique to the bench pillow, but the effort was worth it!


Bench Pillow and Mini Quilt:
The bench pillow was a row by row with a precut laser applique (Bee-Happy-Full-Row-Kit ) I picked up a couple of years ago at Quilts and Quilts in Branson, Missouri. I plan to try this with some of the other rows I picked up in my travels. If you are feeling really industrious, add a little extra yellow from your stash and be sure to use all of the cut off triangles to make some mini quilts. It makes a perfect background for a big stitch beeline, laser cut honeybee, and a just a little bit of Happy embroidery. Mini quilts are a great way to use spare blocks or leftover fabrics from projects.

Couched Throws:
The honeycomb throws are the latest in my couched seasonal series. My approach to couching these has been to use low volume backgrounds with the Bernat Blanket yarns. This particular Bernat Blanket Mist-ical yarn in watercolor yellow with the very structured hex pattern was a little less forgiving than some of the others I have tried. In hindsight, if I do that pattern again, I will ensure I leave enough space on my backing to “puddle” the yarn a little more to reduce tension and I will reduce my stitch length. I am normally about 11-12 stitches per inch, but I would probably increase that somewhere between 12-15.

While these makes will get used in my home, some of the other things I made will be used in my studio. I recently designed and released some new products to my shop. I will probably highlight these another time, but check out the new FlexReel Base and Top Plate, FlexReel Organizer, and the Hive Tap Winder for 120″ flexible measuring tapes. The FlexReel is my solution to being able to smoothly spool binding off of the binding ruler reels at the sewing machine. The organizer is just my fun way to store my quilting tools AND magnetically attach the FlexReel top plate when it isn’t being used.

If you are curious to learn more or want me to make one for you, make a beeline to my Facebook, Instagram, or shop to see what they are all about. You might just think they are the bee’s knees!

Happy Quilting!

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A Little Maker Love

There is something about the whimsy of a holiday that gives me the itch to create themed gifts. What started as making some valentine throw pillow covers quickly turned into button mirrors, engraving, and embroidery too. I always have a little something lying around that works for my crafts. When my sew day plans went bust last weekend, I just started making! Now I have a table full of love to share with my friends (and with you!).

One of my favorite pieces is the red quilt block key chains made from some of my leftover red acrylic from my trekkie holiday gifts. If you attach it to your favorite quilt shopping bag, you can pull it out to compare the value (lightness / darkness) of fabrics. Now I need to go and buy some special transparent green acrylic too!

I have a 2016 post called “Color Story” that shows an example of using transparent red and green filters to judge value of fabrics. What I have learned is that the red filter works better to compare “warm” colors and the green works better for “cool”.

I will be making some drops of my extra Valentine’s themed goodies over the next couple of weeks, so head to my shop if you see anything you are curious about.

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Boldly Crafting

If you have ever visited my home, or even some of my blog posts you will find that I grew up watching Star Trek with my mom, married a guy who can quote the shows, and our enjoyment of the series bleeds over into home decor. As I busily worked on some laser crafted Christmas gifts this year, a few didn’t stay secret long enough!

I created some accessories from some of the transparent acrylic I have been using for quilting templates. The “Boldly Go” keychain insignia set features three of the original series insignia and the “Warp Speed” keychains feature an engraved starship paired with Star Trek insignia charms. I had some of the smaller charms left-over and my daughter suggested earings! Who knows, perhaps they will be a perfect pairing for planet comicon in March 2026 in Kansas City. I thought I read that William Shatner will be in attendance. Any other fans out there?

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Couching, No Potatoes

It was a productive weekend! I had several projects keyed up for a finish this weekend. A few were gifts, but one was selfishly a project I had been planning to try (just for me) for a while. I tried my hand at couching last year with some limited success with my mini Xmas trees. Couching is a technique where you incorporate decorative threads, cord, or yarn on the surface of a fabric. You stitch it in place with other finer threads. In my case, I feed my yarns in with my longarm when stitching a design. The first time I tried this, I used a crushed velvet yarn. I found it was a little finicky due to the nature of the yarn I selected. The velvety fiber slides right off of the middle strand, and would occasionally not get caught by my upper thread. While it worked, I did find I had to go back and manually stitch a few areas down. I don’t recommend using crushed velvet.

This weekend, I tried again with a different kind of yarn, Bernat Blanket. It still has a soft, fuzzy texture, but is more stable than the crushed velvet. For my spider web pillow project, I opted for a variegated. Using a the Spider Web E2E Simple, I fed the variegated yarn into my longarm. I tried two methods for feeding it. First, I looped the yarn over a hook behind the needle. This method was forgiving about where I had the yarn lying. However, it tended to let the yarn twist and resulted in a bumpier finish. The method that worked better was to just let the yarn feed dragging over the quilt. I am using pro stitch. The machine is moving by computer in the video, but you could also use this method with free motion quilting. The foot on my machine is one of the specialized Handi Quilter couching feet and is selected so that the hole in the foot is similar to the thickness of the thread. This keeps the yarn feeding directly under the needle.

