April Block for Design Camp 3

This month we were sent fabric swatches from Amy Butler’s Love fabric & were asked to make a wonky log cabin block.

The sample block posted by this month’s recipient was framed in white, so thats what I did with this block. I think my favorite of all the fabrics is the dark blue floral. There is something so appealing about the contrast large floral designs provide when set against solids & smaller prints.

Very fun block to make, and came together very quickly—less than an hour! A win-win combination.

March block for Design Camp 3

Its been a while since I’ve posted in regards to the flickr quilting bee, Design Camp. The girl assigned February is/was so behind getting her blocks finished & posted to other members that she felt guilty asking people to make blocks for her, so February ended up being a sort of catch-up month for anyone running behind. I’ve only received about half of the blocks from November, so I’m convinced she wasn’t the only one running behind from last fall! For march, we were given gray fabric along with 3 shades of pink, and asked to follow a rough outline to create a 12.5″x12.5″ block reminiscent of tube socks. This block gave me a lot of trouble, more than I’ve had for a bee block for a while, mostly because the fabric stretched in bizarre ways when I pressed it. I’m not sure if it wasn’t shrunk before getting mailed out or what, but I ended up picking out half the block & resewing it in order to reach the proper dimensions. I think the finished quilt will look very fun, but I’m glad my contribution is finished & safely on its way to its new home.

Baby Gift

One of my friends is having a baby girl, due about a month after mine. Her baby shower was this past weekend, so I made her a baby blanket & teddy bear to match.

I sewed around the edge twice to add a little more of a finish to the edge than a simple turnover would give it.

To be clear, all I did with the bear was sew on buttons & the bow, but I chose colors to match the strawberry blanket. I think this duo turned out quite cute!

Fruit Salad Quilt Complete! (at long last)

Remember my Fruit Salad quilt? I received most of these blocks back in 2011 from the Long Distance Quilting Bee members, plus a couple from myself and my mom. I made the quilt top a while ago but never got around to finishing it. Last week I quilted the top, batting, and backing together. Yesterday I finally made and attached the binding.

I love the flannel I used for the back. Originally I was thinking of using the banana fabric for the back, but the quilt is so much more snuggly with flannel on one side. The polka dots were originally white, and I prewashed it initially for my sister’s Christmas quilt, but since it was bleeding enough to turn the polka dots pink at the time, I used different backing on her quilt. I think the polka dots look so cute on this fruity quilt. The quilting around the individual blocks just gives the back a hint of interest so your eye doesn’t go crazy staring at all the dots.

I love the look of the yellow banana binding contrasting with the red flannel as well. Maybe I just love bright colors?

I sewed around the borders 1/4″ away from the seam on both sides for each border. Its simple, but thats okay. The differences in block colors & pattern are busy so I’m okay with straight forward borders & simple quilting on the borders. I’m really glad to have this unfinished project finally finished!

Refinished Mirror

This is a mirror that has resided in my garage for almost a year. I swiped it from my sister-in-law’s garage sale items last summer. Originally it was attached to a long dresser, and I don’t need another dresser…thus I took the mirror alone. I like that its big, but I don’t like how dark it is.
I decided to refinish it using a compilation of techniques from my own past experience upcycling Craigslist furniture, and one of the paint techniques Cyndy uses on The Creativity Exchange. After priming the wood, I mixed spray paint & some acrylic in a bowl & applied it with my finger. I wore a latex glove because I didn’t feel like getting paint all over my fingernails & skin creases. If I didn’t like how it went on, I just added/smeared/mixed paint until it pleased my eye.

The wheat at the top of the mirror looks so much better with its lighter look!

After fingerpainting the mirror with my multi-tone paint, I mixed some wood stain with some light colored acrylic. This I applied with a cheap sponge brush, and after about a minute rubbed it off. I rubbed it with varying degrees of pressure to get a bit of a worn look. Thomas thought it looked like fun, so he joined in with me on this part—he did the part in the photo below, and I think it looks amazing–just like birch bark!

After it was entirely dry, I lightly went over it with sandpaper. I think it looks pretty good! I am still deciding where to put it, but I like the fact that if I get tired of it looking like this, a new coat of paint will give it a complete makeover. DIY projects are so worth it!

Burp Cloths!

This past week I finally found the time to “prettify” some burp cloths. My boys’ burp cloths are half worn out, and I made them from patterned flannel that really scream BOY so it was fun to buy some white burp cloths & scavenge through my ribbon basket to find some feminine samples to adorn them.
Random fact: it is almost impossible to find white burp cloths where I live. I think I went to four different stores, including Target and Walmart, none of which sold these nice, white, traditional burp cloths. What is wrong with them? I ended up ordering these from Amazon. Regardless of the hassle they were to procure, I’m happy with the end result.

More Pink Scrap Quilt

Remember when I said that I wasn’t in a hurry to finish the pink scrappy quilt that I am working on, but that its so fun to work on? Well, the joy factor struck again and I made the center of the quilt.

I have been seeing these giant starts crop up from time to time on other sewing/quilting/crafting blogs that I follow, and I finally decided to just go for it & make one using the same fabrics I’ve used in the small blocks for my giant star.

I played around with the layout a bunch as you can see. I actually deleted more potential layouts from my camera…I am only posting these ones because I really like them for one reason or another.

Several of these would have worked but I wanted to find one that gave the most balance between light & dark, busy & calm, solid & print.

Ultimately the photo below is what I went with. Its hard to see in this photo because it was dark and I really only took this photo so I’d remember where to lay out the pieces as I sewed them together bit by bit. In real life, it looks amazing. I think this will be a very fun bedspread someday!

