Two in One Pouches

I’m so not following the blogging trends of when you blog about things! Ha!

I didn’t make too many Christmas presents, but I did make a few… And since it’s almost February, I thought I’d show them! Well, the Alabama Pillow was one… So, next up is the Two In One pouch by Sotak Handmade. I made them at the same time, assembly line style. One was gifted to the kiddo’s teacher, the other for me!

Years ago at one our SMQG retreats, we had a white elephant and I won one of these! Yay! Then it was stolen from me…. In honest white elephant style… But I will not forget the pain of it being ripped from my hands! Ha!! And now I have my very own, in awesome Cotton and Steel Fabric!

The pattern calls for fusible fleece and I feel like it’s makes it a little too puffy. If I had quilted it, it would probably be fine. So next time I’m thinking about either quilting it or ditching the fleece and just using a heavy interfacing.

I love the two pockets! But it opens…. And it just seems like wasted space! It needs pockets in here. Or a little mini note holder… Or to stitch together the two sides, so it becomes a middle pocket. So many options! Next time, I’m going to make it more user friendly in the middle.

It was a pretty quick sew, perfect for a teacher gift! And I’ve enjoyed Finally having my own! I’ll keep you posted on any adjustments I make on the next round!

The Making of a Nursery- Part 3 Bed Skirt and Crib Rail Cover

Ruffles and Ruffles, oh my!

Being a mom of one son, you can imagine that I have not had a lot of experience with ruffles! But after these two projects, I feel like I’ve made up for lost ruffle time! Man!!!!

It almost looks like a can can skirt here with all the ruffles! The funny thing is, I made it and then took it to my son’s room and told him it was for his bed. You could tell at first he didn’t want to hurt my feelings and say no. But then he couldn’t hold out and was like, ‘NOOOOO! No ruffles in my room!’ To make the bed skirt, I followed The Ribbon Retreat’s tutorial. It was fairly simple, just the ruffling took some time.

First, I hemmed all the ruffle pieces.

And my new serger skills blossomed! I serged every edge of the flat panel pieces. Then the top edge of all the ruffle pieces. Then pulled all the ruffles into ruffles. And sewed them on following the tutorial.

And this is how it looks laying flat out!

I don’t have a crib set up, so I unfortunately can’t show all the pieces in context… But I tied the crib rail bumper or cover over our bed instead! This piece is intended to keep the kids from chewing on the crib. My kiddo didn’t do too much chewing on it, but I didn’t even now this was an option back a few years ago!

For this project, I totally winged it. No tutorial, just pictires online of what the new Momma wanted! I had the length I needed it to be and then divided that into 3 parts and made equal curves. This is the top!

And this is the underside.

And the ruffle! More ruffles! This one seemed to take forever! But I made a big ring or ruffles. And I sewed together with all the pieces, fleece right side up, foam, the ruffles pinned around the edge with the ruffle towards the inside, the ribbons pinned at the inside of the curves and lastly the minky back fabric face down. Sewed it all together with an opening to pull it through and then hand sew the hole together.

I think the whole nursery ensemble came out just adorable! Beautiful! My friend lives about 3,000 miles away, so I haven’t been able to see the whole room put together. But I know it’s got to be adorable! And that’s the end of my mini-series of The Making of a Nursery. Did you do much sewing for your child’s nursery?

 

 

 

The Making of a Nursery- Part 2 A Rag Quilt Tutorial

Welcome to Part 2 of my 3 part mini-series!

Today it’s the Rag Quilt! And how I made it! These things are super simple. Before this one I had never made one, so when tasked with making one I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. This was probably the easiest project for the whole nursery!

And I love the fabrics and colors (enough those these things weren’t totally picked by me… Actually I had nothing to do with the color, but I did get to choose some of the fabrics!). And it’s so soft!

Here’s how I made it! First to cut the squares. I made squares 7″. So the top cottons (and a little fleece) and the back minki fabrics were cut to be 7″ squares. But I cut the batting to be 6″ squares.

Then stack the three pieces. Minki on the bottom, batting in the middle and cotton on the top. Wrong sides together!

