Frank Pillow Completed

In my earlier post about Frank (dated 9/24/25) I was very pleased with how quick and fun it was to make up the Lella Boutique pattern. All that remained to complete this item was the FMQ and its assembly into a pillow. Deciding the pattern to quilt over Frank's face was a quandary for me, more so than it should have been. I worried about my motif choice for far too long, dithering back and forth among my many rulers. I glossed over my many circle and heart choices. I considered a Clamshell motif, or perhaps a mustache type Swish ruler. Eventually I settled on something wavy. I then "wavered" on the basic decisions.

• Should the wave be deep or shallow?
• Should the repeat of the length be short or long?
• Should the distance between waves be close or more spaced out?
• Should the waves be parallel in one direction or they should cross each other at right angles?

The top size is 17½" square. I decided on an 8" long wave shape with a 1.5" depth, spacing the waves slightly over 1.5" apart. I sewed a horizontal set and a vertical set using my HQ Wave C template. I rejected using my HQ Wave F template as having too much movement; its wavelength is 4" with the same depth options as HQ Wave C template.

Selecting a thread color was another delay. I truly do not know why I could not make up my mind. Part of the problem was that I had no dull greens, which is what I thought I needed. I only had bright chartreuse, Kelly green, or blue-green tones, not drab olive type monster colors. After choosing a bright green, I was pleased it gave movement to Frank's face without screaming discord; nor did the bright green detract from the pink spider web background.

I plan to make two or three more of these pillows as gifts, so I could vary the FMQ pattern and color on those. While at a recent craft show (9/25/25 post), I even sought out alternative green fabrics for Frank's face, ones that were not too perky, too bluish, too dark, or too busy a print. This project helped me resurrect my zipper insertion skills. Instead of the overlap method for the pillow back, I put a zipper in the bottom seam. A 14" zipper with an 18" pillow form provided a good combination of insertion ease and final plumpness. The pillow back is simple and not quilted but in keeping with theme — the perfect green with spider webs.

I noticed now that I had not put a label on this pillow. I think I will just write the title Frank, my initials, and the year in the lower corners with a pigma micron marker.

Extra Information
In researching waves for this blog post (and my own benefit), I came across a Handi-Quilter video on How to use the Wave Rulers. I learned that some rulers have been released under new names and some are no longer available from Handi-Quilter directly. Here is my summary to share for wave type rulers. There are also scallop rulers but I did not address those.

Original issue wave rulers:
I own C and F. B is too large for my hand to hold. I may seek D out E.

• Wave B: 10" x 2" or 10" x 1" (hard to hold, now Smooth Wave)
• Wave C: 8"x1.5" deep or 8"x 0.75" deep
• Wave D: 6"x ¾" or 3" x ¾" (now Ripple Wave)
• Wave E : 6"x 1.75" or 3" x 1.75"
• Wave F: 4"x1.5" or 4"x 0.75" (now Tidal Wave)

New names:
Smooth is too large for my hand to hold. I may seek out Wiggle and Ripple (formerly D).

• Wiggle Wave: 3"x½" or 1½"x½" ( ~10" long, may be hard to hold)
• Smooth wave :10" x 2" or 10" x 1" (hard to hold  on sit down, formerly wave B)
• Ripple Wave 6"x ¾" or 3" x ¾" ( ~12" long, may be hard to hold, formerly wave D)
• Tidal Wave  4 x ¾"  or 4" x 1½" (formerly Wave F)

The original Lella Boutique pattern picture shows tight vertical waves down Frank's face. My guess is that this is a canned wavy line stitch on a Bernina. My Pfaff does not have that. I wanted something less dense anyway. I use Winline 100% Bamboo batting and it allows for stitching as wide as 8" apart.

Pleasanton Craft Show

Today I met up with my friend Tekoa at the Pleasanton Quilt, Craft, and Sewing Festival being held at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, CA. We got there the first day about one hour after opening and it was packed! I was glad to see this show's resurrection since the COVID pandemic really curtailed the extent of many of these events; happily they are surging back.

