Owner of sewhooked.com and fandominstitches.com. #quiltforgood advocate. Quilt designer, instructor, Talk to Me Tuesday founder & contributor, cat mom, and craft enabler.
Well, how much fun has it been getting to chat with you all about the album themes you like from My Memories, all the while knowing that you might win some awesome software?
I don’t know about you, but I thought it was pretty darn fun! If you enjoyed it, let me know, because we have the opportunity to do this again in the future. Fun, huh?
And now, my super-secret, high-tech, new-fangled way of choosing winners.
Or not, but this is the best, most fair way I’ve found to do this!
Without further ado, the winner of the My Memories Free Software Giveaway here on Sewhooked is Adrith! You can see at a glance my super-futurist method of choosing a winner. 😉
If you didn’t win, you can still get $10 off your purchase of My Memories Software with coupon code STMMMS23344. The software is $39.97 USD, making ten bucks off a huge savings!
A huge congratulations to Adrith, and thank you to everyone else that played along. This was a lot of fun for me, I do love giving away freebies!
These three sewing-themed blocks were some of my first-ever paper pieced blocks to draft. I had just started designing my own patterns and really wanted to make something that said “sewing.” I had seen similar blocks, of course. Jars and spools are pretty classic when it comes to quilting, but having just learned to draft, I wanted to draw my own versions.
The original patterns are six or seven years old and have gotten their first revamp in a long, long time. Compare the original version of the Sewing Machine with the new version, and you can really see how much cleaner and easier to read my patterns have become over the years. It’s cool to me to have this documented evidence of my own evolution.
As time goes by, I plan to update as many of my older patterns as possible. Who knows, maybe even some of those patterns that have been locked away in the Sewhooked Vault will see the light of day again!
I hope you enjoy these patterns for what they are: classic, simple, and representative of the craft we love!
We had some really great Show & Tell at The Linus Connection meeting today, which you can see in this post on the Linus blog. It’s entirely possible you might recognize the writing style. 😉
Since I take the pictures at Show & Tell, I rarely actually Show. Today, I donated the Wizard of Oz quilt I’ve been working on and really wanted to share it with the group before it headed off to it’s final destination; one of the facilities getting blankets in the hands of children affected by the Central Texas fires.
The fabrics were donated to Linus as sales samples, then the tumbler blocks were cut out at the last meeting on an AccuQuilt.
I stitched the top, added an emerald city sparkly border, quilted it on the Linus long-arm (I’m still a novice, but it sure is fun!) and bound it.
Also a Linus Sideways Shell. I’m sort of embarrassed to admit that I started this in June. When I ran out of yarn, it sat until I bought two skeins yesterday morning and finished it last night.
Stars For Linus continue to come in! Keep them coming and we’ll have a quilt to show here soon!
Mother/Daughter Talk To Me Tuesday-ers Terry and Satia are crafting for good with Project Red Cross!
They are regular blood donors to the Red Cross and in an effort to boost their support during the crazy weather and natural disasters that have been plaguing the world lately, they are selling Blood Drops.
You heard that right, vampire lovers, Blood Drops!
No, seriously, the Blood Drops represent donating blood…not vampires. Sorry, once a fangirl, always a fangirl!
Terry explains Project Red Cross
Update!
There are two items available for sale:
A keychain, handcrafted by Satia out of polymer clay, beads and hemp, a variety of hemp colors available. $5 donation
A squeezie, knitted by Terry and ready for you to squeeze during your next blood donation visit or to work out a little post-disaster related stress. $5 donation.
Terri and Satia are collecting money for one big donation to The Red Cross. Every donor will have his or her name added to a card to be included with the donation.
Shipping for one item is $1.71 in the U.S. Shipping outside the U.S. will vary based on location. Check or money order only, all proceeds outside of shipping will go directly to The Red Cross.
Please email Terry or Satia for payment details, their address, etc.
Did I mention I’m getting one of each? Hand-crafted blood for a $10 donation to The Red Cross? Heck yeah!
Stars for Linus blocks have stared arriving in the mail! It’s only been a few days and I just need a few more for a quilt top. Keep them coming folks, keep them coming!
A note about printer scaling: if your pattern prints 8″ instead of 8.5″, you can either add a wider sashing or simply make your block finish at 12″. Either way, your blocks will get used. I personally promise you that each and every block will find it’s way into a Linus quilt. Every block counts!
If you’ve been around Sewhooked any length of time, or have watched Talk To Me Tuesday, well, ever, then you know that The Linus Connection is a big part of my life. I started donating blankets to Linus way back in November of 2002. The Linus Connection, in turn, distributes those blankets to children in crisis throughout Central Texas.
