A Preview of Coming Attractions....of sorts!

Yes, you're in the right place...don't click back!I've been working behind the scenes to work on this site, and there are changes here (and more coming...it's a process).  But in keeping with my commitment to post weekly, I can tell you that there's more 'secret stuff'' coming in the near future.  If you saw my Facebook post the other day about walking a project back from Plan B to Plan A - thanks to a shipping notice from Missouri Star, I got started on Plan A this afternoon.  Remember balance? I sometimes need to take a break  from coding and widgets to let my creative side play. It's just another kind of work. So let me tell you a bit about what Plan B/A is...and why I'm excited about the possibilities of it.  For one thing, I see a lot of quilters on my feeds are playing with new Kaffe projects this year...and I am one of them. My project isn't for a challenge, but for an independent study project...and that's all I can tell you for now.  But it's the technique that I want to share with you this morning.I've been working for months now on being able to use my Cricut Explore to cut quilting fabric. In the picture to the right, I am using a piece of my Kaffe (purchased at a guild show last fall, and coveted over the holidays) which has been prepared with fabric stabilizer with my cricut.  This isn't a sponsored post, but I linked to the machine I have (still on the Cricut site) for clarification  because there are several machines out there.  It is very important when using fabric with the machine to use the appropriate mat - they come in various levels of sticky - and this one is made for use with fabric.  I found out early on that if you don't have a mat which is sticky enough...the fabric will pull off during the cutting, and you'll have a mess on your hands. The fabric stabilizer that I use is a spray on product called Terial Magic, which I first saw introduced at Quilt Market a year ago. By spraying the product on the fabric, you give the fabric a texture similar to paper...it becomes very stiff indeed. It also washes out when you are done using it, so you don't have to worry about your finished piece.  While I was putting this post together earlier this week, I was pleased to see a good friend, Eye of the Beholder Quilts, mention the product in this week's blog post...sometimes, it's funny how things come together. I have found that I am more impatient than Margaret - I tend to saturate the fabric with the product, and then iron it with a dry iron to dry the fabric out.I have found that I love using the Cricut with my quilting fabric opens the door to many possibilities - whether I'm using Cricut's proprietary software package, a prepurchased svg file, a copyright free image from google images, or something I've hand sketched and scanned in for using my quilting fabric.It's absolutely fabulous for working with text to personalize something - he's a photo of something that I made for my grandson earlier this year, three different images - the hearts, the elephants and the lettering were elements that I  found online.There's more coming on this project next week, but in the meantime, here's a quick video of what happened to the Kaffe fabric once I finished the cuts...[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf6sUWjg6uo[/embed]Enjoy the day...