Pay It Forward Gifts in Mail Today + 1

Today I'm mailing the 3 Pay It Forward gifts to Sarah, Shar, and Moneik. Sure hope they like their surprises.

I'm also mailing a 4th package of 4 cream Thimbleberries FQs to Christine for spotting the boo boo in my Seeds of Kindness quilt.

~Joan

Where in the World is Joanie Appleseed?

I've had very little sewing time this week, and I'm developing a twitch in my right eye because of it. I miss sewing! What little time I had I devoted to finishing this so I can get it up on the wall.

In addition to little time, I squeezed in one Pay It Forward gift. Turned out really cute, too. I'll post about that after the recipient receives it! I need one more participant for the PIF challenge. Write today!

This apple quilt is a pattern from an old Fons & Porter book. I think the book is called Quick Quilts. It was one of the first quilt books I owned. I made 4 of the quilts in it! I made one of these years ago and gave it to our pastor's wife. She decorates with apples in her kitchen. Anyway, my daughter made a set of blocks, intending to sell the top on eBay. I decided I needed to replace my other apple quilt, so I confiscated them. But the original (with 18 blocks) was too large. I made the other 5 blocks into a smaller top to sell.

This one was machine quilted in the cream and in the outer border. For the ultra curious like myself, I used invisible thread in the outer border and a variegated cream in the cream.

At that point I set it aside because I wanted to hand quilt apples in the setting triangles like I did in my original quilt. So I am in the process of doing that. This is about 39" square.

In this quilt, the top left apple and the 2 in the second row have not been quilted with seeds. Only a few setting triangles are quilted.

Here is my template for the apples...it was the pattern from the quilt book. I traced it on the setting triangles (only a few are stitched in the picture above) and am hand quilting with dark brown thread. The pencil I use is a "General's Pastel Chalk" in a light grey. It brushes off easily with no trace, but stays put enough to do the quilting.
Below is my "seed template". The apples were too puffy, but I didn't want to heavily quilt them because of all the seams. So I used a piece of a plastic folder and drew the seeds below. The dot is where the intersection of the 9-patch seams are, and the straight line is where the template lines up with the edge of the apple. After I do the right side (designated by the R), I flip it over and mark the left side. The scratched out line is the line I drew by mistake. Very professional, huh? It works for me. I laid the template on a (clean) facial tissue so you could see it in the picture.
I'll post about the Seeds of Kindness booboo and further updates later

~Joan