Right now, more children than ever before are in crisis in Central Texas because Texas has been burning all week. Hundreds and hundreds of families are now homeless. People have died. I have a friend that lost everything. It’s bad, bad business.
So now, I’m going to do what I do best and give you a free pattern.
But this time, I want a little something in return.
for best results when printing, set scaling to “none”
Take this free pattern and make a block, or two, or twelve. Make a quilt top, or a quilt, or an afghan (because yarn is fabulous, too!) and mail it to the address on the pattern. Yes, that’s my address there. Please don’t stalk me, but do send me loads of blocks and blankets for The Linus Connection so we can then take those blankets and get them to the children in our area who need them!
So, you’re not a paper piecer, but you’d still like to contribute? Inspired by WIP Girl, Kristel, known as Clumsy Chord on Talk To Me Tuesday, I will also accept 12″ (12 1/2″ unfinished) Maverick Stars or Wonky Stars (the same technique, different tutorials). To make a 12 1/2″ Maverick or Wonky star, your nine patch units need to be 4 1/2″. 12 1/2″ Wonky Stars with colorful sashing are appreciated!
Want to do your own thing? Be sure to check our the Linus Blanket Specifications first. Here’s a summary: 100% cotton quilting fabric for quilts, washable acrylic yarn for blankets, sizes can range from 30” x 30” up to 54” x 70”. Cotton or low-loft acrylic batting and french fold binding. Here’s the rest!
All blocks sent to me will be pieced into quilt tops, quilted and bound by myself or another Linus volunteer. I will make every effort to share finished quilts here on Sewhooked.
Linus has already started getting calls, and the number of blankets needed is going to be huge. My favorite charity and the children of my home state need your help. Whether you make just one block or many, every little bit counts.
And please, please, please share, tweet, Facebook, tumble and +1 this post. Get it out there, share the pattern with your friends and help us cover Central Texas children in blankets of made with love!
When I was presented with the opportunity to play with fun new software AND give a copy of that software away to one of my readers, all for free, I thought it might be to good to be true.
Was it?
No, indeed!
Not only do I get to give one of you fabulous people free software, I have a coupon for $10 off of cool crafty, and super-reasonably priced software for every Sewhooked reader!
That’s a win-win situation!
My Memories is scrapbooking software. Now, I’ve never been much of a scrapbooker in real life, but I love digital photo manipulation. I’ved used online solutions through stores with photo processing and such to create cards and photo books, and I have to admit, this is way, way cooler. It’s a crazy versatile software that allows you to do all kinds of cool things with your photos.
I have oodles (and oodles!) of digital photographs. Up until about 2005, I kept them in tidy albums, organized by dates. Then this weird thing happened.
I got my first digital camera. ..
At first, I continued to have my photos printed, but eventually, I realized I was taking way too many pictures to do that. So I began archiving them on a multitude of discs, then eventually on an external hard drive. Have I gone back to dig out those discs and look at those photos? Do I regularly visit my million and one photo files?
Sadly, no. I have thousands of photos that are just sitting, collecting virtual dust instead of being easily accessible. So what the heck, why not try a little digital scrapbooking?
Of course, the first thing I did after downloading my spiffy new software was to download all the FREEBIES! Free paper designs, templates, cards, gift tags and, and, and! What? I like free!
Once the freebies were installed, I started playing. Papers and embellishments and text, oh my…
My darling daughter’s Sweet 16 Birthday.
Once I started playing with My Memories, I had a really, really hard time stopping. It’s super easy to use, and after just a little trial and error, I got the hang of where most everything was. There are all kinds of cool embellishments and such built in to the software (note the spiffy pencil and clips in the image below) and the software accesses your font library, so if you have a million and one fonts like I do (DaFont free fonts for the win!), the text options are endless.
My son with all the awards he won at the end of the last school year.
See, I told you I couldn’t stop! I’m an absolute novice here, but I’m super happy with these results. There are SO MANY FUN TOYS!
My ramblings not explaining it? Watch a little video!
Now, the fun part for you! Enter to win a FREE COPY of My Memories right here on Sewhooked! All you have to do to be entered to win is to visit the My Memories website and check out their Album Themes and tell me the name of a theme that you think is really fun or cool or pretty, or crazy, or just plain interesting. Then, leave a comment with the name of the theme so I can check it out, too! (Note: If you read this on your feed or on Facebook, please visit the original post on Sewhooked in order to be eligible to win.)
On Wednesday, September 21, I will choose a random winner and that person will receive a coupon for a free software download! How cool is that?!
Just can’t wait? Get $10 off your purchase of My Memories with coupon code STMMMS23344!
Sewhooked 