My goal for the show was to buy other green fabrics that would work for the face of Frank per my previous post dated 9/24/25. I also was determined not to buy any more kits. Kits are a weakness of mine. I was only going to add fabrics to my stash that really spoke to me. When I get home from a show like this, my habit is to I challenge myself to remember everything I bought without peeking. I silently chastise my self (mildly) that if I cannot remember an item I really did not want it and it was an impulse purchase. I am not too hard core about this philosophy, because I also maintain that indulging a few of our impulses is what keeps us happy. Nevertheless I try to recall what I bought; picturing where I bought it helps. I look at the map of the vendors and try to match that with my receipts. Here is my spreadsheet to jog my memory. Seeing the overview I categorize items by type of purchase.

Fabric type purchases
I did indeed meet my first primary goal and get more green fabrics for the face of Frank. I added to those, a yard of red and white stripe. I find I do use this graphic stripe as a basic, or for binding especially around Christmas time. The magenta and teal fabrics with white line drawings I will admit was an impulse buy. They called to me. I got one yard each. But to my credit, I did not buy them in the other colorways of royal blue, aqua, peach, purple, black, orange, or red. On the selvage, I noted that they are Patt 1319 Cameo by Allison Glass for Andover Fabrics ©2024. If I do get desperate, I may be able to get the other colors. I show a few of the colors I did not buy.

Panel type purchases
Even though I have a drawer crammed full of fabric book panels to make up, these two seasonal panels appealed to me. The colors are so soft and calming. My grandkids are beyond cloth books but I can make these pages into a quilt, graphic novel style, by separating "pages" with sashing as in my 11/20/2014 Mitten Graphic Novel post. I can also make them into placemats as I did in my 12/17/2018 Twelve Dogs of Christmas post or my 12/26/2018 Twelve Cats of Christmas post.

The soft colors of this Santa panel also seemed to whisper to me to buy it. I think the gentle bunnies in the lower portion did the urging. I also include a photo from the web showing the entire panel. This will inspire, test, and develop my FMQ skills

Not all the panels I caved over were soft and subtle in coloration. My tastes can be very eclectic. I saw this orange pumpkin and starting searching the booth for the fabric. Its siren call to me was so loud, I was about to ask the vendor if I could just buy the pillow, all made up. The vendor had five related pillows made up. Then my friend Tekoa found the panel with the funky characters on it to sew and stuff. I snatched it up.

Tool and pattern purchases
In making up my 9/21/2025 Bees and Sunflowers Banner, I embroidered the antennae on the bees and renewed my interest in stitchery, hence my interest in this redwork pattern. For my own quilting, I liked the pattern with sheep each having a different detailed mini-block in its body. At another booth I found a charm to go with the yes, yet-to-be made, quilt.

Each of the redwork ornaments are about 3" tall. An enlarged view of a bird ornament shows it to be interesting enough yet uncomplicated enough to perhaps encourage a young sewist to be successful. I thought it might provide small enough projects to perhaps interest my granddaughter. That is why I bought an embroidery hoop and scissors to go with it. A small perk is that the investment in floss only needs to be one color.

Here is a full size image of the Down the Lane pattern. Once I got it home I noticed it is by Lamb Farm Designs. This is the same designer of the Make it Merry wreath I am thoroughly enjoying assembling on a monthly basis. These are the posts of my progress on that pattern: 6/14/2025 Make It Merry Month One, 6/21/2025 Make It Merry Month Two, 8/16/2025 Make It Merry Month Three. This quilt may be a noble goal for an Easter quilt. Easter can be much more than bunnies and chicks.

I had a fun outing with my friend. I did not come home with any more kits, only with lots of inspiration and enthusiasm for some fun future projects. Lately I have been completing smaller projects and found the satisfaction is very joy-inducing indeed. Not all endeavors need to accommodate a king size bed! Buying, in moderation, is also a mood booster in its own right. It was a great day.

