Cheers to 80 Years

Yesterday we celebrated my mom's 80th birthday. Not how we had hoped to celebrate, but we marked the occasion in a low-key Covid-era way. Typically, my mom hosts a quilting retreat for her sisters and me over her birthday weekend. Over the years, the number of days has increased and its always a fun time. Because of Covid, she didn't feel comfortable having her sisters travel and stay with her so just mom and I spent the weekend sewing. We had fun and we both made lots of progress on our 2020 stash buster quilts.

To celebrate her day, I designed an SVG file to cut a vinyl decal to make her a shirt to wear. I made some sketches, and even drew my own wording, that I scanned into Adobe Illustrator and traced. Then I began arranging the motifs into a design. When I was happy with the design, I saved it as an SVG which is the type of file my Silhouette Cameo 4 uses to cut. 

This was the first time I tried to design my own SVG file and was really pleased with how it turned out. It was a little time consuming weeding out the pieces of vinyl from the cut design because of the intricacy, but other than that, it worked great. 

Mom gave me a hard time for making her a shirt advertising her age but when I explained that I was making a 60 one for me (I turn 60 in August) and one for my daughter (she turns 40 in October) for our "40-60-80" trip this summer, she agreed to wear it. LOL!

Have any of you designed your own SVG files? What types of designs have you made? I'd love to hear about them!

Happy Crafting!

~Sharla

Leave A Comment

Conversation Heart Wood & Tin Valentines

I picked up these wood and tin hearts at Hobby Lobby the other day to do a quick vinyl project with my Silhouette Cameo 4 that I received as a Christmas gift from my kids. I wanted to make some conversation hearts to add to my Valentines table scape (it was looking a little bare after putting away the Christmas decorations!).

I love this unconventional blue and white color scheme for my Valentines table this year. I added a pop of green with some of my jadeite dishes. 

This project took less than 30 minutes, picking the font for the words was the hardest part! Now I'm looking for other quick projects to make. How many other people received Silhouette's for Christmas and trying to figure it out? Give me some fun ideas of what you are making with it!

Happy Crafting!

~Sharla

Leave A Comment

New Year, New Finish-A-Long Goals

The holidays flew by and a new year is here, and with it a new year of the Finish-A-Long is beginning. The FAL took a break last year but posted on Instagram that they were ready to start back up again. So here is my very short goals list for the first quarter of 2021.

I decided to just focus on the three sewing challenges that I started in 2020 and hoping this will help me to focus and finish them in a timely manner (ha, ha!).

1. Moda Blockheads 3 Quilt: There are only five more blocks to go in this sew along, but I'm behind as usual. Still, I'm anxious to get caught up and begin working on my setting blocks.

2. 2020 Stash Buster Quilt: I have over half of the blocks completed to make a king-size quilt. I'm planning on working on this project at my mom's annual birthday sewing weekend this month (if she decided to have it with the continuing Covid concerns). Maybe just mom and I will have a sewing weekend for her birthday to celebrate her 80th! I want to gift this one this summer so I need to get it finished.

3. 2020 Temperature Quilt: I am waaay behind on this one and need to do some serious work on it if I am going to enter it in the Modern Quilt Guild's Temperature Quilt Exhibit that will be shown at QuiltCon in 2022. Deadline to enter is in July, I think. I'm still finalizing the layout in my head for this one.

That's it, my Q1 quilting goals. Simple. Straightforward. Focused. Hopefully I don't have any squirrels that will pop up to distract me:) Did you join the Finish-A-Long this quarter? If so, share your IG name so I can go visit your Q1list!

Happy Quilting, Happy New Year!

~Sharla

Leave A Comment