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Westalee Snowflakes; Tips and Tricks

Oct6

Thinking about snow in October? Some places have already had their first flurries, but I suspect it will be a while before we see any in the Desert Southwest. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be making them out of foam board, pom poms, pipe cleaners, paper & glue, or any other items you can think of.  I’ll be sticking to fabric, batting, and Westalee Templates this season.

Like the other templates in the Spin-E-Fex collection, the Snowflake templates have reference lines that work with the 8 point Crosshair Square. I want my snowflakes to have 6 points. Oh, and I don’t want to mark my fabric. Then it occurred to me. I don’ t have to if I spend a little time preparing my templates. In the following video, I show you how to mark your templates instead of your fabric, how to stitch out the snowflakes and stick around to the end for how to clean your templates.

These are the products I used.

Mini Cross Hair Squares

Snowflake Templates

Grid Glider

Permanent Marker

 

Jewel of a Pillow

Jun7

JewelPillow

Whenever I start with new templates, I almost always work the design out on paper first. The Jewel Series was an exception as I couldn’t wait to see the results. I ended up making a few mistakes which turned into a great design. I call those “Personal Design Variations” The following is a tutorial, including a video of how this pillow came to life.

Supplies, etc

Templates: The Jewel Collection; Pearls, Diamonds, and Hearts. All 1” and of course a Westalee Design Ruler Foot
A foot that can do a zig-zag stitch
6 Point Crosshair Square
Sew Steady Table and Circle Sewing Tool (I used my Wish Table)
1 yd of fabric (can get by with ¾: see cutting diagram)
16” square batting
Thread for quilting
Thread for construction
Needle, scissors, and pins.
Something to stuff the pillow with, like FiberFil.

Optional:

Stable Tape: I use this exclusively to keep my templates from slipping.
Grid Glider: Makes everything sew much easier.
Westalee Design Adjusting Locking Ruler: If you haven’t seen this system, you really need to check it out.

Waxed Dental Floss: I use this for gathering. The person who came up with this idea is a genius!
Two 14” squares of muslin for the pillow form.

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