Handi Quilter Amara – Couching with Bernat Blanket Yarn

I was very happy with the final product and made a few 18″ throw pillow shams and a mini quilt. The mini needed some additional detail. Normally, I would embroidery designs on my mini, but I didn’t think that the chunky yarn would work well for that, so I designed some new spooky buttons. I laser cut a limited run and have shared a handful in my shop in case you want to give this couching project a spin.
Boo! Spider Button Set – Custom Halloween Buttons

Happy Couching!

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“The Epic of Thread: Eight Years Later”

People ask me, “How long does it take to make a quilt”? I usually respond with, it depends. This is true, and can be broken down methodically to size, number of pieces, complexity, etc. When I am making a quilt just for me, there is no deadline. The answer is simply “as long as it takes”. I wish I could use that answer at work! When I quilt for fun, I don’t rush. I don’t ever give up. I will work on it off and on as I feel like it. No deadlines. No pressure (though sometimes I get friendly encouragement from my quilty besties).

Eight years ago, around September 17th, my dear friend Kayla and I hosted our first quilting retreat together. At that retreat, she gifted me a book, 100 Modern Blocks by Tula Pink. My kiddos were in elementary school and just kicked off a new school year. It was the same year I fell in love with laser machines and set my eyes on eventually owning one. It was a hoot to look for images for this post. I saw all the fun things my family and I have done while I slowly rolled this colorful quilt. I’m not sure how it worked out, but Kayla also purchased the book and I think she suggested that we work on it together. (Spoiler, yes, this means there is another one coming from her soon!).

First the pattern. Then the fabric. What does one choose for a sampler quilt with 100 different blocks? Something about the Kinetic line by Windham fabrics caught my eye, so that is where I started. I added coordinating solids to a fat quarter bundle.

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I completed the first block on Sept 30, 2017. But the second block didn’t get completed until October 2017. Dark times.

Somewhere along the way, I knew I needed more fabric. I was in love with Kayla’s fabrics. I decided I needed to supplement mine with some Tula Pink, All Stars. This quilt is the first and only quilt I have used her line of fabrics in. They were so much fun! If you look closely at the finished quilt, you will see whimsical animals and bohemian designs. These are mixed with the kinetic shapes of the more geometric fabrics. Friends who saw me working on it would trade me pieces to supplement. One of my favorites random adds was the addition of a unicorn and the Loch Ness monster. (Thanks Chris!)

In the last 2 years, I went to Arkansas to visit Kayla. We quilted together. We also swapped fabrics from our collections. (Thanks Kayla!) We will each have some of the same fabrics in our quilts. Instant memories. The colors in the Tula lines mixed amazingly well with the Windham Kinetic line. This combination allowed me to expand the color range of the blocks. I kept track of how many blocks I had in each color family and tried to balance the quantity from each. It is far too easy when stitching samplers to navigate to your favorite colors all the time! Around September 2024, I finally finished all of the blocks, and had prepped my background for piecing. Random just didn’t work for me. I needed order. My inspiration for the layout started with the idea of a traditional log cabin. The heart (traditionally red) would be at the center. I then let the colors radiate outward in general wavelength order. Chromatic order to the rescue.

Somewhere in between the first four blocks, a career change, a “pandemic”, master’s work, a backyard construction project, a senior graduation, some fantastic experiences with my family and friends, countless trips to my favorite quilt shops, and two lasers later, I have a finished quilt. I think this one will get a label saying “Enjoy the Ride”.

The final layout was called “City Planner” and the longarm quilt design I chose was “Grid Lock”. Fitting for an 8 year journey! I chalk it up to a “block of the month”. It didn’t really seem that long. Time flies. Happy Quilting.

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Tame the Tangle: My Studio Just Got an Upgrade

Over the last several months I have been experimenting with some new additions to my studio. Lasers! They don’t have names yet, but I am sure their personality will shine through soon. My love for leveraging this technology as a quilter’s tool started back in 2017. Over the years, I have occasionally used the Johnson County Library’s Maker Space. It was originally sponsored by Black & Veatch. My new lasers allow me to create custom laser cut applique and quilting tools on my own schedule. Meet my baby 20W diode laser and it’s big sister, a 55W CO2 laser.

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I’m loving it! I’ve created some intricate layered laser cut appliques for quilts and I just finished designing some acrylic templates. While creating tools for my projects and organization, I also plan to make limited quantities available in my new shop. Grab them quick for fastest turnaround time! Today’s highlight is my new Binding Hive™.

It is a thick, slotted, acrylic base that holds two sizes of Ruler Reels—laser-engraved spools that double as measuring and cutting tools. One side of the 1/8″ acrylic reel has a regular ruler, and the other a zero center ruler. The base and reels fit neatly in drawers of my IKEA cabinets. They keep my binding upright, visible, and ready to roll. I look forward to getting my stash of binding leftovers visible and ready to use for some projects.