Frank

Since the name of this Lella Boutique pattern, FRANK, is the same as my husband, I just had to get it. I love the green of the face, the boo print in the rosy cheeks and the detailed little scar on his forehead. The pattern is so darn cute, like my husband. Note there are some similarities with my Frank: green background, general head shape, gray hair, forehead features, similarly spaced dots for eyes, rosy cheeks, distinctive nose, straight smile. He tripped on our concrete sidewalk at one point recently, but the scar on his forehead from that fall has faded. Gee, my Frank could have been a model for this pillow design.

I like making blocks that are non-traditional yet involve calculated piecing. As I cut out the pieces for this Frank block, I was struck by how tiny some of them were. My entire set of Alphabitties®, from A to Z, was needed to label all the pieces. I would need to be meticulous about keeping track. The smallest two pieces — black under the Z, to the lower left of the bright pink boo P — are only 1" square and will finish to two ½" square eyes. Isn't it serendipitous that my overhead light, (which I could not avoid), points right at that Z, spotlighting it? I did fussy cut Frank-the-pattern's ears from a fabric that reminded me of ear lobes (piece O, to the left of piece P). And that adorable background out of  pink cobwebs...? This will be the first time cobwebs have ever appealed to me. Wisely though, I cover the tray with a large square ruler so the neat piles do not blow away or get mixed up. Building this block is going to be fun. My idea of fun may not agree with many of you regarding so many itty-bitty pieces, but I am excited.

I proceeded methodically with Frank's assembly starting with the mid section of his face consisting of the eyes, cheeks and nose. Although there are a lot of pieces, there are relatively few places where seams need to be aligned. Seam pressing in opposite directions in order to nest upon joining becomes important only where the lower chin and mid section of the face meet, at the bottom of the nose. I do, however, need to be careful with an accurate ¼" seam. An accumulation of deviations can add up in both the horizontal and vertical directions.

I show the bottom half (left) and the top half (right) sections of Frank's face as sewn before being joined in a vertical column.
          

Here is Frank all put together and nestled among pink cobwebs. Now I get to ponder how to quilt him. His ultimate disposition will be a pillow. I bought a zipper to place in the bottom seam rather than make an overlapping back like the pattern called for. Luckily, Michael's carries some zippers with the closure of JoAnn's, so I am prepared. FMQ inspiration, come my way...

August Bees and Sunflowers Completed

This post is the follow-up quilting of the assembly of the August Bees and Sunflowers post from 9/15/25. I usually need to have my quilts mellow a few days before the inspiration as to how to FMQ them strikes me. This is the third banner I have completed from the Shabby Fabrics' Pieceful Patchwork series. Each banner finished at 31" x 31". This "Let it mellow for a few days" technique has worked for me on the previous two banners.

Bees
I knew once I saw that glittery, lacy fabric for the wings that I wanted to FMQ them as feathers. A favorite resource of mine is a Hooked on Feathers book ©2008 by Sally Terry, an oldie but goodie. Her technique eliminates the need to backtrack, often a source of an untidy look for a learning quilter of feathers. Then I was inspired to FMQ the background with my go-to four-petal motif, modifying it to flow around the bee, not over her. (Fact: All worker bees are female. They are the ones flying around pollinating.) I use an Angela Walters Slim® ruler only for the straight midlines on the petals, stitching the curves freeform. At first I was trying to avoid the antennae but when that proved awkward I sewed over them; the overlying stitch or two is barely visible. I was fretting for nothing. Finally, I had to decide the head and body. I slept on it and awoke with the idea to put a simple heart (2½") on her head  and one (3½") on her body using Good Measure® Heart templates by Amanda Murphy. I chose a pale yellow thread throughout, mainly to coordinate with the sunflowers. By sheer dumb luck, however, the color choice does show up well on the black head and striped body of the bee. Pale yellow does not jump out on the wings but then it's the texture, more than the pattern, that I wanted to show off the glam. Besides, I got my feather practice. The quilting pattern shows up much better on the reverse side.

