A Little Elephant Pouch Gift

For the holidays I really enjoyed making handmade gifts for family. I do enjoy a nice quick ‘er’ project than a full quilt every now and then!

This project was a bunch of new! A new pattern, times two, altering a paper pieced pattern, sewing with cork and new quilting pattern.

The pattern is by Olesya Lebedenko Design and I got it from her etsy shop. She has a lot of cute patterns.  This came in a set of other ‘Jungle Flat Face Animals’. The paper piecing pattern set up is different than I am used to. It’s not set up with the 1/4″ seams shown, so there are more copies required to get the pattern pieces you need. But it still worked. I loved the elephant face, but I didn’t like that the trunk just ended. So I added that on myself. The corners didn’t come together perfectly, but close enough for me. And if you look at at the right angle, you don’t notice it as much! ha!

Then I had to decide what to do with my little elephant head! This person was already getting pot holders and I’d given them coasters another year… Then I found Sew Sweetness’ Persimmon Dumpling Pouch pattern. And that was that! It’s a free pattern on her blog and even comes with a video tutorial. It’s a really easy make.

Not too long ago, I was gifted an amazing pouch by a friend in my guild and she had done this awesome quilting on it. (Yes, I still need to share about that!) I was totally inspired by her to do the quilting on this little pouch! The quilting on the back is moreo detailed than in the front. I was planning on doing the back pattern on the front as well, but it seemed like it would be too busy and take away from the elephant.

The inside uses a contrasting grey fabric. I also love how well this zipper goes. When I saw the zipper I knew I’d be able to use it and this was the perfect project for it!

And the cork bottom! This wasn’t actually the first time I had used cork. But it is the first time I’ve used it in a pouch and really had to work with it. I’ve ben hoarding my cork fabric for way too long. I finally busted it out and made some wallets and was hooked! Ordered more and have a lot of plans for it now! I love it!

And that’s my elephant pouch! It’s my Persimmon Dumpling Flat Faced Elephant Pouch!

 

 

Bright Tide Pools

ok! I’m on a roll and loving getting quilts and projects finished! Not half finished in a pile! Now if I can only post them! 

This little one isn’t as old as some of my other WIPS. It’s only about a year in process. For my son’s school auction, I have been putting in a custom quilt. I give them some of my designs to choose from and whoever gets it, gets to pick the colors to make it their own. This is the second time I have done it. You can see the first one, Triangle Mountain, here. And probably the last as the auction was cancelled this year and I don’t think they do it at his middle school. And I honestly get kinda freaked out about whether or not the person is going to like it.

This design came from when I was active in the Quilt Design a Day FB group. I really miss it and need to pick it up again.

Each day there is a prompt picture, like the one above by Michelle Wilke of Factum of Arts Blog. This picture she took of tide pools in the Olympic National Park was te inspiration ‘spark’ where this quilt originated!

From the picture above came this design.

Which turned into this design after I got the color inspiration from the auction winner!

And this is what we ended up with! Not a single square in the mix. one of the things I like about quilting is the puzzle of putting it all together and this one was a real puzzle!

In hindsight, I probably would have made the blocks bigger so that sat closer together, but I like how it turned out.

I used all the scraps for the back. Starting with the little yellow green rectangle in the orange. That was the first block for the front when I realized it was WAY to small! The back started out as a log cabin, but ended up looking like an old TV with the ‘bunny ears’ antenna. the TV is all I can really see at this point. HA!

I think my favorite part of the back is this skinny purple line!

The auction winner wanted it to cover her induction cooktop. At first I was like, ‘No way! That’s a fire hazard, if I’ve ever heard of one!’ Then I googled it and apparently it’s a thing to cover these cooktops with quilts. Very odd to me and it makes me nervous. But It’s what she wanted, so I went with it. I also added inslu-bright so it can act as a huge potholder/hot pad/trivet.

Name : Bright Tide Pools
Design: Original Design
Dimensions: 32 x 21 in.
Quilted: Straight line quilting 

 

 

Winter Friend Pillows

I’m enjoying making other people’s projects these days! Like these Winter Friend Pillows!

I really love these little throw pillows. They were intended to be Christmas presents, but they were a little late. The green ones are staying at our house while the red ones found a new home. I’m calling them winter pillows, not holiday pillows. It’s still winter….

As you probably know, I love this book! Pretty In Patchwork, Holidays by John Q Adams. I’ve made a few projects from it, like these teachers gifts.

As much as I love this book, I did find a bit of an editing oversight. The project for these pillows in the book is called Greetings From Antarctica! I just want to clarify… There are no polar bears in the Antarctic. Penguins live in Antarctica, polar bears live in the Arctic. Things like this really bug me! Let’s be smart, people! Don’t dumb us down….