Chain piece all the quilt sandwiches! Quilt the pieces from corner to corner and corner to corner. You’ll end up with a big X  across each piece.

Then start sewing blocks together to make rows and rows! But use a half inch seam allowance rather than the 1/2″ seam allowance, quilts usually use.

Then sew the rows together. I pinned my rows, so that I was sure the the seams would match up.

And your left with this….

But you still want to trim all those seam allowances! This part took longer than any of the other steps….

And this is what you get! Nice and cuddly!!!

I kinda want one for me…. Have you ever made a rag quilt? Did you know they were this easy? I think picking the fabric and laying out the blocks and trimming the ‘fringe’ took longer than actually making the quilt! Let me know if you try it!

 

 

 

The Making of a Nursery- Part 1

Last year a friend of mine was having a baby and asked me to help her personalize the nursery with some custom pieces. She picked out the fabric and together we grouped the fabrics to make curtains, a rag quilt, a ruffle bed skirt and a teething rail for the crib.

Today, let’s talk about the curtains and the rag quilt!

The curtains are yards and yards of fabric! They are almost 8′ long and lined with a black out fabric. Yep, long hems!

I love the purple flocked pattern. We wanted to use it in other pieces, but were concerned about the flocking comign off and into a baby’s sweet mouth. So the main use of this fabric is the curtains.

LIke I said, I lined the curtains with black out lining. I cut the lining a bit shorter and narrower than the curtain fabric and then folded the hems over on the lining to secure it place. So, for the width, I cut the lining 2 inches narrower than the curtain fabric to account for the 1/2″ hem on the sides.

Same thing for the bottom hem and the top hem.

And the rag quilt! This was the first rag quilt I have ever made!

A rag quilt is a perfect project for a beginner quilter. And it’s super soft! Stayed tuned this week and I’ll show you how I made it!

Stay tuned for more nursery fun!

A Christmas Cross Stitch Pillow!

Well, one of my New Years Resolutions was to get back into blogging and post more than once a week! Not doing so well on that resolution, but still trying…. Anyway…. I seem to be loving pillows right now! So I thought I’d show you one more that I made.

I’m soooo loving cross stitch right now! I did it as a kid, but I’m loving that it’s making a comeback and making a comeback with modern designs. It does take me forever, but I love it.

And so what do I do with it? I piece and quilt it, of course!

The first cross stitch project I did when I picked it back up used the traditional Aida fabric. It’s super easy to use, but who wants to cuddle up with it? Not me. So I knew I had to find a different way…. I picked up this Pellon Sticky Grid and Tear. It works great!

I layer a piece of quilting cotton with a piece of muslin or another layer of quilting cotton and cut the grid paper to fit inside my hoop. The instructions say not to leave it on the fabric for very long. I just look loosely attached it and it stayed on for months! It didn’t leave a residue or anything.

And don’t look at my back stitching! I just do it! I didn’t even know that there are particular ways you are supposed to cross stitch that makes the backs look pretty too… I’ll try that next time…

My lines aren’t quite as straight as they could be with Aida fabric, but once you see it as an overall design, I think it looks quite nice.

I pulled fabric from the colors in the pattern and did a little HST border. I wasn’t sure about the polka dot yellow for a while. I feel much better about it now, though. I gave it to my step-Mom for Christmas and didn’t realize her bedding is yellow! Perfect fit!

The pattern is by Tiny Boxes Design and is a downloadable pattern. She has a couple of other patterns, I’d like to make, too! The pattern actually says ‘go Yell it…’, but I made it the real words of the song and changed ‘Yell’ to ‘Tell’. And I added the star on top with variegated yellow thread. It took me forever to figure out how I wanted to do the star!

I’ve got some more cross stitch projects in the works! Do you do cross stitch? I’m loving it, but it’s putting my double sided hexagon quilt on the back burner! oops….

Bama Pillow and How to Quilt with Old Clothes!

Roll Tide Roll! I thought it would be fitting to post this on the night of another National Championship game for ‘Bama! Whether we win or loose, Roll Tide Roll!

