Fragrant Delights is an embroidered quilt in soft, pastel colors. As well as the instructions to make the Fragrant Delights quilt, this magazine show cases 10 wonderful pillows submitted by embroidery designers and distributors from around the world who also are giving away free sampler designs from their collections – 17 FREE designs that you can download!!

In Moulin Rouge, color seduces the eye and excites the senses on this richly designed quilt that features black velvet with red and black silk, embellished with rich red roses, bows and gold lattice. Plus there are many other projects included from great designers such as Kerrie Hay from Bernina with a bridal trousseau, Robyn Cawdron from Elna with summer outfit fun and Sharon Bummer’s school formals. All fantastic ideas to keep your mind overflowing with possibilities. Plus a cd is included with the magazine filled with FREE designs!

These issues are no longer in print and once they’re gone – they’re gone! So be sure to get your copy today! Machine embroidery ideas galore plus free embroidery designs; what could be better?!

Fall and Autumn colors are just beautiful! Shades of brown, gold, green, rust and yellow in leaves, flowers, scrolls and redwork will greet your eyes as you take a peek at each design in this collection. These designs are just itching to be stitched on some of your Fall and Thanksgiving projects!

Package contains: USB Design stick, Thread Color Chart, Thread Shopping List
Multi-format USB stick includes the following formats: art, pes, pcs, dst, hus, jef, xxx, sew, exp

This new collection from OESD is a must-have!!

In this issue:
The Cleo & Kirstin Quilt
Gulf Stream Pillows
Robyn’s Renaissance Quilt Part II
Lottie’s Poppies Pillow
Danise’s Sheer Delight Wrap
Midnight Magic Jacket
Sugar ‘n’ Spice and Everything Nice Quilt

Note from Serena: Receiving this magazine is always a highlight of my day! Now to figure out a way to create more time to stitch all the wonderful projects inside the pages!

That where one of my favorite tools, the ballpoint awl by Clover, comes in handy. Most awls that you may have in your sewing room have a sharp point that is made to puncture the fabric. This is used for creating eyelets or other decorative uses. But with the ballpoint awl, the end is not so sharp as to puncture to fabric, but will work to help you dig out the stabilizer from the back of the design.

From the back of the fabric, slide the end of the ballpoint awl between the stabilizer and fabric and gently pull the stabilizer away from the stitching. The end still could damage your fabric or stitches if you are pushing too deeply, so be sure just to catch the layer of tear away to pull it away from the design. This helps to dig out the stabilizer from those little areas instead of using your fingers or fingernails.

The next time you are struggling with getting out all those areas with tear away stabilizer, give this ballpoint awl a try! I’m sure you’ll love using it!

Fiber Etch – have you ever used this etching gel? I have several times and taught a couple of classes using it several years ago, but it’s been a while since I’ve picked up my bottle. If you’ve never heard of it, it is a gel that etched out plant fiber fabrics such as cotton, linen and rayon. It will not etch polyester, wool or silk, so you can create designs by using different fabrics and etching whatever design or motif you want.

www.embroideryonline.com Design NZ369

Basically what I’ve done with it is cutwork like the embroidery design above. I’ve stitched an open cutwork design with polyester thread on a rayon fabric, applied the fiber etch to the area of fabric inside the stitching, heated it with an iron and the fabric inside the stitching darkens and just falls out.

If you’ve ever done cutwork, usually you stitch the design and then take a little itty bitty pair of scissors and cut out the fabric inside. What a headache! It’s tough to cut out the fabric without clipping the threads plus getting a smooth clean finish without those little thread ends sticking out. Just look at the tulip and imagine trying to cut out all the fabric without snipping the threads?!?!

When using the Fiber Etch, the fabric just falls out inside and there is a smooth clean finish on the edge of the thread. It’s great to use and I’ve gotten out of the habit of using it, so this was a good reminder to get it out and create something with it.

What was neat was seeing how Dana (Dana Marie Designs) used the Fiber Etch here at the Sew Expo. She does use it for cutwork with embroidery, but she also showed some pieces using silk/rayon velvet. Trace a pattern such as a simple outlined leaf on the fabric. Just run a line of Fiber Etch following the pattern. Heat it and brush away the fibers. The rayon pile of velvet is etched away and the silk background remains. Just too neat!!!

I actually have some silk chiffon that I was planning on making a skirt out of at some point and doing cutwork around the edge of the hem, but I may dig around in my stash and see if I have a plant fiber fabric that I can do the same thing and use the Fiber Etch. I’m sure I have something!

The great thing with using the Fiber Etch is that you can etch out the top fabric and put another fabric behind it to show through as a different color. Make a very easy project look like it took hours to do! :)

There’s some other projects swirling around in my head in which I could use the Fiber Etch and create some neat things, so I just need to get that bottle out in my line of sight and make a note to do something.