So I’m changing the name of the project to Winter Friends, as in they are all our friends. I don’t think polar bears and penguins would be friends.

The directions called for applique eyes and button eyeballs. As much as I don’t like applique, I did do the eyes! By putting a white circle over black, the black showed through, so I added some betting to my circles, so you couldn’t see the black through the white. But I didn’t want buttons for eyes. And I didn’t want to applique anything smaller than the eyes. I also have those eyeballs you use for stuffed animals, but I realized they wouldn’t work on the pillow. It was my son who said, ‘I saw you had some other round things in your cabinet.’ He was talking about my box of rivets! Perfect!

The polar bear actually had applique eyes (or was it buttons), but I added the diamond shaped eyes in the paper piecing pattern. I love how they turned out, but wonder if I had used rivets, would the pillows blend together better??

I did also change the pattern of the hat to make the white band thinner. Then the poof was to be a button or applique as well. But I hand sewed on a little pompom!

I did the same thing for the little penguins! just used smaller rivets and a smaller pompom. Also, for these little guys, I just reduced the size of the pattern when I made the copies. Next time, I’d like them a little larger!

I chose a freehand wavy pattern to work with ‘sprinkles’ of white to look like the sprinkles were snow blowing in the wind. I think it works!

The backs are BORING! But I’m ok with it, because the fronts are adorable!

And the invisible zippers rock!

I love my winter friends pillows! They make a great gift for penguin loving friends!

 

An Angel Pillow

I have a whole stack of handmade Christmas presents piled up to share! I had a nice long list of handmade Christmas presents I wanted to make for family this year. It was a bit too long and I didn’t get it all done. But I did get a good bit done. At least one thing for each person on my list. And now I want to share them with you.

First up is this angel pillow! I actually pieced the angel in 2018, but didn’t make it for Christmas. It sat around for more months than I can to share until I got it quilted and made into a pillow in time to gift in 2019!

The pattern is by Quilt Art Designs. Have you seen her patterns? She has some of the most elaborate paper pieced patterns I’ve ever seen. They are so good! And she must have hundreds of patterns. I bet if you want a paper pieced pattern of something, she has it! You can find this one here.

For the dress I used an ombre pink fabric that I had in my stash. I believe it was by Cotton and Steel a few years back. I also debated on how to quilt it. I thought about starting with the halo and quilting a circular pattern radiating out from the halo. Now that I type this, I like that idea even more! But I went straight line quilting and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

I used all solids on the front, so I threw in some pattern on the back!

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m loving invisible zippers! This one is a little more invisible on one side than it is on the other! but it still works!

I’m pretty sure this one was well received by it’s new owner! I think it’s quite beautiful!

 

A New Christmas Tree Skirt

I finished with a day to spare!

I started this project in January. I started it but then put it away to work on other things. The thought was to start back up after the early in the year so that it would be ready in plenty of time for Christmas. Well, that didn’t happen! so of course, I was cramming to get it done for this Christmas. And I did!

It is so beautiful (if I do say so myself)! It would make a beautiful real skirt! My Christmas colors are white, bright pink, bright green and teal. And I’m excited to say, it’s all made from my stash! I saw the project in Issue 66 of Love Patchwork and Quilting and knew I wanted to make it. The pattern is by Evie of EVQuilts and is the Starburst Tree Skirt.

Then when I realized I had all the fabric I needed, I was even more excited! The pink raw silk was a scrap I had been given ages ago. I don’t know where the teal satin and bright green came from. I did use the bright green for our handmade Elf on the Shelf.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/da-atis/49297707787/in/dateposted-public/

All the other fabrics were from my wedding! The white raw silk look alike (it’s not actually raw silk, but looks like it) was from my wedding. The beaded white raw silk was from the cake table at my wedding. And the green, but not bright green, was from extra fabric I bought to match the bridesmaids dresses. I ran out of that fabric and had some of the darker fabric from their dresses that I used to finish off the binding in the back. I didn’t make thier dresses, but we used a company that I picked the fabric, the bridesmaids picked the dress style. You can buy extra fabric to use on other projects for your wedding. Perfect use of stash, IMO! I also used the beaded white fabric from our Chirstmas stockings I made ages ago! Nine years ago, actually! (excuse the horrible pictures if you click back…) 

For years, we’ve been using these fleece tree skirt. It went better with the tree when we used to get a live, green tree. It’s literally a piece of fleece cut into a circle with a split in the back. Since we got the white tree I have not liked it anymore!

But man! Check out how much better the new skirt looks!! I’m actually gleeful with how this turned out!

