January 2013, I started my first Sue Spargo BOM. I was new to wool appliqué, especially embellished wool appliqué. I decided to make a Bird Dance test block before I actually used the wool in the first BOM package. While stitching the first 3 Bird Dance block, I realized I was using quite a few different needles and I needed a needle case.


I used the my test Bird Dance block for the front of the needle case. The case is 6" x 6", small but served me well for about a year. As I began my second Sue Spargo BOM in 2014, I began thinking of making another needle case which was larger and had more pages for the additional needles I was using to do my wool appliqué.



My second needle case is 7 1/2" x 8 1/2", plus had some zipper pockets and 4 pages for needles. I used this needle case for 2 years and I was quite happy with my design but there were some features that I wanted to change. In June, Sue Spargo published Folk-Tails which had a wool appliqué Sue designed for a Folk-Tails workbox. Also, in June, Sue introduced an elephant pincushion pattern. My mind is now whirring thinking about the elephant wool appliqués.


I used some design elements from Folk-Tails, the workbox and pincushion patterns for my new needle case. The elephant appliqué is a smaller version of the workbox elephant, the green fabric is a design element from the pincushion, the cloud is a design from Folk-Tails, the back is fabric Sue used for the back of the Folk-Tails quilt. The front of the needle case is 8" x 8".

These are pictures of the inside of the needle case. I printed the needle names and then used Soft Fuse to attach the names to the wool pages.

Another quilt made from my stash!

It is always satisfying to finish a binding a quilt. It is doubly satisfying to finish a quilt that is made completely from fabric in my stash! I found an opened Bali Pop, a collection of 40 different 2.5" x 44" strips of batik fabric from Hoffman Fabrics. A Bali Pop is basically a batik fabric version of a jelly roll. I cut a few more batik strips from fabric in my stash and made a quilt. I again made the Andouille Quilt from the book Jelly Roll Jambalaya Quilts by Jean Ann Wright. Jessica Jones Gamez did the machine quilting with a leaf design. I named the quilt, Tropical Forest, because of the quilting motif and the colors of the quilt. The finished quilt is 52" x 67"

Oh so cute! An elephant felt notions bag, handmade in Nepal, which I purchased from Sue Spargo during her 4 day Folk-Tails celebration.

Sue suggested embellishing the bag. Marcie likes hearts and the color pink so I used pink and magenta thread for the chain stitching. BTW, Marcie was surprised and thrilled when I gave her the bag. The bag is about 5 1/2" x 8 1/2".

120 piano keys later, I finished the border for my newest wool appliqué quilt.


This quilt is just one block from Kim McLean's appliqué quilt called Flower Pot, the block I used is on the right side of the quilt. Kim's quilt is huge, 78" X 90" and the individual blocks are quilt large. I took the Kim's original pattern to a printing shop to reduce the block size to 75% of the original size. The interior block 15" X 35".

Kim McLean's Flower Pot quilt

My quilt is a combination of wool and cotton fabrics. I used Cherrywood Hand Dyed fabric for the background, Kaffe Fassett fabrics for the piano key border and some of the appliqué shapes. I used a variety of embellishing threads, silken pearl, sashiko threads, razzle thread by Wonderfil and Oriental Linen thread. I used Painter's single loop embellishment on the lower left turquoise shape which I must admit was quilt a challenge to appliqué.

The quilt is about 23" X 43".

Today, Sue Spargo has started a 4 day countdown to the release of her new book, Folk-Tails. Today, we are allowed to share pictures of our completed Folk-Tails 2015 BOM quilts.

This is my Folk-Tails quilt top, it measures about 37" by 43". My quilt is awaiting machine quilting by Jessica Jones Gamez, I can hardly wait to get it back.
Sue picked Alexander Henry fabric for the backing which is just perfect for the quilt's theme.

I know better, I should never look at Sue Spargo's web site on Friday afternoon. Every Friday afternoon, Sue sends out her newsletter and she always seems to showcase a new patterns, fabrics or threads. A few weeks ago, Sue published a new pattern called Tootin' Along and of course I loved the quilt as did Marcie.



I immediately decided to change the generic blue cars to VW Bugs since I have long been a VW bug aficionado! Today, I drew a VW bug and decided I really should test the design before going ahead with appliquéing the VW bugs to the quilt. This block is about 4" by 6".

Today, I also prepared the background for my quilt. I decided to use a cotton fabric instead of wool for my road. There is about 120" of road that I must appliqué before I can start preparing all the wool VW, houses and trees. The finished quilt will be about 24" by 37".

Honestly, I have had problems completing this quilt, I was so dissatisfied with Erica Kaprow's Summertime sampler pattern. I felt the blocks were poorly designed and I was struggling to redraw the blocks. In March, I had 9 blocks completed and managed to complete 3 more blocks. A few weeks ago, I decided to get serious about trying to complete this quilt. Bottom line, I hated any arrangement of the 12 blocks on my design wall.

Now my focus became trying to make lemonade out of lemons. I decided that I only liked 6 of the completed blocks, so I decided use only 6 blocks in my quilt. 6 blocks would be a small quilt so added some sashing to the blocks.


I appliquéd some fabric rectangles to the wool border, then I stitched around each rectangle with size 8 pearl cotton. The quilt top is 28" by 38".

These are the 6 blocks which I decided not to use in the quilt.

Patiently waiting 10 months for a quilt to be machine quilted is hard to do but so worth the wait. Jessica Jones Gamez did the gorgeous quilting my wool quilt. She used wool and cotton batting which gives the appliqué a trapunto effect.


The wool appliqué were designed by Bonnie Sullivan. I added some embellishing stitches, notably the buttonhole scallops on the baby chick wings and bullion knots for the bird legs. The piano key border was made with 100% Italian linen fabric I purchased at the 2014 Houston Quilt Festival.

The back of the quilt is 100% linen fabric which I purchased from Sue Spargo a few years ago. Using linen on the back, definitely made the machine quilting more challenging for Jessica.


I will be giving this quilt to my daughter Marcie. The quilt is 31" by 37".

It has been months in the making because I chose not to follow the pattern exactly. The Allium Spool Sac was designed by Sue Spargo specifically to store Eleganza, Razzle and Dazzle threads with the special vinyl zippered pockets.




The wool appliqué front is about 14" by 15", the opened bag is 14" by 36". The interior base has 4" wide soft pile velcro so the hook velcro on the vinyl zippered pockets can attach to the base. The fabric is Birds & The Bees by tamarakate for Michael Miller, which perfectly compliments the wool appliqué. I used Incomparable Buttons on both upper bands. Incomparable Buttons are handmade by women in South Africa and are fully washable.



I wanted to use this new bag to carry all the threads used in Sue Spargo's 2016 BOM so I needed to design and sew a special vinyl zippered pocket insert which would hold the larger Genziana Wool thread spools. The new pocket insert is 13" by 28" with four sets of zippered gusseted pockets. I sewed the hook velcro to center vertical area and I sewed the soft pile velcro on the backside of the insert so I could attach one of Sue's vinyl zippered pocket to hold the Eleganza, Razzle and Dazzle threads.

Oh my goodness, it is has been over 6 months since I have posted about my progress on my serendipity quilt. I started working on multiple blocks because I was having some creative indecision on selecting embellishing stitches and wool colors. I am not thrilled with some of my color decisions but truthfully, I just want to finish this quilt and move on to other projects. I now have 9 out of 12 blocks finished.

As my serendipity blocks where up on my design wall, I decided to make some changes to the previously posted fish block. I added yellow wool under the angel fish eye to make the eye more defined. I also sewed eyes on the magenta fish and the clown fish.