Here is the book resource I used, followed by a photo of the heart and straight rulers I used for the bees.

Sunflowers
For the sunflowers I decided on the background and petals first. I used the same four petal motif as around the bees but eliminated the central "X" that helps find a center. Each motif's center was pretty much defined by the piecing. Plus there were so many straight diagonal lines introduced with the petals, I decided less was more. For the quasi-round brown center of the sunflower, I wanted to emphasize the concept of many, many seeds. I really loved the diagonal plaid fabric with a bit of glitter provided for that brown center. I've always love those images where parallel curved lines intersection other parallel curved lines at angles and give a 3-D effect, called Curved Cross-Hatching. I wanted to try doing that technique. I used an HQ Half-Circle Template and the theory worked fine. I learned however, that the effort shows up better on a solid. My pretty center fabric was somewhat obscured instead of enhanced. Oh, well. At least my efforts show up on the reverse side and I got some practice. Pebbles would have been a better choice but, as I have admitted before, I am terrible at pebbles.

Here is the HQ Half-Circle Template I used for the cross-hatching. The yellow tape across the top was my indicator to help me equally space those parallel circle arcs along two orthogonal directions. I used the outer edge, 12" diameter, as my guide. Beneath the half-circle arc is shown the HQ-Multi Clamshells tool that I used for scallops around the bee block, discussed in the following sashing section.

Border and Sashing

With the bee and sunflower blocks quilted I turned my attention to the green plaid sashing. I did a shallow scallop around each bee block (lower right area of image), sizing its width to mate with the petal motif spacing and sizing its height to be noticeably curved. In the outer sunflower print border I took my FMQ cue from the dashed straight-line in the background behind the sunflowers. I stitched jagged straight lines lined up with the dashed ones, leaving the sunflowers free of stitching so they would pop.

The height of the scallop on the bee blocks extended it too far into the narrow sashing to allow a similar curve on the sunflower blocks. A similar scallop would overlap with the scallops around the bee block scallops. I suppose this overlap is totally acceptable as in an egg and dart design (as shown in two stages of overlap in the next image) but I did not know if I was up to such planning and precision, especially in such a limited width.  So I opted for a simple straight edge in the sashing around the sunflower blocks. The contrast framing sets each pair of blocks apart as different from the other.

Finishing Details
The sleeve called only for a 3" wide strip of fabric, so I was able to make it from the same fabric as the backing. A directed by the instructions, I attached the sleeve to the top of the banner before adding the binding. I also added my grosgrain ribbon labels and the hanging sleeve before attaching my binding. Keeping it short, I put only my initials, banner month, and completion year on one label. Keeping it simple, I put a descriptive, if unimaginative, name on the other label, Bees and Sunflowers. This time I attached the brown binding from the front by machine and wrapped it around to the back to finish, hand sewing invisibly. The banner is small enough it did not take long to take make the extra effort for hand sewing. I did not want another machine stitching line distracting from the bias vibe angles of the plaid binding fabric. I learned my lesson from the sunflower centers.

The completed Pieceful Patchwork banner for August is shown hanging on the special heart scroll holder I bought solely for these monthly banners. I have just the space reserved for this 31" x31" wall hanging and swapped the June wallhanging out it for the newly finished August one. For completeness I have also shown an image of the reverse side. Since this is now three banners in a row I've made, I think it best if I switch to another project lest I get bored and disgruntled. I will leave August Bees and Sunflowers up. Sometime in the future I may be able to synchronize the banner on the wall with the appropriate month of the year. At least August is somewhat closer to September than June was.

August Bees and Sunflowers

The Pieceful Patchwork kit for August by Shabby Fabrics has bees and sunflowers, all in warm, golden honey tones. I cut all the fabrics per the instructions. Per the directions each piece is labeled with a letter and the intended block, Bee or Sunflower. An improvement to the pattern would be to not repeat letters. I solved that issue by using different color Alphabitties for the two blocks, pink for the Bee and blue for the Sunflower, sorting them on my sewing themed melamine dedicated tray set.  A rectangular tray is for each block and the larger square tray is for the sashing and border fabric strips, which have sizes but not letter designations.

