Congratulations to Mary on Lake Pulaski who’s been chosen randomly as the Weekly Giveaway winner of Gift Box Studio® Celebrate!
Thank you to our family of blog readers and Facebookers for leaving such entertaining stories about holiday gifts and unusual gift wrapping techniques in the comments! I got some great ideas to try out this holiday season and had a few chuckles as well.
Some quilters pre-wash their fabric before sewing, others don’t. It becomes a personal decision on what is best for you.
If you decide to pre-wash fabric in the washing machine, use a lingerie bag to corral the small or older vintage pieces to protect them and minimize fraying at the edges. You can use a zigzag stitch or overlock stitch around the cut edges of your larger pieces of fabric to prevent the threads from raveling.
This tip comes from Fast, Fun & Easy Scrapbook Quilts by Sue Astroth.
Happy Washing,
The Tech Editors
This article is part of the Quilting Tips from the Tech Editors tutorial series. Recent tutorials include:
A creative life is filled with challenges and rewards, puzzles and curiosities. This ongoing series of poems attempts to express the “Aha”s and “What if”s, the deep ponderings and casual observations of an inquiring mind trying to make sense of reality. May it serve, for you, as a bit of “Everyday Inspiration” along your own creative path.
Are your shelves sagging with the weight of your crafting library, but you can’t bear to toss those fondly-remembered titles? Consider donating them to your local library! Give them a call. Most public libraries accept lightly used books to add to their underfunded collections or to sell in bargain sales to support other programs. Either way they’ll get a second (green) life while benefitting your community!
Library sales are also a great place to find scrapbooking and paper crafts treasures for cheap! Sift through the stacks as if you’re in a paper store, and keep a keen eye out for sumptuous gold-stamped bindings, antique text pages, scribbled notes hidden in poetry books, marbled papers, bookplates, etc. to add to your next collage. Don’t forget to look through the children’s section for rich lithographs and etchings, or for unique bright colors and patterns. Kids books are often the cheapest, sometimes less than a dollar a piece!
Check out the next library sale in your community and let us know what you find!
I have been an admirer of Kathy Mack from Pink Chalk Studio for ages now and am so impressed by her recent post on laminated cottons.
Photo courtesy of Kathy Mack
I have been so excited to use these but have been a little intimidated. Kathy saves me, and you some time with her tips and tricks at her blog.
From Anna Maria Horner
from Annette Tatum
I’m feeling a lot more confident about trying some of the laminated cottons now and see a coloring/painting table cloth in my near future.
I took a 2-day staycation a few months ago and finally got started on a couple of birdhouse projects I’d been planning to make as gifts for my Aunt and Grandmother. Both ladies love it when birds visit their gardens. I bought the unfinished wood birdhouses at Joann and used just a few simple supplies to turn them into bold, colorful garden pieces. The Paper Crafter’s Color Companion always comes in handy for me when I need to come up with a color scheme. If any birdhouses can bring a bit of cheeriness to a couple of gardens in cold England, then these can!
The month of gift giving is here. Just when you think you’ve got all your shopping done, you realize there is still the wrapping to be done and nothing short of creative or original will do. Good news, this week’s giveaway is a wrap task helper. Gift Box Studio® Celebrate pop-out gift boxes, cards and embellishments are so easy and trendy that you’ll surely hear those oohs and ahhs as you bestow your presents. Check out the whole Gift Box Studio collection. Their beauty and function also make them great gifts.
For a chance to win your copy of Gift box Studio Celebrate leave a comment here or on Facebook telling us your most interesting gift wrapping experience.
Comments will be closed at 9am PST on Monday 12/14/09 and the winner will be announced later that day!
Congratulations to Diana Wilsey Geer who was randomly chosen as the winner of Lorraine Torrence’s book Shifting Perspectives as well as a beautiful, Caribbean-inspired mini-quilt pattern from Lorraine Torrence Designs called Sunrise. We’d like to thank Lorraine for contributing to this great giveaway. Be sure to visit Lorraine’s website often for new ideas, products and inspiration!
Thanks for all the great comments from our blog community and Facebookers. Tune in tomorrow for the next Weekly Giveaway.
My favorite thing about the holidays by far is getting to give things to people. You blog readers really are a nice bunch, so I have a treat for you! Below are four desktop wallpaper images for you to download and set as the background image on your computers!
Just click on the image to download a .zip file containing the desktop wallpaper image in several different sizes. For help on downloading and setting the images as your desktop background, click here.
The images came straight out of our books, so thank our fabulous authors for making such beautiful quilts. Happy Holidays to everyone from all of us here at C&T Publishing!
Once Upon a Season
by Becky Goldsmith & Linda Jenkins
A creative life is filled with challenges and rewards, puzzles and curiosities. This ongoing series of poems attempts to express the “Aha”s and “What if”s, the deep ponderings and casual observations of an inquiring mind trying to make sense of reality. May it serve, for you, as a bit of “Everyday Inspiration” along your own creative path.
