Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home

With the weather warming up, it seems like nature is waking up. In our house we definitely see in this in the number of Asian lady beetles!

I googled them and found out I was using the preferred method of removing them from my home....the vacuum!


My sleeps have been so disrupted the last few days and it turned out to be an early morning applique session today. Not complaining, after all it is one of my favourite times of day!

I put the last couple of stitches into a little flower on my Auntie Green's Garden....time to do the prep work for the lower left quadrant of this section.

I think I'll get right at the next step of this piece since I'm looking forward to what is appliqued after that!

Here is how it looks now....

After that last little flower was on I switched up and did a bit of reverse applique on my next Flower Garden block. I don't know if these pictures will show well but I wanted to demonstrate how I deal with pieces occcasionally.

Usually I will use tiny applique pins to hold the pieces in place as I'm appliqueing. Once in a while I feel it's worth the couple of minutes to actually baste the pieces in place. This is especially nice when dealing with a lot of vines.

In the borders of my Stars and Sprigs by Kim McLean, there were probably yards of vine. I basted them all down first so I didn't have to deal with the many pins that would have been needed.

This saves getting poked by the wee pins, and the possibility of losing some for grandchildren and puppies to step on!

Here is the piece I started on this morning. There is one piece of the purple fabric basted underneath the actual flower fabric. I have basted it all together to make it easier to work with.

Hmm, maybe hard to see, but there are five petal-shaped holes cut into the pink fabric.

Here is a picture of the flower, all reverse-appliqued and ready to applique as one piece to the block....

Now, I feel like making my morning applique last all day and keep working on this block! This quilt has been a fun one to work on so far.

This week on the longarm I did custom work on a small wall-hanging that will be displayed in a long-term care facility. It was so pretty with the embroidered birds and butterflies! I was asked to echo the butterflies and do some feathers in the border, the rest was up to me to "play" with! Here's a few photos....

Have a visit with Kathy's blog at Kathy's Quilts to read about her Ricky Tims experience and to see what everyone else is working on her Slow Sunday Stitching post!

Have a great day!