I used to think that poppies didn't make great cut flowers. Now I know better. After cutting these fragile flowers you must take a match and burn the cut end of the stem to seal it. If they lose their sap they die; to live, to keep their beauty, they must be burned a little.
I'm using a blanket-stitch setting, but you can also use a wide zig-zag, buttonhole stitch, even a satin-stitch to do machine applique. I've also chosen a black thread, to complement the folk art look but use whatever color best suits you and your bird.Begin at the top of the beak and sew down the body of the bird.
You will need to have the needle down to pivot around the corners on the tail. If you have a needle down setting it's helpful, if you don't just manually lower the needle each time. When you get back to the top of the beak pivot again. Lower the needle, raise the presser foot, and turn the fabric, before lowering the presser foot again.
It may help to use a seam ripper or the point of a pin to hold the fabric flat as you sew down the edges of the beak.
Then just add an eye -- I couldn't resist using the "eyelet" setting for that -- and trim your thread ends and you're done.
I decided it was too small, for my purposes I wanted it to be a little bigger, about 10 inches or so for the finished size. The easiest way to make a block larger without remaking it with larger pieces is to frame it.
To frame my block I took my dark fabric from this block and cut 1.5 x 9.5 inch strips. I added another light fabric for the 1.5 inch squares.
I sewed in rows:
new square, new strip, new square
new strip, "old" block, new strip
new square, new strip, new square
and then I sewed those rows together in that order.
This process works with any sized block. If you had a 5 inch (finished -- unfinished measure would be 5.5) block that you wanted to turn into a 7 inch (finished) block you would use strips that were 2.5 x5.5 inches and 2.5 inch squares in the corners. You could add 3 inch strips and squares to a 15 inch block (allowing for seams) and get an 18 inch block. and if you ever feel you've added too much and you want to chop it back down to a smaller size -- rotary cutters and see-through rulers are great for that.
More For the Birds blocks and tutorials can be found by following the cardinal photo link in the sidebar.
Once I have my faux fabric I can cut up the paper and play with the positions and options. For example... If I wanted to see how this fabric looks as the King's Cross (aka Tennessee Crossroads) Block:
I like the look of the top two quadrants in that one above. And I like the top left (see below) when I switch it to the lighter orange for the background....
Although this option with the blue looks good too.
Oh, and look what happens when I try just the dark orange, with the fussy cut stripe against a green background:
So many choices. Which one do you like best? 
You have just spotted a bolt of fabric you know you will love forever and always. How much should you get? The standard number that gets kicked around quilting circles is three yards. But when that dearly beloved print is retailing at $9 a yard, and you don’t have a project in mind, and you are working with a budget, three yards becomes impossible to justify, especially in today's economy. And I say this as a self confessed over-buying, fabric-hoarding, stash builder. 
When you burn a brush pile, always call it a bonfire. It makes it more fun and not a chore.
I begin with one large square (this one was 9 1/2 inch) and four small squares (these were 4 inch). The four small squares are marked with a diagonal line from tip to tip as you can see in this picture:
Of course, you only sew them on one at at time. So take one small square and match its unmarked corner to the corner of the large square. You may want to pin it in place; I don't but I'm a bit careless about things like that.
The diagonal line (which now runs across the corner of the large square) is your seam guide. Run you quarter inch foot along the line, so that your seam is a quarter inch from that line. Do that on BOTH sides of the line.
Once you have done this on all four corners (and used all four squares) you will cut along the marked lines.
Press the large square open and it's the snowball block (it will need to be trimmed a bit) and press cut off corners open for four HSTs. 
We're going to take this project really slowly.
Step One is picking your fabric.
Select your Stripe. You saw that one coming right? Now, on the selvage edge of the fabric will be a row of colored dots with numbers in them. Looks like the printer used 16 different colors when printing my strawberry stripe.
These dots will help you match your fabrics, they isolate the colors so you can better see what, exactly, the colors are in the first place. We'll need a "light" I'll be using a Kona cotton (not pictured) that matches the color number 4.
Now I'm just pulling fabrics out of my stash for this next part, but you could just as easily stand in the fabric shop and sort through all their fabrics instead. I want to emphasise the color of the strawberries. You may have purple sea monsters or orange race cars you want to match, the principle is the same no matter the color. Find the fabrics that say "Strawberry" (or "sea monster" or "race car") to you.
Here's my pink/berry stash spectrum:
Not all of those are going to work with my stripe fabric, and for this project you only need a couple. Here are four from my stash that will work with my stripe:
Numbers 5, 7, and 11 of the color dots are the same tones as these four fabrics. The "honey comb" print is a definite, and then I need two more... not three more, but I'm still deciding. So we'll talk yardage next time. 