The tree skirt is quilt as you go. You start with a really long piece of batting, like 60″ long, and sew the strips on at angle. Over and over and over! Then you do it again with the strips going in the opposite direction! So, needless to say it took me longer that I had anticpiated. I was planning on quilting just the white. But then decided, nope.

I did hand sew on the binding. You can see the two fabrics from the bridesmaids dresses here.

I’m just so excited about it! I almost hated to cover it in presents! But we did, of course! And now it’s empty again and I can enjoy the tree skirt again before it has to go away until next year.

 

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer! Quilted!

I’m so excited to show you this Christmas quilt! I’ve been waiting all year! I finished it about a week after Christmas last year and decided to wait until this year to show you.

It’s an abstract Rudolph!

As soon as Sew Kinda Wonderful posted about her upcoming Urbanologie quilt, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. literally, the moment I first saw it! I only wanted the one block from the quilt, but I bought the whole thing anyway… I couldn’t wait to see if they ever published the patters separately, which they haven’t by the way… Maybe one day I’ll make other pieces of the quilt, but not the whole thing together. It’s not quite my thing.. But the antlers… LOVE!

Since I had so much white space, I wanted a color for the binding and went with the bright green to make it a little more playful.

And for the nose, I used the same process I used on my sports quilt I did ages ago… You can find the tutorial here.

You know me and solids! I rarely use prints, but I wanted to here. And I ordered all the fabrics online. I took a good guess at which ones would work together, and they all do! By sheer luck of the draw!

And the back. I didn’t do very good at straightening out when I basted, but oh well… A little crooked.

Token label picture!

I would say this has enough white space to qualify as a Modern Quilt! ha! Have you made a Christmas quilt this year?? I want to size this down to a pillow as well. Probably not this year though! But an easy matching set, wouldn’t you think?  I’ll be sharing some more Christmas things soon! Between sewing projects!

Handmade Teacher Gifts

Halloween is over, and as much as I want to keep sewing for Halloween, I’m going to take a break and move on to handmade gifts! Not quite Christmas posts, but a few gift idea posts are coming up before I move into full on Christmas!

What do you do for Teacher gifts at the Holidays? I’ve always made handmade somethings! One year I made a two in one pouch for a teacher and one year I made a personalized pouch with the teachers initial pieced on it. I forget what else! ha! And then for the last two years, I’ve made these adorable little quilted ‘folios’ from the book Pretty in Patchwork: Holidays.

I’m a little obsessed with buying quilting and cross stitch magazines, but I rarely buy books. One year, I found this book is  super sale bin at the bookstore and I bought it. I have to say it’s one of my favorite project books I have! The projects are focused on Christmas primarily, but most of hte projects also have suggestions for turning the projects into other holiday sewing projects. Stay tunned for some more projects from this book this holiday season!

I made this one just like the directions say. I laid out my blocks how I wanted them, then turned them over, but forgot to flip their location… The little girl flying the kite was supposed to be on the front, not hte back! Oh, well!

My family gave me all the lovely Cotton and Steel fabric for Christmas. I think it was a perfect choice for this little gift!

I loved placing the little apple on the side pocket! Aren’t you supposed to give teachers apples?? I’m not exactly sure what apples have to do with teachers, but it’s a thing! ha!

And then I made another one last year for his teacher. This teacher is a University of Washington grad, so I went with a UW themed version! Purple and gold with touches of black and white!

Photo via Amazon

And for this one I combined the folio project with the Ho Ho Ho pillow project! The book has directiosn for each letter, so I made the W. I pieced this as quilt as you go and didn’t go back with any additional quilting. Looking back at this picture, i’m kinda inpreseed with how striaght my lines are! 

And the inside of this one!

I’d love to know your favorite teacher gift go to! I have a new idea for this year….. More to come on that!

 

My Halloween Quilt! with a paper pieced pattern download

I know, most everyone has moved onto Christmas, but I’m still posting about Halloween!

I started this about this time last year. I had a plan. I was going to do one block each month… I was also going to make one Halloween and one Christmas placemat each month. Let’s just say NONE of those things happened! Oops!

I didn’t quite finish in time for Halloween, but I finished 3 days later. So I’m calling that a win!

I did intend for the stripe to go from top to bottom, not side to side… But I realized I didn’t have enough of the green fabric, so I switched gears mid stream. I actually really like having the stripe of pieced blocks along the bottom.

Our Halloween guests seem to like it as well! They can still scare, but show off the stripe! ha! Who doesn’t love seeing monsters and skeletons cuddling under a quilt on the porch bench??? So sweet!

