Maria Elkins

Category: Tutorials

  • Tutorial: quilt documentation, continued

    Tutorial: quilt documentation, continued

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    Maria
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    After posting yesterday about my rather haphazard way of “documenting” my quilts, I thought it might be nice to give you something a little more organized. So here is the second part of the tutorial on documenting your quilts. I spent a little time creating an easy-to-fill-out quilt documentation form in PDF format. I’m going…

  • Tutorial: documenting your quilts

    Tutorial: documenting your quilts

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    Maria
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    Seems like I’ve been spinning my wheels the last couple weeks. For the past five days I’ve been drowning in paperwork. Mostly end-of-the-year paperwork and tax stuff for my family, for our church, and for my quilting. Of course there were a few distracted side trips sprinkled in. One of my rabbit trails was organizing…

  • Tutorial: family silhouette

    Tutorial: family silhouette

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    Maria
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    Here’s another version of the silhouette, only this time I combined several images to include the entire family. (Many thanks to my friend who let me borrow her wonderful family!) To create a family silhouette, I followed the basic instructions given a couple days ago except this time, when I took the pictures, I had…

  • Tutorial: embellished silhouette

    Tutorial: embellished silhouette

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    Maria
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    Yesterday I gave you a silhouette tutorial. Here is one example of how it can be personalized and embellished. This is my mother-in-law, Ellie. For as long as I’ve known her, she has dyed her hair red so I decided I needed to do a red silhouette for her. She was born in 1937, so…

  • Tutorial: silhouettes

    Tutorial: silhouettes

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    Maria
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    With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I’d suggest a potential gift idea. These are quick and easy enough to make one of each child or grandchild! I’m always drawn to portraits of any kind, but silhouettes can be particularly interesting. It is amazing to me how much a silhouette still looks like the…

  • Tutorial: revolving door calendar

    Tutorial: revolving door calendar

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    Maria
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    Okay, my door doesn’t revolve, but now my calendar can! I had a bare door just eight feet from my desk that I wanted to use some how. I decided I wanted a really big calendar so I can easily see an overall view of several months at a time. The extra bonus is that…

  • Tutorial: fun, new ironing board cover

    Tutorial: fun, new ironing board cover

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    Maria
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    I finally got tired of my old ironing board cover and decided it needed to be replaced. It is probably ten years old. I think my (really, really) old ironing board must be an unusual size because the cover was never quite wide enough. Originally, it was teflon-coated, but that’s pretty much all worn off…

  • Tutorial: Fabric flowers

    Tutorial: Fabric flowers

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    Maria
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    This weekend I have to teach a short workshop at a women’s retreat. I decided to teach how to make fabric flowers. Today DD#1 and I made up some samples. I figured I better actually make one before I tried to teach how! It’s a pretty simple craft that gives almost immediate satisfaction in a…

  • Tutorial: magnetic pin dish

    Tutorial: magnetic pin dish

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    Maria
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    I saw this great idea on Amy Smart’s blog, Diary of a Quilter. So today before I left for church I made this one minute craft. So easy and it works! Just use some craft cement and glue some magnets to the underside of a pretty dish. I didn’t have the extra-strong neodymium magnetic buttons…