Patchwork Treasury on Etsy

One of my Sapphire Dream ATC's is featured in a treasury on Etsy along with many other lovely blue patchwork items. Check it out....
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=6718

Lucky Number 7 Piece of Toast

This is the piece of toast that was served to us at breakfast today! Pretty freaky! It really has a number 7 on it! I'm selling it on eBay just out of curiosity to see if someone will actually buy it...

Here's the listing if you want to check on it during the week to see if it's going to sell...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Lucky-and-or-Holy-Number-7-Piece-of-Toast-Bread-OOAK_W0QQitemZ320296313966QQihZ011QQcategoryZ1469QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


This has been a fun highlight of a week that has been spent watching hurricanes in the Gulf with my family who is evacuated here from Gustav and is waiting to see where Ike goes before heading home to New Orleans. If the piece of toast sells, I will donate the money to hurricane recovery efforts.

Apple Printing-Back to School

My daughter and I tried our hands at apple printing the other day. Etsy Texas Crafters had a design challenge this past Monday and one of the themes was Back to School. Apples seemed to be a good fit. I did some printing along with my daughter and then even used my new embellisher to needle felt the finished quilted piece. I'm really quite pleased with the resulting mini-quilt. It is listed in my etsy shop, bybethstudio.

Here's my daughter's hands loading the apple with paint...

We just used regular acrylic panit on cotton fabric. Here's the printing in progress (this is my side of the fabric)...

Here's the free-style painting that my daughter did along with the apple printing...

She has titled her fabric "Butterfly Garden". I will soon quilt and embellish her piece as well and will post a picture of the finished piece. Claire LOVES my sewing machine and embellisher so I will have her help me with that part too.

We also saved the apple halves and are going to print with different colors on different fabrics later in the week. I'll post the results of that printing session, too.

Welcome Back to School!

Embellisher Practice Samples

Well with the encouragement of my quilting buddy, Cindy, I got over the fear of screwing up my new machine and dove right in. I have started practicing on fleece and have tried a variety of items as embellishment such as , fleece yarn, regular "fuzzy" yarn, metallic yarn, yarn woven with threads and just fleece pieces. We were both impressed by how well the 2 items are felted together into a very solid new creation.

Here is the front of my fleece sample strip....

And here is the back.....
Now that I've over come my initial trepidation, I'm really having fun.

I'll post more later as I continue to experiment with my new toy!!!

My Newest Toy

Well, there she is...my latest toy, a Baby Lock Embellisher. I got a steal on the EMB7 from a sweet lady in Minnesota.

It should arrive here this week.

After a long while of googling, searching blogs, calling local quilt stores and fantasizing, I'm eagerly anticipating its arrival.

After feeling like I was involved in new car-like negotiations with a local quilting store (amazing how a price can drop by $400 seemingly overnight???, good thing I didn't jump at the expensive-ass first price...who are they kidding here?) I found this brand new, never opened one on Craig's List and the seller is a fellow etsy person (etsian?). So it has 7 needles instead of the 12 of the new model...that's ok! I really don't even know what to do with the 7 needles it has. I'm sure I'll have fun learning!

So, I made a new etsy friend and got a cool new machine at a great price.

Keep checking back for pictures of my first attempts at creating things with my new baby. YEA!!!

Any input on good sites and blogs with project ideas and how-to's is appreciated. :)

ETSY front page! YEA!

On August 2nd I was featured on the front page of Etsy! YEA!!! My little green ATC/ACEO is in the top left-hand corner! Yea!

Beaded Tassel Inspiration

I scooped up this interesting tassel on a shopping trip with my daughter a few weeks ago.I have disassembled it into its components and I'm using the parts in different ATCs/ACEOs for my etsy shop bybethstudio. Here it is in parts....






Here are 2 ATCs/ACEOs that I have made so far using the parts...


They are both newly listed in my etsy shop http://bybethstudio.etsy.com/ .

I'll post the others as they are created from the parts of this one tassel...you just never know when inspiration will strike! Keep creating! :) Beth