For this quilt I did paper piece the stripe. That’s how I got such sharp points! Look at those points! I love it! You can download the quilt block here. It is a 12×18 page, so most home printers won’t print it, but your neighborhood office supply store will be able to. The block makes a 10″ square.

How do you do binding? I sew mine onto the top and then iron it over to the back and hand stitch it to the back. I have not mastered the machine binding! Nope! And I love the time away from the machine to do a little hand stitching anyway!

And the back. I made a few extra blocks with the scraps to put on the back. Then I just pieced all my scraps for as much of the back as I could. Then I just started adding larger pieces to make up the difference.

Man, did this quilt almost give me a heart attack??? I was in the process of quilting it. I quilt on the dining room table. We had family friends over for dinner, so I just through my quilt and the machine in my son’s (also known at Lulu’s room, our 3 year old great pyrenees mix) room. Well, the pup got super excited about our guests, so we put her in ‘her room’ to calm down… When we go in the room, she has chewed up the quilt. I stifled my scream! we did still have guests… But luckily, she had just chewed the excess you add to the batting and back! So it was totally ok, but, man, did it scare me! And no, she didn’t get sick at all!

My token label picture that I take for each quilt!

I’m so excited to have it finished! And even though I have a list of more Halloween projects to do, I’m also excited to move on to handmade Christmas presents! What you working on after Halloween? Did you sew anything for Halloween?

 

Zig Zag Big and Small Quilt

Another Quilt that I finished last year, but never blogged about!

This was the April 2017 quilt for the Nurture Circle of do.Good Stitches. I finished it last summer and took it on a photo shoot in White Sands, NM before sending it on to the group to be donated.

This is just a half square triangle quilt that I arranged into squares. Nothing too dramatic, but I was inspired by the scraps from the quilt design the month before.

These are the blocks we made the month before. They were made from a square and a rectangle, using the tutorial from A Bright Corner. You sew the pieces together, then cut off the corners that are left.

As I was making my block and saw the scraps, I quickly let the group know to keep their scraps and we’d be using them the following month! We sewed those together to make mini half square triangles! I have to admit, I realized then that not everyone enjoyed the small piecing phenomena going around! But they played along with me anyway.

After piecing the tiny half square triangles, everyone made these little blocks out of them.  I pieced them using the same way I pieced my Crosses Postage Stamp Quilt, using a super thin fusible interfacing. I also asked everyone to make larger blue and grey HSTs. I then arranged the larger ones the same way as the tiny ones for a play on scale.

I debated between blue or grey or even green binding. Obviously, I went with the grey. It just kinda fades away, where the others would make more of a frame. Either one would have been nice, but I like how the grey turned out.

Nothing too exciting about the back. A little green and black print.

I’m no longer a member of the Nuture Group, but I still have a couple quilts to finish for the group. Slowly but surely, I’ll get them done!

 

Triangle Mountain

 

Introducing Triangle Mountain! This is another one that took forever, yet didn’t take forever! A few years ago, I donated a quilt design/custom quilt to my son’s school. I give some design options and the size. they get to pick the colors. Solid colors, because that’s what I do!

But I realized that when I’m quilting for a particular person, it makes me nervous! Kinda like when I tried to be a photographer… I was a stress case! Will they like me? Will they like my pictures? And on and on… Needless to say, that career idea didn’t last long! Back to quilting. I guess that kinda carries over into quilting. I knew the design, and I knew the colors she wanted, but I was nervous she wouldn’t like it! Gifts, no problem. ‘Client’ is where I got stuck!

All the designs I gave as options were designs I had made through the Quilt Design a Day FB group!

This is the inspiration photo from Design Seeds.

And the design that came from the inspiration photo! Obviously, originally it hade a white background, but the ‘client’ wanted a coral background. Originally we were going to use some hand dyed fabric from her mother, but that didn’t happen.

Then by the time I got to adding the background, the Pantone Color of the Year for 2019 had come out. Living Coral! I was so excited! I have had grand intentions every year to participate in the Pantone Quilt Challenge hosted by No Hats in the House and Bryan House Quilts every year and finally I knew I’d have one completed for it! I did it!

I love how the triangles turned out! I was a little intimated by the triangles too! But I found this tutorial from Jaybird Quilts that got me past it! It’s not an earth shattering tutorial, but it gave me that push I needed to realize I could do this! And just look at those corners!!

And I added a couple of matched binding transitions at the corners of the mountain. They aren’t quite the exact same angle, but it’s ok! Still gets the point across!

And the back! I just all the scraps from the triangle in that little pieced box on top. I didn’t have as much as I thought I would!

Such a relief to get this one done, out of the house and to it’s new home! And my ‘client’ was very appreciative and seemed to be very happy with her purchase. Her long, overdue purchase…