Cutting

Bee Block
I assembled two bee blocks. The striped body was sewn in strips and then cut on a 45°. The wings are out of a glittery fabric that is so pretty, having a light lacy look. Thinking ahead, I already am getting inspired to FMQ them with a feather motif in each. The head has a nice detail of sprouting two antennae to be embroidered in a back stitch. In the next photo they are drawn in but not yet stitched

I have not embroidered in years; my hoop and floss have long been buried somewhere in my craft closet. The floss container was obvious and in my face when I opened the folding doors, but the task to find a hoop would be daunting; I seriously considered running out to the store and buying a new one. But I stayed steadfast, went through several plastic bins before eventually indeed finding a hoop. The effort was not wasted. In the process I uncovered a lot of stuff I was hanging onto for no defendable reason. I found several candidates for donation. I was determined not to be deterred from sewing those antennae, so I set the unearthed items aside with a note to self to deal with them before the end of the month. 

I used a micron marker to trace the antennae from the photo in the pattern. Wisely, an enlarged section of the bee's head had been printed at full scale so there was no guesswork on what size and exactly where to place those antennae. Seeing all that floss in my closet was a reminder but not required for this project. Enough black floss was sent with the kit to embroider the antennae on a whole hive's colony of bees. Two strands of floss was recommended but I used three strand to make the fine antennae just a tad thicker. 

Sunflower Block

Learning from the Bee blocks, I transferred all the pieces for the Sunflower blocks to a larger square tray so I could see all the letters at once. For the sunflower petals there are eight 3½" squares that are made up of a mint background piece and two golds. As in the case with this series these squares are made up oversized and then trimmed down uniformly. I goofed for a couple by trimming them before pressing open which made the squares too small. Instead of being 3½", two squares were slightly bigger that 3". I had enough extra gold fabric that with some head scratching cutting and pieced pieces I could recover. As it turns out I did not need to used the pieced pieces but I kept them as orphan blocks

A Sunflower block is shown in the next photo. The points came out great. I was pretty lucky considering my unthinking goof.

Orphan Blocks
Here are four orphan blocks I have from trimmings. The black and gold one on the left is from the cut-off corners of the two bee blocks. It is far from perfect but unique enough I am hanging on to it for a bit. It is crooked but measures ~ 6½". In the middle are two pinwheels made from cut off corners from the bee's wings. The teeny-tiny one is 2" square and the larger one 3½"; that lacy, glittery fabric was too appealing to toss. On the far right is a 5½" block made from those four pieced and recovered blocks from my sunflower trimming mistake. On a closer look, two of the four larger triangle gold corners are from pieced fabric. (Spoiler alert — the two left corners are pieced.) There is a fair amount of leftover fabric, too but I did not take the time to catalog it. Someday, maybe, in the future, in the far future, I will finally figure out a scrap management system. For now collecting orphan blocks is the level of effort I am willing to expend. The challenge of sewing them up from trimmings is fun.

Assembly

The two Bee blocks and two Sunflower blocks are assembled along with the green plaid sashing and sunflower print border. As is my habit, this top has to sit and mellow for a while as I decide how to quilt it. In the interim I will make the binding and labels. Hopefully by the time I have cut the backing and batting and sandwiched it all, I will have a direction to proceed.

May Roses and Pansies Completed

This post is the follow-up quilting of the assembly of the May Roses and Pansies post from 8/14/25. This is the second banner I have completed from the Shabby Fabrics' Pieceful Patchwork series.

