Pin It Weekly #251

Wow, I've posted about five years of weekly pins. Some of my own pin, some from followers, some from pinners who just happen to have great boards and ideas.

From the Audubon Society, find it at:
https://www.pinterest.com/mary_marcotte/humming-bird/

Five years! 250 posts. I'm quite happy with my stick-to-it ability. (It's a rare thing.)

From the Audubon Society, find it at:
https://www.pinterest.com/mary_marcotte/feathered-friends/

I just had to look back and see when this started. Apparently the Pinterest bug bit me hard in the summer of 2012. By the end of the year I was posting weekly Pinterest posts. I called them Pin It Wednesday until I figured out I was rarely posting on  Wednesdays.

From the Audubon Society, find it at;
https://www.pinterest.com/mary_marcotte/butterfly-flying-flowers/

To give myself a little leeway, I changed the name to Post It Weekly and was thrilled to post anytime on a weekday.

Now here we are almost six years later and I'm still going. Well, according to the dear darling the math doesn't add up, but he doesn't know Mary math, so how could he figure it out?

So, happy dance! And three cheers for six years! Plus thank yous all around to all of you for hanging in with me. Six years of Pinterest foolishness and seven with this blog. Love, hugs, and Southern squeezes to you all.

See you in a quilt,
Mary

Pin It Weekly #250

Happy Weekly! Here are a few pins that showed up on my feed in the last few days.

Have a happy weekly!

Birthday....Bust :-(

Have you ever known a 4-year-old to have a birthday party in which several other children were invited and no one showed up?  That's what's happened to Fleur de Lis Quilts.  It's sad and disheartening, but I've decided to move on.  


Much of what I write about is for myself: a way of recording my ideas, my quilting story, and events, So in a way it makes sense that I continue in that vein and not let my lack of interested, engaged readers affect who I am or what I write.  People will either read or not.  

On the other hand, I have to admit that it stings.  After all, there were a few people who visited.  They, apparently, just chose not to enter the giveaway.  

Regardless, I have one faithful follower: Kaja, who visits a couple of times each week and leaves her sweet comments.  Since she is the only one to comment on the giveaway, she wins by default!  Congratulations Kaja!  I'll send the New Orleans recipe book and the fabric, in yellow, once I hear from you.


I've already sent you an email and it would be best to respond to that so that I'm sure to get your note.

I hope you enjoy your prizes!

Four Years of Blogging CELEBRATION and GIVEAWAY

I've really enjoyed blogging.  I like writing and having an outlet for some of my work.  I also enjoy reading other blogs, keeping up with what is going on in the quilting/blogging world and, mostly, I love meeting new people.  

This outlet is just as much an inlet for me.  FOUR fun years!

So enough celebrating, let's give something away!  First I have this sweet little recipe book that Richard and I picked up on our last trip to the Big Easy.  The title is Favorite Recipes from New Orleans, the recipes are from some of its famous restaurants and everyone looks and reads absolutely delicious.  Well, I mean, the one or two that I looked at. 

Just take at look at Cherries Jubilee.

And there are beautiful photos of some of those restaurants.  The photos alone would be worth the price of the book. 

And so what about the quilting part of the blog?  Well, there's something for that, too.  I've been taking advantage of the very generous sale at Sew Fresh Fabrics which is eventually closing it's online store.  To that end, they are giving 30% off of all purchases of whatever is left on their shelves.  I've decided to cut some of the fat quarters into 4 1/2 inch squares so that I can play with a few ideas (eventually) and, of course, I thought you'd like a few of the squares.  Since I've barely started cutting on the Studio cutter, I thought I'd let the winner choose a color or two.  It really doesn't matter to me, since I can play with whatever color I happen to have.  
This means we'll have two winners: the first name chosen by Mr. Random Number will win the recipe book, the second will win some 4 1/2 inch squares.

These are the pieces that came in this week, but again, you don't have to choose yellow or green: I have plenty of other colors, patterns, and prints.  If you'd like to do something really scrappy, or modern, or "everything and the kitchen sink," I can do that, too. Four years of blogging should mean, oh, 40 squares, don't you agree?

So what do you have to do?  
Well, heck we're celebrating four years, so let's give you four chances:
                               1. like Fleur de Lis Quilts on Facebook, 
                               2. follow Fleur de Lis Quilts blog, 
                               3. follow Fleur de Lis Quilts on 3rd Revolution, 
                        and 4. tell us which color, print or type of fabric you'd prefer (solids, prints, modern, mix it up).

Surely you know that you'll need to leave a comment for each chance...please do.  And don't forget your email address so I can contact you on Friday, which will be the final day of the giveaway.

What a disappointment!

Voting begins today for the Connecting Threads Fabric Design Contest.    My design did not make it into the competition.  I don't really know why except that it may have been "disqualified due to poor image quality or inability for the design to be reproduced with screen printing methods in 15 colors or less. Photographs of artwork, snapshots, pixelated artwork, and designs with numerous colors in small spaces all fall into this category."  

I was so excited.  Oh well, on to other things...
You can still vote on the Connecting Threads' website.

Latest project

I finished this quilt a few days ago.  The title is "Fleurs sur Lundi bleu" which is French for "Flowers on Blue Monday."  

I used fabrics in the Surf and Sand collection by Michele D'Amore for Marcus Brothers Textiles.  I really like the fabrics and enjoyed the process of designing the quilt as I worked on it...truly flying by the seat of my pants!  

