No- Sew Fabric St. Patrick's Day Project : Shamrock Wall Hanging

This is a very easy, no-sew project. We are not Irish, so I put another family's name on it... You could also do this for Valentine's Day using a heart in place of the shamrock and using red & pink fabrics, or for Christmas with a holly leaf pattern and red & green fabrics.

If you don't want to do your name, or if your name won't fit, you can do this version:

Supplies:

• Wrapped artist canvas (available at craft store) 8 x 10"    (You could also use a piece of board about 1/2" thick)
• Scraps of fabric
• Assorted buttons
• Ribbon, 12" long piece
• Fusible webbing (found in fabric store or sewing department)
• Glue gun
• Scissors

Write your family name in block letters (or print it out from your computer.) The name should be no longer than 5 1/2", and about 1 1/4 - 2" high (the number of letters in your name will determine how big the letters need to be to fit.)

Flip the paper over and trace so that the letters are reversed.

Trace the reversed letters onto paper side of fusible webbing. For version with name, trace large shamrock (click here for pattern) onto paper side of fusible webbing. For version without name, trace both the large and small shamrocks. Cut out letters and shamrock(s), leaving about 1/8-1/4" around each shape.

Iron letters and shamrock(s) to WRONG sides of fabrics.

(I originally tried using different fabrics for the letters, but then ended up using the same fabric for all of them.)


Cut out letters and shamrock on the line. Peel off the paper backing.

Cut a piece of fabric a couple of inches larger than your canvas. Wrap edges around back of canvas like you are wrapping a present. Glue in place.

Place large shamrock on front of covered canvas, about 1/4" from top of canvas. Iron in place. Arrange letters or smaller shamrock on top of large shamrock and iron in place.

Cut a piece of fabric about 3 1/2" x 12". Place at bottom of canvas, wrapping sides and bottom to back of canvas and gluing in place.

Glue a piece of ribbon to cover the seam. Glue buttons to bottom. Easy!

And now some giveaway updates:
My giveaway ends tonight at midnight. Click here to enter.

(Also, check out the Designer's Link page for this issue of Quiltmaker magazine.)


Lily Pad Quilting is giving away 2 Fat Quarter Bundles of my Happy Town fabric. That giveaway ends on Monday. Click here AND here to enter.

Next week I will be doing some recipes to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Do you have any favorites??
I don't have favorite Irish recipes, per se, but I will say that I have never met a potato that I didn't like....

Have a great weekend!

Changes Are Coming....

This is a long post, so I hope you’ll stick with me! I have been talking about re-doing my website (due to be up and running around the first week in May) and some changes to my business. I wanted to share some details with you along the way. Some of the changes you've already seen- like the decision to turn our popular newsletter into an online magazine format, and the publication of our very first e-book (coming soon, very soon!)

But I will also say that the decision to make these changes wasn’t super easy. Change is scary, especially if what you’re doing is OK. Because what if your new ideas flop and you wish you had just stuck with what you were doing before??  But if you want to be more than just OK, you have to take some risks. You have to get out of the boat if you’re going to walk on water, as they say…..

There are several reasons why I am re-doing my blog and website: I want my site to be well-organized and easy to navigate. I want it to be easy for you to find all of the projects and recipes that we’ve shared here.  And I want it to be pretty. The blog & website have had the same look for five years now, and it’s really time for a change!

If you have been following my blog for a little while, you know that I have already been sharing not just sewing & quilting ideas, but also lots of recipes and craft and decorating projects, too. But in getting some objective, outside opinions, I discovered that my current blog appears to be, at first glance, a quilting blog only. Also, it also doesn't showcase my artwork at all- and that is a really large part of who I am and what I do.

So the new blog and website will feature not just the quilting and sewing projects that many of you expect to find here, but much more. I hope you will like it! My goal is to reach out to a larger audience than those looking just for quilting blogs. I believe we are all creative and I believe that we all like to express our creativity in different ways. If you have visited this blog, chances are you are interested in at least some of the “home arts,” such as cooking, sewing, crafting, entertaining, gardening, decorating….. I believe that home is the best place to express our creativity. I would like this to be a place where we can inspire each other and learn from each other in all of these creative areas.

Now….. my business name. I became “The Noble Wife” sort of by accident. I had been making wool pins to benefit charity. I thought that since the pins were made of wool, it would be cool to donate the profits to a charity that provides sheep to poor families so they can start a business. I was reading Proverbs 31 in the Bible one day and came across this verse:

A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.

She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands.

She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. (vs 10, 13 & 21)

I thought that was the perfect name for the pins. Then I started designing quilt patterns, and just carried over the name. However, the artwork that I do is under my name, Jacquelynne Steves. It seemed to be a little confusing that people had to remember not one, but two names for me! 

So, to simplify things, I have decided to change my business name to Jacquelynne Steves. It makes sense because I will probably always be Jacquelynne Steves, so no matter what I decide to do, the name will always fit. (Like, someday if I decide to open a car repair shop, I can just call it “Jacquelynne Steves’ Garage” and that will work! “The Noble Wife Garage” doesn’t seem to work as well, ha ha.)

My web address will be JacquelynneSteves.com. (However, TheNobleWife.com will still also work- it will be directed to my new website as well.)

