Back in the spring, I saw a Facebook post from Megan Harris looking for someone interested in digitizing and machine embroidering the center block of a special quilt being created for the Maryland State Fair to celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary. I reached out to her, and after chatting for a few days, I agreed to take on the project. Megan would be responsible for the rest of the quilt, including the piecing, quilting, and binding, while I focused on creating the embroidered centerpiece.

I immediately got to work digitizing the design. The finished block was planned to be approximately 2 feet by 2 feet in size. Since I didn’t have a machine capable of stitching something that large in a single hooping, I divided the design into 30 individual tiles. That may sound like a lot, and it certainly was, but there was a method to the madness. Breaking the design into smaller sections meant that if there was an issue with a tile, I would only need to restitch a small portion rather than lose a large section of work.

In late May, I met with Megan to pick up the fabric for the embroidered center block. After cutting out all the tiles, I ironed fusible stabilizer onto the back of each piece and began stitching. As the project progressed, I continued refining and editing the tiles to improve the stitch quality and overall appearance.

This was a huge undertaking for me. While I had previously worked with pre-designed tiled embroidery scenes from OESD, I had never created one completely from scratch. To say I am proud of the finished center block would be an understatement. Looking back, there are definitely things I would do differently, but overall I am extremely pleased with how it turned out.

The center block alone consisted of an incredible 1,438,657 stitches. It required approximately 50 hours of digitizing and another 60 hours of stitching. I completed it in time to deliver it to Megan on July 4th.

I’ll be honest, it was difficult to hand it over after investing so much time and effort into the project. However, seeing the completed quilt made it all worthwhile. Megan’s finished quilt is absolutely stunning, and being part of such a meaningful and commemorative piece for the Maryland State Fair is something I never would have imagined when I first responded to her Facebook post.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed being part of this incredible journey.

It is the end of August and that means the upcoming holiday season is fast approaching. I have been busy this past year creating new designs in both my sewing projects as well as my stamping projects. I have been able to update several of my stamps to much better quality ones and the stamping and designs I have been able to come up with are so much better!!! I am excited to share one of the paw print stamped ornaments with you here in this blog posting. There are more that will be showing up on the sanderscrafts website as well as the Etsy shop.

This past year has gone by very quickly. I am very excited that Spring is here! The flowers will bloom soon, the grass is going to grow and baby goats will be born soon! Spring is my favorite time of year. I love seeing all of the plants come back to life and I really enjoy getting to be outside more with my dogs and goats:)

It also means that I need to work on the new designs for the year! I am very excited about some of the designs and techniques I am learning. I have been wanting to try making flying geese for some time but honestly they looked very intimidating to me and I wasn’t sure I wanted to mess with them. I recently signed up for an Ugly Duckling Quilt Contest at a local shop and part of the designs involves making flying geese (16 of them to be exact). I found a YouTube video to watch and I thought I should make a few practice geese before I tried to make the ones I needed for the quilt contest. So here is a snapshot of my practice geese (these aren’t sewn together yet in the photo). They turned out much better than I expected so I am ready to give the ones for the contest a try. I will share pictures of my progress and completed quilt once the contest is over as it would be unfair to the other participants of the contest if anyone saw what I am working on.

The sun is shining and i hear the birds chirping…spring is getting close!!! Spring is my favorite time of year. Everything is starting to grow and rejuvenate after winter. I wanted to share my newest earrings with you…ice cream cones!!! There is a variety of colored cones and they look good enough to eat. I am working on a few more fun designs that will be added to the shop in the next few weeks. I also have a stamped ice cream cone design that I am using on a variety of jewelry items as well. Warmer weather is coming…hang in there!!!

Hello and thanks for visiting my shop. There are some exciting things in store for this year at Sanders Crafts. The embroidered towels were a big hit during the holidays! I am working on some new stamped designs, there is a really fun ice cream cone bracelet I have been working on that will be available this spring in the shop. Right now sales have slowed down some allowing for time to work on some new designs that will be available this year. The shop will soon be carrying some of the Riley Blake Designs fabrics. These are some really fun fabrics and I am excited for the first shipment to arrive. I hope you check back in a few weeks to see some of the new items available for purchase in the shop. Think Spring everyone!!!!!

In my last blog I mentioned one of the new designs/ideas I was working on…bandanas for your pet. Here is my first design. I have some tweaking to do but I am pleased with the turn out and I made this on the new Topaz machine I bought the end of August! I will be able to offer these bandanas in different sizes and I hope to have a variety of designs to choose from as I get better with my embroider skills. I also have a few birthday gifts to complete over the next few weeks. I will share pics of those once they are given to the various people as I do not want to ruin the surprise 🙂

Its time to start thinking about the upcoming holiday season. I have spent the past few months taking various sewing and embroidery classes to build up my skills. As I was doing this I found that my Janome machine was limiting me on some of the sizes I could design. I found that I really wanted to be able to create larger designs. So I started researching what I could get within my budget. I really wanted to get another Janome machine but while doing my research I wasn’t able to find a machine that would do both sewing and embroidery with in my budget that would also fit in my craft area. I did come across a Husqvarna Viking Topaz 50 that would work for all my needs and would also travel to class with me if I wanted to switch up the machine I was using. Win-Win!!!

So now that I have this 2nd machine I am working on some designs I hope to have ready and available for the upcoming busy shopping season…one of the items I am working on will be featured in the next blog a pet bandana 🙂

A few years ago I expanded my online presents to include this website as well as a few other store establishments. I have continued selling in a few consignment locations and I have limited the online stores to Etsy, Sanderscrafts.com and Facebook. These locations have kept me busy over the last several months and I hope this continues as we start moving past COVID. I am looking to add some new designs for the ornament hooks as well as the Swarovski snowflakes for the 2021 holiday season. Stay tuned as these items will start showing up at my stores in the next few weeks. 🙂