It has been my privilege to work with Marian from Seams To Be Sew on these annual Row Alongs since she started them five years ago. My, how time flies!! Please be sure to stop by Marian's website to leave her a special thanks. Click here for Seams to be Sew website.
Here are the links for the other designers for today:
Clever Chameleon
Sew Incredibly Crazy
Seams To Be Sew
This year's theme was nursery rhymes or song- stories we learned or heard as children, many years ago....at least for me! 
My choice is a song I sang to my oldest daughter 40 years ago! Hard to imagine all the years that have gone by. I started singing it to my grandson Caspian along with Happy Trails every night. It's hard to believe as well that he is now 10 years old and still enjoys hearing this song every once in awhile. He now has his own childhood memories and favorite nursery rhymes and songs.
It is said that the original lyrics of the first part of the song "Sing A Song Of Sixpence" in the early 1700's was:
Sing a Song of Sixpence
A bag full of Rye
Four and twenty Naughty Boys
Baked in a Pye
In the 1780's, it is said the "boys" was replaced by "birds".
Sing a song of sixpence
A pocket full of rye
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing
Wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before the king
The king was in the counting-house
Counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlor
Eating bread and honey,
The maid was in the garden
Hanging out the clothes.
Along came a blackbird
And snipped off her nose.
This pattern is all applique except where the table cloth fabric meets the sky fabric. I was very fortunate and thankful that 
Northcott Fabrics gave all of the designers some choices in fabrics to use in our projects. My choices of fabrics are on the left. I needed plenty of black for all those birds! Please be sure to visit Northcott Fabrics. They have been a sponsor of this event for many years. Starting with the fabrics I received from Northcott, I started 
pull together fabrics to use in this project.
Next was tracing out the shapes onto fusible webbing. You can make this pattern by
any applique method you enjoy. I chose machine applique using fusible webbing (Steam A Seam II light). It is easier to use a light box if you have one especially if you are going to reverse the shapes. Reversing the shapes means you will turn the paper over and trace from the back. A light box makes the lines of the shapes much easier to see. There are alot of blackbirds to trace and some of them
are quite big so the tracing goes much faster than you think!
Get our your pencil, fusible webbing and a good movie and get tracing!! It is much easier to trace all of the shapes that are going to be on the same fabric together and just cut out around all the shapes and fuse to the back of the fabric then cut out the individual pieces. Here's part of my tracing process.
Lots of birds together!
Feet together!
The tree is pretty long so it has to be taped together. It comes in three parts!
Since the pie is on a couple of plates and there is an inside crust and an outside crust along with all the birds popping out, it is easier to assemble all of the pieces by using an applique pressing sheet and getting the placement of everything on the pie done before putting it on the background fabrics.
Make sure you take off the paper backing on the applique pieces before you set them in place. Don't set them in place with the paper on then pick the pieces up to take off the paper. Nothing will stay where you put it. Make it easy on yourself and take the paper off then place the pieces down. You can easily move them around until you get everything where you want it. Don't fuse in place until you have everything placed where you want it on the fabric.
I started building the pie like this.
The cream colored background is the applique pressing sheet.
Now it's time for alot of birds waiting to be fed!
Now to place the tree, branches and the rest of the birds on the background fabrics along with the pie of hungry birds.
Here's the whole project done!! It's 30" x 30" finished so I had to stand over it just to get it all the in picture!! I am going to finish this as a wallhanging for my grandson to have. I left the words off so you could see how the project will look without putting the words on. It's your choice!! I hope you enjoy my pattern and all the patterns you have been offered so far!
Click HERE to download my free pattern! My pattern will be available as a free download until the end of October, 2019!
Now to the giveaways!! First is a $35.00 gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop!! Second is a free digital download of EQ8! Design your own patterns for quilts, tablerunners, even bags with this great software. Be sure to enter! The rules and guidelines for this giveaway are at the bottom of this post.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good luck on the giveaways and don't forget to download your free pattern.
Keep stitching,
loreen
As Always, All Giveaways Have Some Rules
Please take the time to read them.
- Rules and guidelines are also listed on the Rafflecopter window of each blog’s giveaway entry on there featured days post.
- Giveaways offered by sponsors are assigned to the various blogger/designers for their featured day.
- There are no prior announcements on who is doing which sponsor except to the sponsor and blogger/designers themselves.
- You’ll have to visit the blog or the featured blog to enter the giveaways.
- All giveaways can also be entered at Seams To Be Sew. You must have commented at each of the blogs post to enter at Seams To Be Sew, Winners who win from entering at Seams To Be Sew will be checked for the comment. When you enter a give away that asks you to answer the question asked on the entry form, you do need to fill in that box. No answer means your winning entry will be ignored and cancelled.
- You are only allowed to enter once at each of the featured day sites. Giveaways are different at each site, thus you can enter those giveaways. On the Electric Quilt giveaway, you can enter once each day of the row along, new sites to click on are assigned to this giveaway you need to visit each site to be credited for the entry.
- I will start announcing winners on September 10, 2019, and finish announcing winners on October 13, 2019
- You must give a valid email address when you enter the giveaways, any email returned to me, loses the ability to win automatically.
- All giveaways run for 1 week with the exception of the Electric Quilt giveaway which runs the full course of the event.
- You are given 3 days to answer the email, if you do not answer within 3 days a new winner will be drawn. Check those spam/junk mail folders, you may miss that winning email if you don’t do so because there are no exceptions to this rule.
- If you are notified that you are a winner, in all cases except for the Fat Quartershop, and C&T Publishing winners, you will need to provide your name, address, city, state, zip code, country, telephone number, and email address.
- No purchase whatsoever is necessary.
- You must be 18+ in order to win a gift.
- You are responsible for claiming and paying any tax owed on the value of any gift that you win. Prizes valued at $500.00 should be claimed.
- All winners are chosen at random.
- All winners will be announced on the blogs via the Rafflecopter entry form and/or post by the blogger at the site where they won and here at Seams To Be Sew. All winners must allow for their first name and first initial of their last name to be announced on this blog.
- Odds of Winning a prize are based on a total number of rafflecopter entries during each week and in total for all giveaways.
- This giveaway is void where prohibited by law.
- Participating bloggers/designers may enter any of the giveaways.
- The word giveaways in the rules and guidelines are also known as sweepstakes.
