Hi everyone,

Hope you all have days filled with love and celebrated it even more last week with your loved ones. 🙂

I was quiet here for many reasons, but emerging now with some new life set-ups – I have a new job!! I finally found a great fit and opportunity to go back to cancer research and back to my original “home-away-from-home”, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and… here it comes…. I AM SOOOOOOO HAPPPYYYYYY!!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, my previous work was a good place, a great growing company with good people (specially my Microbiology team!) but it wasn’t research, my first and original passion. I am very grateful to have had that job since I learned a lot of things that I wouldn’t otherwise and of course met some great people and made some friends. But not being passionate about my work (that takes most of my day) was really wearing down on me… I don’t think I even realized how much, until now.

In more practical terms, old job often required long hours and always longer commute, so the hours of the day were just not there for much of creative work… and likely the drive to do it too.

But I feel it all changing! The sense of excitement, million ideas in my head and strong drive to create are all coming back – hoorayyy!!! I know, it’s a bit pathetic, but I really am excited and so full of ideas that it’s a bit of a problem in itself. I say that because it actually prevented me from writing ANY blog post for a while… kinda didn’t know where to start? But then I figured – just write what’s in your heart and head at the moment, so this is it!! 🙂

Sew…. back to quilting now. Like many of you, I have been doing this for a while… more than 20 years to be more precise and one of my favorite parts of this creative journey is always learning new things!! And that is exactly what I have been missing lately!! Hence, one of my new goals is to be much better in doing that!

First up – improving my machine quilting skills!!

Ever-inspiring Karen Miller, had a quick and cute pre-Valentine’s Day quilting challenge on her Facebook group and I jumped right in!

We were to hand appliqué a heart on a square of background and then do some echo-ing and feathers, to create a small Valentine. There was going to be some marking, some precision, feathers… all the stuff that I needed to practice!! Here is what I did:

-first, I immediately decided I have to make TWO, since I have two cutest granddaughters, and also aimed to make them into floor pillows (more about that later!). Since pinks and purples are highly rated in toddler world, I picked some super-yummy AGF fabrics…

Appliquéd my hearts by machine (still turned edges!) by sewing fabric heart to piece of very light tule,

turning it right side out through a slit in the tule,

and doing an almost invisible stitching around it.

http://maraquiltdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/img_3051.mov

My favorite stitch for this is a blind-hem stitch, adjusted to a small length and narrow width.

What do you like to use for machine appliqué stitch?

So here were the hearts and it was time to quilt!!

After some reference pressing folds and markings of outside perimeters, I just went for the tiny pebbles and some feathers…

I used 50wt cotton Aurifil, matching pink on top and contrasting teal in the bobbin (I just wanted to see how good/bad it was on the back!! )

And just as I was happy to finish first one, this (above) happened… yup! Few four letter words and some frog-stitching (rip-it, rip-it… ) and that was corrected!!

It was really fun doing this!! What did I learn?

-my pebbles are still a struggle…

-my feathers need more precise back-tracking

-I need to constantly remind myself to be patient and slow down when precision is needed

-my letters (in the middle of the heart) also need more practice (N for Natalie almost looks like H?? 🙁 )

What do you think?? Be totally honest here!

Using the contrasting thread in the bobin does come with some risks but I really wanted to see it clearly… it is a challenge after all, right?

So once these two were done, I placed each one on-point on a square of some super charming AGF small floral (one of my favorites, Recollection by Katarina Roccella !)

And that was the front of the future floor pillow.

Now I had to throw in some fun for my little girls – an envelope on the back of the pillow, where my love note for them would be, accompanied of course with a bunch of goodies…

I picked some totally LOVEly fat quarters from AGF’s Letters Capsule – goodness these are cute!!

These went on the top back part of the pillow

And then it was time to fill them with some goodies!

Yes, photos are definitely not the best as I was in a bit of a rush, but my two sweeties Valentines love their pillows!

Love.

Love for family, love to create, love to improve, love is what it’s all about, right?

Wishing you nothing but love and see you soon back here,

Love,

Marija

3 replies
  1. Diana
    Diana says:

    These are two very lucky little granddaughters. Your pillows and treats envelopes are lovely. I think your FMQ looks amazing! ~Diana from Toronto

    Reply

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