Pansies
Full, four-petaled motifs would fill in the block proper nicely. This motif is one on my go-to choices, I used it on my June Strawberries quilt post dated 9/6/25. As for the two HSTs with leaves, I wanted to add parallel lines to look like veining. Learning from my strawberry blossom post, I took a best guess at the direction of veins running from the source stem  and made the parallel lines vertical on the lower leaf and horizontal on the upper leaf. The directionality is somewhat camouflaged by the gingham fabric but a least I know I made a somewhat logical decision.

Roses
Undecided on how to quilt the yellow rose, I did the leaves first while waiting for inspiration to hit me.  For the central stem of each leaf, I sewed the spine from corner to corner, even though this deviated from a 45 degree line. This skewed approach saved me from having to deal with weird corner voids and let the veins radiate horizontally and vertically from the central spine. I used the pindots as a quasi-guide and free-formed the squiggles. For the white background however I was stricter and spaced the diagonals equidistant with the aid of a ruler. My final "aha" moment was for the yellow rose. I remembered I owned Amanda Murphy's Good Measure Every Daisy template set of four flower sizes. I quilted the largest one first, and then thought I'd insert the smaller ones concentric within. When I tried to outline the next one down in size, the template slipped and slid all over and was hard to control. Hmmm. The largest one had been manageable with the non-slip backing it came with. I picked out the sloppy mess. Then I added some extra sandpaper grippers to the back of the third one down in size and it worked beautifully. I decided not to press my luck with the second largest and the smallest. My bamboo batting can be quilted as spaced out as 8 inches so two concentric daisies were sufficient.

Here are the rulers I used for the rose and pansy blocks. I am not a slave to a specific brand. They all have their strong points. I rarely use the large HQ Right Angle ruler to guide my stitches. It is just too large for my hand to hold securely while stitching on my sit-down HQ Sweet Sixteen long arm. But it is great for setting right angles and I can use just the corner for zig zags on borders. I used it to mark my position where my point fell on the side edges of the rose block. I used the shorter Angela Walter SLIM ruler for stitching the actual straight lines. It has a gripping back and, with markings both in white and black, it is very versatile. Though hard to see in the photo, Slim also has 45 degree markings that help me stay tilted just the right amount throughout my diagonal grid. Also shown are the two sizes I used of Amanda Murphy's Daisy four template set.

The next photo is a quick comparison of the quilting patterns I chose for the two flowers. Sashing and borders are yet to be stitched.

Sashing and Borders
The inner sashing is rather narrow but leaving it without stitching seemed unfinished. Plus the sashing is a very dark purple, and I thought white thread would be distracting and purple thread ... why bother since it would not show up? As a compromise, I stitched a few arcs, six per side of a block or basically half the 3x3 setting. These arcs I stitched using the blocks themselves as a uniform spacing tool. I did use the curved edge of a HQ Versatool ruler for aid in sewing smooth contours and uniform sizing. Any curve would have sufficed but this one was a convenient size for my hand. For the mini floral print outer border, I stitched free form wishbones, referring to Angela Water's YouTube guide Machine Quilting Border Corners to navigate around the corners.

Finishing Details
I added my grosgrain ribbon labels. I also added the hanging sleeve before attaching my binding. On the Strawberries kit for June, I made the sleeve in the same fabric as the binding per the instructions. It shows up rather glaringly on the the back. For the June kit, I made the hanging sleeve out of the same fabric as the backing. Enough extra backing fabric was provided in the kit that I could do so. The sleeve is well camouflaged along that upper edge; and, by the way, so is my FMQ on the backing. I much prefer this same fabric option and will repeat making the sleeve out of the backing fabric whenever there is enough. I intend to make other months of these Shabby Fabric Pieceful Patchwork kits.

Voila! Another month of Pieceful Patchwork banners is completed. It is shown in the next photo hanging on a special heart scroll holder.

I thoroughly enjoy these 31" x 31" whimsical, interesting kits from Shabby Fabrics. They give me a reasonably sized opportunity to practice my FMQ, while granting me the satisfaction of quickly completing a project. There is enough repetition to get better, but not enough repetition to get bored.