More wool

I bought some precut wool hearts & circles on ebay & have been having fun with them.

Wool applique kit

I'm thinking about making wool applique kits to sell. This is the first pattern that I've come up with. It's simple & the sample took me 2 evenings to complete.

Couching cords by machine

I bought this foot, a Bernina #21, especially for cord applique. It works great! Below it is a custom foot that I put together which does the same thing almost as well. The piece of cocktail straw is taped under the foot & it ends just before the needle. It keeps the cord in line with the stitches so you don't have to guide the cord, just the fabric. I used a piping foot, but I have also done this with a satin stitch foot. You can use any foot that has clearance between the side rails to let the cord feed through.

Wool applique

Last month one of the ladies in my local quilt guild taught a class in wool applique (by hand). She had patterns for the students to use, but I didn't see any that I wanted to do, so I designed my own & it became a Valentine for Charlie. I plan to see if I have the right stretcher frames to stretch it. I enjoyed the Valentine so much that I've been doing more wool applique. The next 4 pictures are destined to become patch pockets on tote bags. Two are completed & the other 2 are in progress.

Oops, the one below is sideways. I'll probably use it with the yellow stripe going across the bottom.

The last 2 pictures will be pin cushions. The first one is for me & the second is for a lady who gave me about a pound of antique beads that had been her mothers. They are mostly bugles, & 3 cut seed beads. I will be putting a beaded fringe on her pin cushion.

Vest

I have been playing with wool applique-mostly wool on wool & by hand -pearl cotton buttonhole stitch. It's very relaxing & takes little effort to push the needle through the felted wool. I decided to try wool on denim by machine & made this vest. I finished it at 4:00 this morning so I could wear it to Lock Haven for an appointment, lunch with Charlie & out for our V-day dinner. (We always go out a day or 2 before Valentine's day & I fix a special dinner on the 14th-this year it'll be something with crabmeat & 16-20 size Gulf shrimp.)

I'm glad that I got it done for today, because it looks like we may be staying in for a couple of days. We expect 1-2 feet of snow by tomorrow evening.
We should have taken the pictures before I wore it with a seatbelt & got it wrinkled.

New quilt

In December I found a strange fabric on Walmart's bargain shelves. It had blowfishes with human dentures, lips & eyes, so I hosted a challenge on one of my online groups, Fiber Pirates. I provided a fat 1/4 of the fish fabric & 1 other fabric & the participants had until January 31 to use some or all of both fabrics in the project of their choosing. Here's mine. I've named it " The Schoolmarm" I had 2 other ideas & may play with them at a later date.