Balzer Designs

Quilt Block Cookies

As I mentioned last week, my quilt guild held a day of workshops on Saturday.  We had a pot luck lunch and I brought cookies.  Quilt block cookies.  Each cookie was a half-square triangle.

And just like a quilt, when you put them all together, you get lots of different patterns!

I made four different "patterned fabrics" using royal icing:

It was my first time doing two different cookie icing techniques: wet in wet and one consistency piping.  What does that mean?

"Wet in wet" is when you layer different colored icings while they're still wet.  This way they all meld together into a single flat layer.  You can see it demo-ed in this video:

I like the results a lot and it really makes the cookies look like they've been patterned.  So many people asked me how I managed to do the icing on the cookies!  However, I can see that I need to practice my piping. I have trouble keeping the line a consistent width and starting and stopping is awkward.

"One consistency piping" is the idea of using one bag of icing for all the piping work.  In the video above, you can see that she pipes a border with one consistency of icing and then floods the cookie with a different consistency.  In the video below, she pipes the entire cookie with one consistency:

Clearly I did not have the right consistency because, as you can see from my photos...

...my icing spilled off the edges.  It is a time saver to only have one piping bag per color, but I need to either fix the consistency issue or take the time to pipe with a thicker icing to keep everything from dripping.

I love all of these cookie adventures!  It's crafting you can eat!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cambridge Modern Quilt Guild Challenge

I am a member of the Cambridge Modern Quilt Guild.  At our most recent meeting we were each instructed to bring a fat quarter of red, orange, yellow, blue, green, and purple fabric.  We created piles of each of the colors of fabric...

...and then through a complicated series of swaps, we each ended up with a pile of 6 fabrics -- but not all of the colors.  This was the pile I ended up with:

I used my ScanNCut to help me cut out a bunch of shapes for raw edge applique and put this little baby quilt together from start-to-finish (including quilting and binding) in less than a day!

If I had it to do over, I probably would have taken a little more time to fiddle with the design, but you know what they say: done is better than perfect!  (PS: I've got a blog post coming your way about those 4 green faces in the background of this photo.)

Thanks for stopping by!

Gelli Printing on Fabric

Hey you guys!  The kind folks at Gelli Arts sent me their GIANT Gelli Plate (20x16). Because it's so big, it's perfect for printing on fabric fat quarters! (Fat quarters are usually 22x18.)

In the video, I'm sharing my very first time using this giant plate (so fun) and demonstrating how quick and easy it is to print up tons and tons of custom fabric.

Supplies Used:

• Fabric Paint
• Gelli Plate
• Brayer
• Catalyst Tools

Now I just have to decide what to do about all this yummy hand printed fabric?!  I'm sure I can come up with some ideas!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Best of 2018: Painting, Food, and More

For the next few days I'm going to be sharing a series of "best of 2018" posts:

• Best of 2018: Painting, Food, and More
• Best of 2018: Art Journal Pages
• Best of 2018: ScanNCut and Stamping
• Best of 2018: Blog Posts

To compile these posts, I've read back through an entire year's worth of blog posts and picked my personal favorites to highlight.  Enjoy!

Painting -- I really did a pathetic amount of painting this year.  I hadn't realized how few pieces I completed until I starter looking through the year's archives.  Hopefully there will more painting in 2019.  But in the meantime, enjoy these ones:

Giant Tar Paper Face

I Still Believe in America

A Landscape Painting

On the other hand, this was a banner year for decorative baking.  In the food category:

Halloween Sugar Cookies

Cupcakes for Halloween

Mini Gingerbread Houses

Screenprinted Cookies

And in the miscellaneous category:

My Modern Quilt

My Traveler's Notebook

Painted Dresser

Thanks for stopping by!  More to come!

Big Stitch Quilting

Have you ever heard of Big Stitch Quilting?  Someone on instagram saw a quilt that I'm in the midst of working on and suggested I google "Big Stitch Quilting" and so I did!

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It's a hand quilting technique that uses big stitches and there are lots of tutorials (and here) all over the internet.  There are books, online classes, and entire websites dedicated to the topic.  I have to say, I've done lots of Big Stitch Quilting before, but I didn't realize it had a name.

I love the way the big stitches look:

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Back in 2017 I took a class with Frances Holliday Alford (and blogged about it here).  She uses a lot of this "Big Stitch Quilting" in her work -- although she never referred to it that way.

And the little quilt I made in her class had some Big Stitch Quilting too...

...which I just referred to as "Big Fat Embroidery Stitches" at the time.

Back in 2011, I worked on some small intensely stitched quilt pieces, like this one:

I even taught a class at The City Quilter in New York City on how to make this kind of quilt!  I think it falls under the "Big Stitch Quilting" header, don't you?

This is a kind of stitching that I love doing and have done for years.  I'm delighted to have a name for it.

Thanks for stopping by!