However, I am disappointed that in the end the center fleur de lis is so off-center.  

There are other mistakes in the quilt but I'm going to have to live with all of them because I didn't notice any of those mistake until after the quilt was COMPLETELY finished, quilted and bound!

Here are a few close up so that you can see if you can find those crazy mistakes and check out some of my quilting.  

I really had fun quilting and used a few different quilting techniques, such as echo quilting, feathers, in the ditch, 

pebbling, trapunto and stippling.  

Some of them I have not done before, so I learned a bit, too.

Although I'm disappointed with the mistakes in the quilt, I am happy with the color and block designs.  I guess that's something.  
Happy Quilting,
Mary

Blue brooch

When my bloggy friend, Jenclair, at Bayou Quilts and Dolls wrote about her encrusted pieces which are embroidered, I was intrigued.  She mentioned that she's interested in turning some into brooches, which I love, so I decided to give it a whirl.  My effort is not even close to the beauties she creates, but I'm not disappointed either.

She made a few suggestions when I commented and told her about my interest.  Those definitely helped, but I'm not quite as brave as she is, so my piece is not encrusted at all the way hers are.

I started with a small circle drawn on white muslin.  I embroidered simply motifs because my skills have lain dormant for many years. I really love blue, so I used a variety of blue threads.  

I've made a few beaded brooches before and like those, so I planned from early on to include beads.  I figured that if nothing else, I could cover any bad embroidery with beads.

I wasn't so disappointed in my stitches that I felt an overwhelming need to cover them, though.  So while I did couch some beads in the center of the piece, the rest of the beads encircle the embroidery.

As is my way, once I started couching beads down, I had a difficult time stopping.  I tend to drop them in even circles that get continuously larger as they are added.  By the time I get to the edge of the piece, though, I've begun piling them on.  It's necessary to go around the edge also.  

While I used mostly blue glass beads, this brooch wasn't too particular and any bead in the vial was fair game.  It just happens that there were a few purple, some green, and two or three clear beads.  I love this brooch and can barely wait to wear it on Saturday at the Quilt Show.

Nine Patch Plaid 2.1+ (or &*%$@)

When I wrote my post on Friday night, I'd left everyone wondering about a small quilt I'd been working on that I'm calling "Nine Patch Plaid" mostly because it's starts out as a nine patch but changes dramatically into a plaid-looking quilt.   I spent Saturday morning finishing up the little quilt and then photoing it.

When I came in to the house to work on the pictures, I got sidetracked (as I am want to do) and left the camera on the sofa, where I sit comfortably to work with the laptop.

Enter grandchildren, exit camera.  Fifteen of us spent the next 24 hours searching the house for the camera.  After a bit of torture, one child admitted to having played with the camera.  One child refused to answer any questions concerning the camera and another just kept saying, "I didn't touch the camera."  The others escaped to their own houses.

Since the last known place where the camera was seen was the living room, we cleaned putting stray items in their rightful place--the trashcan.  I searched under the sofa cushions, ran my hand in its dangerous bowel region, turned it over to look under the hood, started it up and drove it around.  

All to no avail. 

To no avail, that is, until Rich turned the sofa over one more time and discovered a suspicious lump caught in the bowel regions.  We consider X-rays and MRI but those require appointments and it is Sunday.  So I did the only thing I could: inserting my head, shoulders, and both arms into the places where trash, weapons and small dogs go to hide, I fished out my camera and a piece of paper.  

As luck would have it, the paper was a ten dollar bill, which everyone claimed, but I fought them off.  After all, MY upper body took the plunge into the depths.  

So we're back in business, everyone forgiven, ugly words erased from memory.  Camera back in good graces.

Do you remember why I was looking for the camera?  Ah, yes!  I had taken pics of this little table topper.  

Short version of my process: added a wide white border, appliqued a few flowers and blue birds, quilted with close, tight seams that sweep across the quilt to create movement.  I've seen a couple of Karen McTavish's videos on youtube.com and a couple of her quilts at the Houston show.  It's rather time consuming and really eats up thread, but it's great on a table runner because all those close stitches really stiffen the quilt, smashing the batting down.

Enjoy the photo gallery, getting it here was a dangerous, difficult endeavor!

I admitted that I'm a little obsessed with Pinterest a few weeks ago, remember?  I thought I'd try to get a handle on that.  It's not so difficult, getting a handle on something.  I figured it was just a matter of not going to the Pinterest site.  Of course, the real problem is that I can't avoid the computer altogether.  That would make it much easier.



I've done fairly well, it turns out.  I'm down to pinning only once or twice a week.... visiting the site less often than I visit my Facebook page.  Of course, I admit that I keep up with family on FB, so there's a really good reason to check it at least daily.  

Then there's Etsy, I do have to check on my shop, which I reopened only a few days ago.  I also need to add a few more items in the shop.  I won't even mention all the things I need to get onto the computer for just to keep up with schoolwork.  In fact, I have a couple of new programs to learn just to keep up.

So apparently I can't live without a computer.  I need it for several good reasons and I like playing on it--not games, that's for the kids as far as I'm concerned.  No I play on Electric Quilt and Pinterest.  Ah well, there's fun to be had in all manner of places and things.  

I may not let my fun control me, but I do enjoy find photos of beautiful antique linens and laces, ancient gold-trimmed costumes, the china that I love, the newest fabrics, quilt inspiration, yummy-looking foods (especially desserts) and various other collections.  

Happy pinning....uhm, I mean quilting,
Mary