Thomas says I should call this the ‘Fablehaven Quilt’ because I only work on it at night when my husband is reading Fablehaven aloud to the rest of us. All the blocks I’ve made including this giant star were made this way, and last night we finished the series. Fun stuff.

Some Recent Projects

I just finished a baby blanket I’ve been working on for over a month. Here is a peek at the back:
Basically you sew diagonal lines through 4 yards of flannel. Then, you cut through 3 of the layers, leaving 1 layer to hold it all together! When you wash it, the cut flannel gets all wriggly and curvy and its very fun for babies to stroke and snuggle with. Maybe I’ll post a tutorial on how to do it if I make another one before my little girl makes her debut in this world. Here is a snapshot of the front flipped onto the back.

I also went to a baby shower for a friend, and sewed a purple baby blanket for her. I actually have several purple flannels with cute prints, but I’m hesitant to use them for myself because I’ve never been a huge fan of purple. That is to say, I like it on other people & in other people’s homes, but I just can’t envision myself or my personal projects as being purple-heavy.

I also whipped up this little number…just a single layer of flannel with the edges turned over twice. Its hard to tell in this photo, but its fuchsia on cream. I think its darling. After the previous paragraph, do I need to state that this doesn’t really count as purple in my book because the fuchsia contains a lot of red/pink? I remember using a lot of single-layer blankets for my boys when they were under 6 months, so now I’m trying to decide which of my flannel patterns to use to make 2 or 3 more.

The women’s organization at my church is holding a charity auction tonight. If you wanted to donate you could either make something to donate, or donate an actual service (like babysitting for someone else, or cooking lessons, etc) I made this cute star using a liberated quilting technique.
Then I turned it into a pillow. I stuffed it pretty well, its quite firm. I think that if no one wants it then its no loss because it will match the pink & aqua quilt I’m working on. Who knows, maybe I’ll make myself a matching pillow anyway! I used the light aqua color as a seam border, and the dark teal on the back. I think it turned out quite cute!

Last but not least I am also, slowly, getting my jar quilt put together. Here is the layout I decided on:
Now I have a stack of jars on my ironing board, waiting to be ironed so I can lay them out again & sew the next connecting seam on my rows. My goal in January was to get as many partially finished quilts finished this year (and hopefully before the baby comes) as possible. As this post probably demonstrates, I’ve had a lot of distracting sewing projects happening! But I think I’m finally getting to a place mentally where I ought to be able to finish my Fruit Salad quilt, and hopefully this jars quilt, in March. I also feel guilty about not plugging away at the sampler quilt I started (see some blocks here and here…back when I first started posting them on Y Seams) so I suppose its a good thing that I dropped out of most of the bees, swaps, and flickr exchange groups I did last year!

Scrappy Pink Quilt

I’ve been working on a few projects lately but haven’t really taken great photos until today, so that is my excuse for not posting on this blog for so long. I’ve got a few baby blankets underway that I’ll share with you after they’re complete. In the meantime…check out this sweet pink alphabet fabric!

I saw it and immediately thought it would look so sweet with different shades of teals and pinks in a scrappy quilt. Playing around with the fabrics I have, I came up with this:

I think that the dark pink is a little strong, & would overwhelm the pale pink background of the alphabet pretty easily if the whole quilt were done like that. Fortunately, I only want little pops of the dark pink here & there. I found some lime fabrics and some whites/off-whites to mix in as well.

I also have some fabrics for this quilt from clothes that my grandma and mom have made, one in particular dates back to the 1950′s! I thought it would be fun to preserve some of those fabrics in a sweet little scrappy quilt for a little girl to enjoy for years and years.

I only have 5 blocks made so far. I’d like to make 12 or 15, and then frame each block with a white border, but have a colored square connecting each block on the border corners, similar to this quilt. My plan is for this to go on my baby’s bed when she’s big enough for a real bed. With these 5 blocks I like the scrappiness, but I also like all the different teals framing the white diamond that the diagonal alphabet squares move across. I haven’t really made a huge plan for what color goes where, as far as the small scrappy squares are concerned. I’m just randomly picking fabrics & will let the finished product be a surprise to myself, along with everyone else, to see how it all comes together.

I think that the white borders will help tone down the busy-ness of the fabrics, but at the same time I want the words SCRAP QUILT to come to mind when someone sees the finished product. Since the end goal for this quilt is still several years away, I’m not feeling stressed to finish it…but not feeling stress while working on something is so enjoyable that it just might come together more quickly than anticipated!

Indiana Jones Quilt: Project Complete!

At long last, the Indiana Jones quilt is complete!

Thomas is so happy. He loves it because its big enough for him to wrap himself up within its snuggly folds.

Here it is all laid out, ready to sew. Because each block was a different size, Thomas & I ended up sewing various fabrics around the blocks which we then squared up. Thomas picked background fabrics which he thought were appropriate for Indiana Jones.

I just freehand quilted with my machine diagonal stripes across the blocks, about 2-3″ apart. Then I went around the border twice. Its hard to tell in these photos, but it frames the blocks so they pop pretty well.

The script in the middle spells out THOMAS in runic alphabet letters. I found the alphabet on this site, and just sort of free-pieced them together. They could be cuter & more uniform, but I’m just telling myself that they were carved by some prehistoric person who wasn’t very skilled at homogeneity, and calling it good. Why did I choose this alphabet, you ask? Because I thought it would be easier to piece together than egyptian hieroglyphics!

We used this brown and cream print flannel for the back. I folded it over twice to make the binding, and it adds a nice touch of “Jonesie” to the front. I saw this flannel on Black Friday last year when Joann’s was selling flannel for $1/yard. Score! I think the skulls add an appropriate touch.

Thomas has been sleeping with his quilt ever since it was finished.

In his words, “I love it. Its really warm, nice, snuggly. Its one of a kind!”