Friday, July 4, 2014

Busy Weekend Update

Happy Fourth of July--I hope you get a chance to do some holiday celebrating!


I am planning to get a few things prepped so I can work on them when I have a few free moments. I'll be setting up some Stitch Society hexagons, of course, and also my Primitive Gatherings block of the week, Sunflower Gatherings. I can't believe we are up to block five already! I am loving the sunflowers and all the happy scrappy fabrics.
Blocks one through four are pretty much done, aside from the parts that overlap into the alternate blocks. I have been making the components for the alternate blocks, but I will wait until the end to make all of them at the same time. That way I can mix up the fabrics a bit more. 

Confession: I just couldn't face cutting out 52 of the tiny flowers for block three. They measure 3/8 of an inch and I cound not get them to look pretty. I did some online research and found a Martha Stewart hydrangea paper punch. With a little experimentation, I got some good results. The punch isn't meant for cutting wool, obviously, but with the fusible web and the paper left on the back to stabilize the wool and a lot of muscle, I am pretty happy with the way they turned out. I had to pick them out of the punch with a tweezers, and occasionally had to snip a few fibers, but it worked! Toward the end, I figured out it worked even better if I just did one of the tiny flowers at a time instead of both of them on the punch.  

I think they turned out very cute--well worth the price of the punch and so much better looking than the few I tried cutting on my own!

Have a fun and safe weekend!!

4 comments:

  1. Brilliant solution for those tiny flowers!

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  2. Oh...what a great idea for those tiny flowers - I said quite a few bad words while tracing and cutting! And the bad thing...I think I have that punch and did not even once think about using it!

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  3. Thanks for the punch idea! I'm getting read to do block 3. So, I ordered it right away to save myself some frustration! Plus, JoAnn's has a special on shipping today!

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  4. Pretty!! I opted out of those tiny flowers...made them just a little bigger! Your idea was a winner!

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