"Grow Your Blog!!!" Welcome To My Blog! And...The Winner Is....

Hello to all the new visitors who are stopping by my blog for the first time! Welcome! My name is Missie and I am so glad you have come by today. I love Quilting, doing Punchneedle Embroidery, Wool Appliqué and English Paper Piecing...these are my favorite hobbies! I have turned my hobbies into a business most of my days since I became a mother in order to stay home with the kids.

And here they are, all grown up for the most part...and I am still doing the small hobby business! I love it! That's Hubs and I in the center, surrounded by our three daughters and our son-in-law. I thought once the kids were grown I would have so much time on my hands, but you all know how that goes! Seems there is never enough time to do all the stitching that I want to do...so the list keeps growing and growing! How about you? How long is your list?

I thought I would take a moment to write a bit about my window coverings today. I have had so many questions about them recently! We moved into this house in August and it was so sunny in the mornings...we could hardly keep our eyes open! Haha! We needed something to keep the sun out and these coverings came to mind. I used to sew window treatments for the decorating store for about 9 years, but I never made curtains for circular windows. Yes, they are quilts...machine appliqué and quilted. I was really into quilts when we moved here ( and still am!) and that was the first thing that came to mind. I made the quilted panel a bit larger than the window, which is huge for a window, I might add. Each of these is 58" wide at the bottom. They are much larger than they look way up there! The quilt design was made specifically for these windows and I expanded it into a full sized quilt a few months later. That quilt is now the logo for my business and is one of my favorites. I think it's the red background I like so much! Then again, I do like stars too!

After the quilted panels were made they were ready to be mounted on something....that something took a while to figure out, but eventually we decided to see if PVC pipe would bend well enough. We got two elbow joints and flexible PVC along with some stiffer PVC. It took a while to cut the two pieces the correct length in order to bend in the shape of the window, but we started with the bendable PVC cut a bit larger than we needed and trimmed an eighth of an inch away until it bent and fit in the window just right! Basically, the PVC is joined and bent to look like a capitol "D" if it were turned on it's side. It was very simple!

Then it was time to attach the quilt to the frame that would fit into the window. I decided to cover the PVC with foam insulation built for these pipes. This allowed the frame to fit snug in the window frame and they fit perfectly after a bit more trimming. Then the quilts were trimmed the shape of the frame with about 4" extra in size. To attach the quilt to the frame, I just rolled the quilts to the backside and pinned them in place with a straight pin! Voila'! They are still keeping the sun out of our eyes just fine! We had plans of taking them down now and then to let the sunlight in. We did this for a while, but had to stand on a chair to reach them and eventually we just left them up all the time. I should also say that we added a large piece of cardboard to keep the sun from shining through the needle holes from the quilting. If I were to make another set someday, I might try it without quilting to see if this fixed the problem. That was quite the long story I just wrote! So sorry about that, but as I said, so many have been asking about them recently. Since a few have asked, I will let you know you can buy this quilt pattern on my website if you are interested. Now everyone can get some PVC and make their own! If you do, be sure to send a picture! I'd love to see your version!

 

For the first time visitors, these two mini quilts were just published in the current issue of Primitive Quilts and Projects Magazine. Bluebirds and Berries arrived home safe and sound this week from the offices of Primitive Quilts and Projects! It was so nice to have them both in my hands again. The needlepunched version is the dark one and the light version is the wool and cotton version. I will have to get them up on a wall soon so I can enjoy them! Now that they are back home, It is time to draw the name of the winner of the year subscription that Primitive Quilts and Projects has so graciously donated for the drawing!

The winner is... Ronnie! Congratulations and thanks so much for following along with my blog Ronnie! Look for an email from me so I can get your information!

I truely appreciate all of my followers and wish I could give you each a year's subscription to the magazine. Since Ronnie is the only winner of the subscription, why don't the rest of you newcomers please find your way to my website if you wish, and find two free patterns on the Wool Pattern Page that you can download. The link to my website is just under the button for this Blog Hop on the right side bar. (While you are at the sidebar, notice I have a former blog...be sure to check that one out. It has many more posts!) For those of you who have followed for a while now, look for a new freebie pincushion on the wool page next week! I will be posting about it next.

 

One of the freebie patterns is a Valentine Pincushion that you can see peeking from inside the basket above. The other freebie is a block called Woolie Tree. I have challenged my blogging buddies, and that includes those who don't blog but like to follow along, to make this block using up those tiny wool scraps we all seem to have a bag of laying around. I have been so busy I've hardly started mine, but it is on my list I mentioned earlier. Have any of you long time followers started this yet? Let's keep it on our lists and see what we can get done in the coming weeks.

Thanks so much for stopping to read the blog today. If you are here with the hop, I'd love to have you join my site as a follower. After all we are trying to grow our blogs! If you sign up to follow, please let me know you've done so and by which method you will be following. It's hard to tell how many followers we really have these days since Google has changed the reader. I like to use my dashboard to keep updated, as I have always done...keeps it simple for me. My preferred way to follow is by clicking "join this site". Then I can keep up on things by accessing my dashboard. How about you?

The organizer of this blog hop will have a list of the blogs joining in posted on her own blog, 2 Bags Full. Thank you Vicki! Be sure to stop by her blog to find a few more blogs to follow. Again, Welcome and Thanks for stopping by today! I hope to see you all here again soon!

Take Care,

Missie

 

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