How to make perfect petals in Appliqué.

How I make my flower petals in appliqué

1. Trace your pattern  on to heat resistant template plastic.
2. Cut out the template.
3. Trace template onto the back of your fabric.
4. Using a quilting weight thread or thicker thread, Use a running stitch starting on the bottom corner of your petal.
5. Insert your finger in the center of the fabric and draw up your thread.
6. Tie off thread with a couple of stitches .
7. Spray starch then use hot iron wait till cools 
8. Snip one thread and pull out template. Hit petal with iron once more and it’s ready to glue baste in place. 

1st baby food!!!! The best book for natural purees

I loved this book so much when I had my baby... I created this post years ago but never published it.
I thought I would share that I made my baby his food and never bought store bought baby food. It is so easy to make your own baby food. All you need to do is peel, boil and jar.

The recipes in this book are so wonderful and easy... All natural.

This is how I freeze and stored my food. In containers and jars from local hardware store and 99c stores. I made rough paper labels taped it to the jars so I knew what it was. You could also date the jars. NOT fancy at all.

its so easy to boil your fruits and vegetables then drain the water then puree. I actually peeled the apple first then boiled.

This is the first real food Jonah had. Purreed peas. Peas have to be purreed a long time because they have a rough texture and are not as smooth as other vegetables.

He used to sit in this chair and lick the spoon later on but they recalled this chair. I was sad about that because I loved this chair.

Thanks for visiting.

FREE APPLIQUÉ PATTERN - Birthday Bouquet

Today for my birthday I am giving you a free appliqué block pattern!

Click HERE OR on the picture above for your pattern. 

Materials:

Bloomsbury Fabric collection fat quarters and scraps

Cut Background 18.5 x 19.5 inches

wash away appliqué sheets found HERE

print out the pdf and pattern on the appliqué sheets.

Cut around the shapes and glue stick them to the fabric

glue baste the shapes to your background and hand stitch or machine stitch in place.

Enjoy!

FAT QUARTER SHOP GIVEAWAY

I am hosting a giveaway of 2 Jolly Bars of my latestest fabric collection"Bloomsbury" for Moda!
Follow me on instagram : francesnewcombe or paper and flower for art!  Tag a friend and say what you like about the collection!

Make some nice comments below!
GO TO FAT QUARTER SHOP HERE TO PURCHASE THE PATTERN THAT GOES WITH THIS LOVELY JOLLY BAR!

Pattern is HERE

SPLENDID SAMPLER MY BLOCK: "SEWING NUT"

When I was asked to do a block for the Splendid Sampler I was so honored. 80 designers were asked to design a block that shared the story behind why we love quilting and sewing.
My block is called "Sewing Nut" it depicts -

A Tale of a Little squirrels’ adventure

When I first discovered quilting I fell in love with applique. Maybe it's because I was an illustration major in college and I love anything that is storybook -- and appliqué is just that. 

 Here is my finished block. YOU CAN GET THE PATTERN HERE
This was sent away to Pat Slone and Jane Davidson (quilt Jane) to go to the Martingale book isn't that exciting?

After cutting out my backgrounds I need to chose my "ground grass" strip colors.

 Here is what my drawn piece on the Heat and Bond Heavy sheet looks like. And yes I use the craft heavy fuse even if it gums up my needle... I really want these small pieces to stick.

 After cuting my white squares, I positioned my white square over my printed pattern for registration to use as a guide.

 Have you ever had those big platers  at the market for veggies or other foods? This black food plastic plater is great to hold all my applique shapes. It is also great to hold any of your quilt block pieces and it is very easy to cary them around in this. The black also is great to see things well.

 Here is the finish block and beautiful Aurfil thread colors to match. I love the sharp mini frisker scissors for cutting out my applique pieces.

 I decided to make a mini quilt with my little squirrel blocks so I cut out 4. Aren't the trees cute?

Time to take out your decorative buttons and use them!

 I Have a seasonal theme for each of my blocks. It's suttle but the buttons sort of do it.

Spring Summer Fall then Winter. You could problably push this idea further with the colors and fabrics you choose.

SPRING

 Here are the close up of the mini quilt I made using my blocks. I just cut 2.5 in strips and did a sort of log cabin around my block. I measured as I went. I sewed in a round ... starting with the left side of the block then the top then the right side then the bottom cutting the 2.5 in strips and measred the length of the block after I sewed each strip.

 SUMMER

FALL

 WINTER

Hope you enjoyed this post and the Splendid Sampler! Hope you go nuts for making this block

Love, Frances.

Honored to have an article on the Moda Blog

Super excited to be featured on the Moda Blog today!  Check out the article 

HERE 

Thank you Moda Fabrics and  Linzee McCray

QUILT MARKET 2016 SPRING SALT LAKE CITY

Better late than never! Is my new moto. I am finally posting pictures of quilt market spring 2016 Salt Lake City Utah and its now one month later. I am sorry it took so long to post however I needed some time to recover from what was a grueling schedule. I was so nervous going to quilt market since it had been 2 years since my last market and the second time doing a full 10 x 10 booth after my "Safari Moon" Collection. I was now launching a new fabric line with Quilt Jane and with MODA. Very exciting yet we had a lot of work prepping for this show.

Downtown salt lake city convention center

Before leaving for quilt maket Jane (Quilt Jane Jane Davidson) had a few hours of a layover so we met Amy Sinibaldi designer for Art Gallery and her company is called Nana and Co. We had brunch near the airport.

Our Quilt market booth was #605 wish I could charge room service to it.  We had gotten the floor put in and Jane was already exhausted. Wake up Jane we have a whole booth to make!

I was acting a bit stir crazy and anxious to get it set up after weeks of sewing.

Floor is in but look at our boxes ... drum roll please...

TADA!

Moda designers Shann Orr and Lyndia Nelso setting up their booth

The audience waiting for Moda School house presentation

I was excited to be one of the "faces of Moda" on their wall

Jane and I in our booth day 2

Patty Vergon Made our Baltimore Sea Quilt and Sheryl Zurek quilted it.

Mario is the rep for Moda in the La Area, He is sporting Karen Turchans bag that she made for us.

Nancy Helpinstill helped us and made some darling things for our booth including this adorale starfish.

We all loved Emily Herrick's quilt made with actual 50 shades of grey.

loved these decorative bindings 

Amy Butler always has an incredible booth

So many amazing booths and things to see at market I so regret not taking more pictures but it was so overwhelming.

I kidnapped Sacy Hsu's baby chick  from her new collection Farm Fun it is so adorable!

Finally had to fly back home and bummped into the incredibly sweet and talented Betsy Chutchian. 

And we hammed it up and bonded at the airport.