Since I am going with Jacquelynne Steves for my business name, I wanted a tag line which was really descriptive of my business and what I’m about. We talked about so many! We spent days and weeks jotting down ideas (this was probably the point which drove my family the most crazy.) I went through a stack of index cards, writing down possibilities on each one and then looking at all of them and trying to decide on the best one. In the end, I decided on one that I just love and think works perfectly:

It’s perfect because the “art” refers not only to the artwork that I do, but also the art of being a home maker and being creative in your home and with your family.

So those are just some of the changes I have been working on over the last several months. (The products that I offer will change a little too, but I’ll talk about that later.) In the next weeks and months, I’ll show you more of the changes I’m making. I hope you will come along on this little adventure with me!

I’m really excited- it’s really good to shake things up once in a while and take a risk! It’s so easy to just get stuck in a rut. I firmly believe in the law of momentum- 

an object at rest tends to stay at rest, but an object in motion tends to stay in motion…..

So now…. Let me challenge you a bit. What in your life needs a little shaking up? It doesn't have to be major- it can be as simple as trying a new recipe or wearing red lipstick if you always wear pink. Or maybe it’s really big- starting a new business or having a baby or walking away from a job or relationship that is really not good for you anymore. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can share what you’d like to “shake up” in your comments below. If you’re not comfortable giving the details, then maybe just tell us that you've made the decision to start shaking things up today!

P.S. Some of my social media addresses have changed- Please click here for my new Twitter address, and click here for my new Instagram address.
Facebook would not let me change my page name.... sooooo.... find my brand new Facebook page here. (This new page will take the place of my old page.)

Scraps & Giveaway

No, I'm not giving away my scraps (although I'll bet a lot of you would like that!)

Whenever I get a quilt back from my quilter, she gives me these neatly folded bundles of leftover fabric and batting.

Usually they are about 3-4" wide, so the fabric is still useful for making quilt blocks.I hate to throw out the batting (it's so expensive)- but those pieces are too narrow for using in a quilt, and I never know what to do with them.

So here is my question: do you have a good use for the scraps, especially the batting? Or maybe you know of a charity that could use it?

The best suggestion will win a free copy of the Spring 2013 Quilts from Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks. (My quilt is on page 18!)

To enter, comment here with you suggestions for using up those long skinny scraps by Friday March 8 at 11:59 pm EST.


AND.... Don't forget to join me and Pat Sloan on the radio today at 4 pm EST!

New Studio Space!!

(Please come take the "full" studio tour here!!!!)

Do you want to see the studio space I have recently "acquired"??? I love it! And the funny thing is, I didn't know how much I "needed" it until I got it all done....

Our oldest daughter got married back in June. Sad as we were to see her go... youngest daughter couldn't wait to get her hands on her older sister's old (bigger) room! We moved youngest daughter into that room.... what to do with the extra room which used to be youngest daughter's room? Expand the studio space, of course! (No brainer, right??)

Now, I will tell you a secret- for years now, I have kept most of the quilts I have made in big plastic containers in the basement, because there really wasn't another place to put them. I couldn't wait to have a room dedicated to storing and displaying all of my quilts! And also, I wanted more space for storing my bolts of fabric and for cutting fabric.

We decorated the room when my daughter was about 8 years old. It had yellow bead board and lilac wall paper. My daughter tried to talk me into painting, but I just didn't have the energy for that! I decided that the colors worked fine with my stuff- it's cheerful. Here is a photo of what it looked like when I was organizing all of my quilts.

In addition to the yellow bead board and lilac wall paper, the room also already had shelving all around (for displaying dolls). This, I discovered, was PRIME real estate for storing and displaying fat quarter bundles which are waiting to be purchased & go to their new homes, as well as many of my project samples:

I already had many of the furniture pieces in the room. The dresser is a vintage piece from my grandmother- great for storing all kinds of stuff. I had the rug, and the cedar chest. The cedar chest used to belong to oldest daughter, but it's not her style and she left it behind when she moved out. It is perfect for storing all of my wool and protecting it from moths:

 The cabinet was youngest daughter's and stayed in the room when she moved across the hall to a room with a much bigger closet (making her little armoire unnecessary.) Now I have some place to store all of those quilts that used to hide in the basement:

I did buy a couple of pieces of furniture for the room from Ikea. My favorite is this gate-leg table. You can have one side of the table up, or both, or neither, so it's really convenient. There are drawers on both sides for more storage. Plus, I think it's just really cute. It works out really well when I have lots of fabric to cut (like when I'm assembling bundle after bundle of fat quarters...)

I also got some shelves from Ikea so I have a convenient place to store my bolts of fabric, and other cute stuff:

A bonus of this room, which I didn't even realize until we got it all done, is that with 3 east and south facing windows, the light is great! So it makes a perfect little photography studio. And since I have managed to keep it pretty neat and clean so far, it also means that I don't find myself spending half an hour to find a clear surface so I can set up a photo.

Did I mention that I love my new space? I spend as much time in there as I can, because it is so bright and cheerful and uncluttered (my "main" studio space tends to get pretty messy....) Also, since my main studio is downstairs and the "annex" is upstairs, it has really increased the amount of exercise I get each day :)

To go on a "tour" of my downstairs studio, click here.

When it comes to a sewing room, studio, or other "hobby" area, what is the most important feature to you? Lighting? Storage space? Your surroundings- colorful & energizing or peaceful & inspirational? Being as close to (or as far away...) from the family as possible??

Thanks for "visiting" my new studio!