CHURCH LADY QUILT

I had the pleasure of making a quilt for a local church raffle for the last two years and I also was very please they have allowed me to make another one for them.

Last year's quilt was something else. OK...first of all, I love to quilt but I am the worst person for color choices for other people. If it was for me, I would have it super bright fabrics of purple, pink, green or big flowers and that is not the choice for everyone.

So last year I asked that the church ladies pick out the colors and the pattern. One of the ladies suggested a quilt that was hanging on the wall in a local quilt store. I went there and pointed out the quilt I needed to make and said I needed some fabric and the pattern. I tried to pick out some but they really picked out the majority. I didn't mind the colors at all, they just weren't my idea of a quilt.

I got to work on it and then I realized that I had to force myself to even work on it. It was mostly made of civil war reproductions and they are very dark and depressing colors in my opinion. I showed it to a few people and they seemed to like it but I have no clue why. Every time I worked on it I just hated it more and more. I started calling it Ugly Betty.

Well, I finally got it done. I was so disappointed with it that I told my friend and my ONLY quilter to just do an edge to edge design and be done with it. I sent it thru the mail and when she got it she said she liked it. I again told her to just do her thing with it. Well, I tell you...DID SHE!! When I went to pick it up, I couldn't believe it was mine. WOW She completely transformed the entire quilt. It was gorgeous!

Well, the tickets sold and the quilt was won by none other than a beautiful woman named Betty. How strange that it happened that way!

All in all here it is in all it's glory. It was a queen size with 2 pillow shams. I haven't got a photo of the pillow shams but they were beautiful! She did an extraordinary job on those. They were like a work of art!

Bird Houses and Cricuts

Well, we had a project this summer that ended up being a family project. Hubby cut the boards and milled down some old cedar shingles. My daughter helped me make some windows out of vinyl on my Cricut. I also did the shutters out of a beer can and ran it thru the Cuttlebug to give it some texture. We then painted them with alcohol inks to give them the look of old copper. The things you can make out of beer cans!
Hey, don't get me wrong here. I do mention beer cans and I do mention alcohol inks. They do not have anything to do with each other. Alcohol inks are just really cool alcohol based inks that colorize really slick surfaces such a metal, glass, and plastic. All those things that are normally hard to paint otherwise.

A Little about my Cricut

I really like to mess with crafty software programs and I love to play with my Cricut Expression. A Cricut is a machine that will cut out anything that you draw or bring into the software screen on your computer from 1/4 inch up to 2 feet! Oh, where would be without those special software programs? I love the fact that you can cut anything you want using the Make The Cut program also known as MTC. There is another program called Sure Cuts A Lot or SCAL that does about the same thing. For some reason I have both programs. They both do about the same but they each have their own little things that I like about them.
These third party softwares are the only reason I bought the Cricut. If I had to buy cartridges for all the projects I would be so broke I couldn't afford to buy the paper or vinyl to put in it! You can cut any font on the computer or search the Internet. You can cut out any dingbat you want. (You can Google that if you don't know what a dingbat is and NO it is NOT a dingy woman. I already hold that proud title!)
You can also design your own cutouts. It is endless what you can do with a Cricut. It is a lot of creative fun and I would highly recommend adding it to your personal "I need" list!