Sew awareness 2026 Quilt Festival theme quilt

Herewith the original Sea glass Quilt I entered into the festival.  It didn't qualify for a prize though as we novices have to compete against teacher and master quilters which is not an even playfield.

I combined turtles with the sea glass design to depict the detrimental influence of micro plastics on the environment.  Turtles was also used as the logo for the festival. The turtle design I bought from Urban Threads, and you can find the design here.  The fabric I used for the border is from Langa Lapu.

Sea Glass design

I was finally able to finish this design and upload it to my store.  I actually embroidered it twice as I entered the first one in the Sew Awareness 2026 quilt festival which contained copyrighted designs from another store.  So, to be able to upload a photo on my store, I needed to embroider another one.

I don't know if it is a labor of love or just craziness to gather up about 120 different pieces of fabric and about 60 spools of thread and change color with every piece of fabric.  Embroidering about 15 pieces per evening after a whole day of work, well, you decide.  The design was already done in February and embroidering two of them with life in-between, brought us to mid June.  And beware, rummaging through so much fabric left your studio looking somewhat like a war zone.

Get your own design here while it is still on special.  Completed size is 400 x 500mm.

I gifted this one to a friend who is going to turn it into a bath mat.  I will put up a picture of my original one after the festival have concluded.

Sloth

I initially wanted to embroider various items for my daughter in 2024 of her favorite animals but unfortunately my Brother Innovis 4000 had other ideas when it broke down.  So, I started in time (or so I thought) this year to gifted her when they visited us during the past two weeks of April, but then had to work many hours overtime, had to finish all the entries for the Bloemshow and started working on entries for the Sew Awareness 2026 quilt festival and just run out of time.

I finished only this beautiful sloth from Planet Applique which I then stitched onto a hoodie and bought items with highland cows, bees and foxes - her other favorite animals.

Cutlery Bags

About ten days ago, my Boss's wife phoned me and ask if I can embroider two names on tea towels for her son and his friend who is going camping.  Another tea towel is then stitched to the backside and turned into a drawstring bag to store their cutlery in and to be used as well, as a tea towel.

Twisted log cabin runners

I finally finished a UFO from 2016 during the December holiday.  Although it was only 4 blocks stitched into 2 runners, other projects were always prioritized.  A member of our quilting group, Marietjie, demonstrated this technique.

I used the same cherry fabrics back in 2013 to make this little wall hanging and was glad I saved the little leftovers of the small cherry print as it was just enough to use as sasching between the 3 blocks for the chest of drawers' runner. 

The single block was done for the bedside table.

A feather motif was embroidered in the center block using variegated thread.  On the red and green sides I free motioned some feathers as well.  The border was stitched using the MuVit foot (previously called a walking foot) and the same variegated thread in a grid pattern.

I don't know if I will ever be able to finish all of the ufo's which have accumulated over the years, but at least I am trying. 

Edge to Edge Quilting Designs Set 6

And finally all 60 designs is finished.  It has been a long trek getting all of them done and I can continue with all the other ideas filling my head.  Producing 60 designs in 8 sizes and in 10 different versions for Bernina, Husqvarna, Pfaff, Singer, Brother etc. machines resulted in a grand total of 5 611 files - something people just don't realize.

Last year Embroidery Library updated their website after babying their customers for years and they received terrible backlash from their customers.  Some people bought designs and never downloaded it and expected the store to keep their purchases until the day they decided to use it.  No, that's not how it work.  The bigger the store gets, the more expensive and cumbersome it gets.  It's like any other item you buy, you take it home with you and take responsibility for it's safekeeping.  

They were all bitching and moaning because they now have to download a zip file...  Well, it is so much faster to upload one zip file containing all the different versions instead of uploading one by one.  You just unzip and delete the files you don't need.  Just good housekeeping.  The difference by using these 60 designs as an example, I uploaded 600 files in total instead of 5 611.  I thing the numbers speak for themselves.

And for taking the store's side, I was told off by quite a few as being perfect and what not.  No, far from perfect, just always mindful about how files are stored since starting to work on PC's as a computer aided draftsperson since 2000.

Herewith the last set of 10 designs.  Embroidery Girl's store

Edge to Edge Quilting Designs Set 5

Set 5 of 6 done and dusted.  Get your own set here in my shop while on promotion.

Baby Quilt

At the start of November, one of my quilting friends, Frances, asked me to embroider flowers for a baby quilt she is making for her youngest son's first baby called Sofia.  For this, Frances choose the Floral Sketches set from Hatched in Africa to alternate with the card trick quilt blocks she had made.

After finishing the top, she had it quilted by Hettie Pringle who did a beautiful job as always.

According to the proud grandmother, the quilt attracted beautiful comments at the stork party.

Pond life

After spending many years on my design wall, the stained glass butterfly as well as the two backgrounds I wrote about in this post was finally turned into a wall hanging after I saw these designs on Kreative Kiwi's website.

I thought at first to stitch two separate quilts but then got the idea of using the tree to camouflage the seam between the two backgrounds thus turning it into one continuous quilt.

I embroidered all the motifs on black fabric to duplicate the stained glass look of the butterfly.  This ufo of 2017 is done.

1.  goed gebruik op vlerke.

2.  by appliekwerk.

3.  drade aan agterkant.

4.  met organiese vorme.

Cushions

I have started to use some of the stitch outs I bought from Stichdelight in January 2024 (this post refers).  At this stage only cushions were made.

This one is the plain-fabric-leafy-panel which is designed for smaller hoop sizes to stitch items to coordinate with the original 43" x 43" Hoffman-Dream-Big-Leaf panel.  The set consist of about 50 individual designs which are stitched separately to create a stunning masterpiece.

  This is the 43" panel stitched by Stitchdelight.  The design is available here.

This is an original panel without any stitching done in another color way.  Absolutely stunning.

I added some gold braid around the embroidery which finished it off quite nice.  The cushion received some well deserved compliments at Bloemshow earlier this year.

 

I also finished the quilted circle into a round cushion using a beautiful coordinating bridal satin thus turning this into a double sided cushion.

Below is a closeup photo of the embroidered panel.  I am however unfortunately unable to find the pattern on the website as I don't know the name or number of it.

 

I also finished one of the alphabets I received for free into a pillow.

This font is available here.