My mom moved recently and as we were cleaning the house ot put it on the market, we came across this old sweatshirt from the 1985 50th Iron Bowl. She wasn’t ready to let it go, so we decided to make it new again! And she just happened to leave this houndstooth fabric at my house on one of her visits!

So we’ve got some fabric, an old sweatshirt (this works with t-shirts too) and some featherweight fusible interfacing.

Iron on the interfacing and it then cut it down to the right size. The interfacing gives the sweatshirt or t-shirt a stability that knit doesn’t have on it’s own. It makes it much easier to sew without distortion.

Then I pieced the top and quilted in the the shape of a football! After I was loving along, I realized my football started to tilt and got off. So don’t look too closely at that detail…

Then I started to wonder, what’s the big deal about this 50th Iron Bowl anyway…. Just in case you aren’t from the South and don’t know what the Iron Bowl is… It’s the biggest state rivalry there is! Well, that is coming from a ‘Bama fan, anyway! It is the biggest anticipated game in the state of Alabama between Alabama and Auburn. And this particular game in 1985, seems to have been an awesome game!

‘Imagine how lucky you’d be to get introduced to the greatest rivalry in the country at the height of its unparalleled powers.

Alf Van Hoose, longtime Birmingham News sports editor, called it “Legion Field’s greatest game,” and no one would know better.

Alabama 25, Auburn 23 on Nov. 30, 1985, will always be the greatest Iron Bowl to me. It was two heavyweight champions taking the other’s best punch and refusing to stay down, getting up and punching back until the Crimson Tide landed the final, crushing blow at the bell of the 15th and final round.’

-from Kevin Scarbinsky, My First Iron Bowl

The article lays it all out and is a fun read!

The pillow was supposed to be a Christmas gift, and it was, just a little late! But just in time to help cheer them on tonight!

Finish Along Quarter 1 2016

It’s that time again! Time to list all the projects I am looking to get done this quarter! Time for the the first quarter of the 2016 Finish-A-Long! Last quarter, I had ten things on my list! I finished four of them! I finished the glitz quilt, Dad’s quilt, The Inside Out Pineapple Quilt and the rag quilt (I just haven’t blogged about that one yet!).

I want to get the rest of my list done this quarter! Like usual, it’s going to look familiar….

First up, The Riley Blake Challenge quilt. I totally missed the deadline on this one, but I still want to finish it!

Oh, and there’s the EZ Quilting Challenge triangle quilt challenge…. Also a Quiltcon challenge like the Michael Miller one. Again, I’ve gotten the ruler, but no clue what to do with it. Totally missed the deadline, and totally still have no idea….

Last year I joined in two Block of the Month quilts. The green one, the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Block of the Month quilt, will be done this week! Still need to figure out how to finish the Technicolor Galaxy Quilt.

I’d love to get these two done too!

I have more on my to do list, but……

Christmas Thank You Printables

Have you had your kiddo write their thank you notes yet?

I so love our letter to Santa, so I decided to transform that and make a coordinating Fill in the Blank Thank You note. The funny thing is that the first thank you note the kiddo sat down to write was to Santa!

I’m good about always having the kiddo sit down and write them. I’m not so good at getting them out right away! But it is very important to me that he gets this thank you thing down and hopefully eventually it will become second nature to him. Thank you’s are very important to me!

Recently, I got a Groupon to Staples for their holiday cards and was very happy with them. Then I saw the groupon again, so I did it again for the Thank You’s. You can upload your own design for both the front and back of the card.

I couldn’t decide, so I have a few options for you to download! You can download the jpeg’s of the front and back here. The jpeg’s you can upload to Staples, or most other printing places. Or you can download a PDF of just the front. The PDF has the front twice. This is more for printing just the front!

And in case you like the graphic on the back, but only want to do one sided, you can download the PDF of this version here!

At first I was having him write out the whole note and realized very quickly why people like the fill in the blank versions for the kiddos! Now I see the fill in the blanks as a stepping stone in the tradition of writing notes. He’s learning what to say in a note.

I just had to throw this picture in because I love those freckles!!!

If you haven’t already written your notes, I hope you’ll enjoy these!

And HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Wishing everyone a great year!