Tonal prints, I think, work better with this project but they don't have to be all the same color. If your purple sea monster swims in aqua algae with a yellow fish, feel free to select purples, aquas, and yellows. I'll illustrate other steps of this SQS project using other "colorways" as this tutorial progresses so you can visualize your options -- but today it's all about PINKS.
Other pink postings can be found through Beverly at How Sweet the Sound.
Congratulations to Dana, from the Stone Rabbit. She won my giveaway.
Nothing picks up thread off the floor of my sewing room floor faster than the flannel backs of quilts laid out to prepare for machine quilting. Why don't I vacuum up the thread? You ask. I do, but somehow there's always more thread lurking in the rug, just waiting for it's chance to sneak up on some flannel. Thus the lint roller. With this handy tool I can zip-zip over the back of the quilt and it's cleaner than ever. Ready for quilting.
Five favorite things for hand quilting. Assorted (there are more favorites hiding in that pretty box where I stash my hand quilting tools and current project threads) and in no particular order:
1. One family favorite is a simple straight set with a solid alternate block. Straight set just means you're not tilitng it on an angle, so there's no need for triangles at the corners. Above is straight set. Below is "on point" note the need for triangles in the corners to make it square again.
2. Nine-patch, set on point with an alternate block like this is called a Simple Irish Chain. Typically the values are reversed and the chain is dark through a light background -- but I'm into traditional not necessarily typical.
This is also a place to add in a third fabric. Here I've laid out several fabrics under my blocks to play with how they would look together. Notice how some fabrics pop out against the block and some harmonize. Which do you like best?
3. Another option is to make more nine-patches with the values reversed. When you put them together it makes a checkerboard pattern. I think you loose the distinctness of the block unless you add a sashing. Like this:
4. Sashing works well with nine patch blocks. I like to use "corner stones" in my sashings (those are the smaller yellow squares). I think it makes a nice echo in the pattern. 
5. And there is a type of sashing known as "Tic-Tac-Toe" which uses a three bar stripe and tiny nine-patches.
6. That three bar idea can also be used full sized as an alternate block. Instead of cutting all your 45 inch long three stripe units into rows of blocks for the 9-patch, cut some the size of the finished block. Our samples were made at the 2.5 inch cutting measurement for a 2 inch finished square (6 inch finished block), so the striped block will need to be cut at 6.5 inches.
Which can be used in a frame and cross setting direction like this:
Or a stripey setting like this:
7. Simple pieced blocks as the alternate block in a nine patch quilt make up quickly and easily. Here I've laid out my nine-patch blocke with some half-square triangle blocks of the same size.
Hint: this is what that 45 degree line on the rotary cutting ruler is for.
Play with it. Have fun. Who knows what you may come up with. :-)
Now go to the sewing machine. Remember we're using quarter inch seam allowances.Put the right sides of the fabric together and sew a dark strip to a light strip (along the 45 inch length). Do that three times. Don't freak out if the strips are different lengths -- textile manufacturers don't seem to always agree on how wide 45 inches really is.
As you sew you can use a method called chain stitching. It's a sort of assembly line method. When you're doing several seams/units that are the same don't worry about stopping after each one, just sew one right after another. That's called chain stitching you can snip the threads between them when you're done sewing. I find it cuts down a lot on the amount of wasted threads.
Now press your seams. (We will be pressing our seams towards the dark side for this block).
Back to the sewing machine. You should have three identical sewn strip units and two light un-sewn strips and one dark un-sewn strip left.
Sew a dark strip to the light side of the first sewn unit.
Then a light strip to the dark side of the second sewn unit.
And the light strip to the dark side of the third sewn unit.
And press. Go towards the dark side -- and that isn't really meant to be a Star Wars reference although it certainly sounds like it could be one.
Next, our measurement was Two and a Half (2.5) inches, so cut at 2.5 inches so that you have three 2.5 inch squares already sewn together. Don't you love it?
Cut all the strips down like that. (And stack them in three fun this is what the block will look like stacks, or not, your call there.) You should have twice as many of the light-dark-lights as you do of the dark-light-darks.
Take one row of light-dark-light squares, and one row of dark-light-dark squares and pin them together at the corners of the center square. You'll notice that the seams butt up against each other going opposite ways, this will cut down on bulk and also helps lock the seam in place for crisp corners.
We're still using quarter inch seam allowances. Sew. And Press. This time you can press the seam anyway you want -- I'm pressing mine open for less bulk but you don't have to.
Now, to the other side of the dark-light-dark row sew another row of light-dark-light the same way. Pin, seam, press. You finished a block! (Don't forget to press it flat.)
Our 2.5 inch measurement makes a (six) 6 inch finished block -- it's 6.5 inches right now because it still has quarter inch seam allowance around the outer edges. Six inch blocks means you need to do a bunch of them to make a quilt. You'll need 42 six inch blocks (seven rows by six rows) to make a baby quilt that's 36 inches by 42 inches.