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Clerestorylines: Quilting meets Mid-Century

In late 2024 I participated in a quilting event associated with the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild. The ask was to create a house themed quilt that would be shown during a homes tour in Kansas City. One of those homes was of Mid-Century Modern design. When I was searching for inspiration, I came across a pattern called “Clerestory”, by textile artist Debbie Grifka. I found it in Fons and Porter’s Love of Quilting magazine in May/June 2016. She also published a book in 2016 called Lines By Design Quilts that contains this pattern. I knew instantly that this was the quilt I wanted to make for the event!

Growing up, my parents sometimes took us to the Johnson County Museum after my brother’s soccer games. The museum has visiting exhibits (sometimes quilt related) but ALSO had a 1950’s All Electric House that you can tour, complete with, you guessed it, Clerestory windows!! I bet you will start noticing them in other buildings now!

Johnson County Museum – 1950’s All Electric House


I certainly did not know the name of that feature until I made this quilt! The museum and house has moved since I was a child to the Arts and Heritage Center. That building used to be King Louie West, another architectural icon from the 1960’s. I have so many memories of ice skating and bowling there with family and friends! Maybe you have been there on election day? The museum is fun place to visit to learn more about the history of Johnson County.

For my quilt, I pulled prints from Basic Mixologie by Studio M – 2015 and coordinating solids for the houses. The backing is from a more recent collection by Cloud 9 Fabrics, “March Balloons Frank Lloyd Wright”, in Brown. The quilting design is by Kim Diamond, Sweet Dreams Quilt Studio. One interesting feature about the construction is that the base of the houses are pieced and the roof is appliqued. I used the raw edge applique technique with Pellon 805 Wonder-Under® (paper backed fusible web). Did I go too low volume?

After you check out more of Debbie Grifka’s work head over to the Johnson County Museum and check out all of the fun built in features of the all electric house!

HAPPY QUILTING!

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DIY Tips: Raising a Gateleg Table to Cutting Table Height

I recently decided (while spending several weekends cutting projects) that I needed to raise my cutting table. I use a wood gate-leg style table and I leave it set up all the time. This particular model is (9.5″W folded); 65.5″Wx36″Dx30.5″H. I think that it came from Crate and Barrel.

This is what mine has looked like since my original purchase.

It allows me to use the Martelli X-Large 30 x 60 cutting mat, but since it is a standard dining table height, always felt too low when cutting for longer periods of time. I struggled to figure out a good way to raise it due to the center island with post swing supports. Recently I was researching and came across FurnitureRisers.com. They let you customize your risers from 5 different pocket types and many heights.

To raise the center section, I picked up four 4″ high – “L” shaped risers, and selected two 4″ high – “Square” risers. These worked almost perfectly. I forgot to measure the distance between the swing leg post and the first cross bar. It ended up being shorter than the inside top pocket for the square risers. However, since these are wood, I was able to get these sawed and sanded down to a shorter depth. The large L shaped risers fit perfectly at each corner of the center “island” of the table.

Note: Inside Top Pocket : The INSIDE pocket dimension. Pocket wall is about 1″ deep and 1/2″ wide.

It may have been easier / cheaper to buy a new table, but I like this one, so it was worth it to me. Now I just need to figure out how to organize some of the things I throw under my table better! Do you have any great ideas for miscellaneous elastic and zippers?

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Top Tools for Quilt Binding: A Quilter’s Guide

I was finishing up some quilts today and I want to highlight a couple of my favorite tools that I use when making quilt binding.

First, I LOVE my June Tailor Shape Cut Pro ruler. It is a monster-sized ruler at 20″ x 23″ and allows me to efficiently cut 8 – 16 (probably more) 2 1/2″ strips for binding at one time from my yardage without needing to continually adjust a ruler. It is also great for crosscutting squares of any size with 2 1/2″ increment measurements. I am so sad that it has been discontinued! I have been trying to find an alternative that will handle 1/2 width of fabric without luck. The Stripology rulers are nice, but I find myself falling back to this one when cutting a large amount from yardage. Maybe GE Designs or Creative Grids will fill this gap in the future. If you run across one of these anywhere, I highly recommend picking it up! Check out this video if you are curious about how it works.

The second tool I want to share is the “Binding Eaze” by Quilted Heartz. I love an inventor. It isn’t a surprise to me that they have come up with some tools to enhance the arduous process of prepping binding! This tool can be found at many quilt shops around the country, including one of my favorite local shops, KC Maker Studio and Fabrics. Check out this video. It really works just like she shows, so no need to remake the wheel here. If you have issues with the binding eaze sliding on you, the tip I have is to stick a few short pins in the corners. This gives it a little more stability.

Happy Quilting!