Christmas Hot Pad

With scraps from the zig-zag quilt. I wanted to try out the swirl quilting style. (There's definitely room for improvement, but it sure was fun!)

Christmas Zig-Zag Quilt, Done and Gone

I wish I had more time to write about this. But I'm just too busy today!

Just pictures for now. Maybe I'll get around to writing about it soon...

Almost done!

I'm working on the last step - binding! I hope to be able to show you "finished" pictures tomorrow.

Peace

I got bored (for a bit) with piecing the zig zag quilt. (I'm sooo slow at quilting. Ugh!) So, I needed a new small project. Over Thanksgiving weekend I decided to use a few scraps from the zig zag quilt to make a Christmas banner. I had some cream felt leftover from making the birthday crown awhile ago. I wanted the felt to be thick so I double it. I then decided it should be reversible. I was going to put another Christmas word on the other side, but thought maybe I should go with a word from a neighboring season/holiday. So, the other side says "Fall" with a fabric leaf on the extra square. I hung it on the mirror in my living room. The only thing I don't really like about that is that you see the fall colors and letters. Oh well.

I free handed the letters on parchment paper and traced them on the fabric. My artistic husband helped me. :)


I used dark green thread to zig zag around the letters (before I attached the Fall letters felt squares to the back).


Easy peasy! But, I thought it would be a two-hour-or-under project. Nope. Not for me. I'm slow! I also broke a needle and stuff like that. When I was done, I was happy with it, but wished I had spent the time quilting instead.

Christmas Quilt Progress

Yay! I'm making progress! I am so grateful to my husband for letting me quilt on Friday night, while our kids were being babysat. We hung out and watched Twilight while I quilted. (We were preparing to see New Moon the next morning. LOVED it!) He actually helped me a bunch. He lined up squares and drew a diagonal line on them so I could sew them. He also helped me the next day by watching the kids for hours while I was pluggin' away in our room, piecing this quilt together.

I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the piecing. But I LOVE seeing the progress! I am a slow quilter, but I still have hope that I will find the time to get it finished. I have about three and a half weeks left.

Spare time = quilting. Now I just need to find "Spare Time"!

Seriously! Do you remember me talking about wanting to make a Christmas quilt for my husband's boss' family? Well, Christmas is right around the corner and all I've done so far is order the fabric and wash it. It's been patiently waiting there on the shelf, for weeks, to be cut and pieced! I was just waiting for all of the craziness of October to end (not really on purpose. I just never found "Spare Time"). I guess I did think to myself that the beginning of November will be less busy and I'd find the time!

We're in NOVEMBER! It doesn't look good for me and that quilt!! I need a whole Saturday to myself, my cutting tools, and my machine! I don't see that happening this month though.

Enough rambling. Sorry.

I bought Moda's Figgy Pudding for the fabric...


and I want to do a zigzag quilt similar to these:

(found here at Film in the Fridge)
{I'm seriously loving her blog. I just found it. She inspiring in the quilting department. Very talented!}

(found here at A Quilt is Nice)
{Also a very talented quilter. I've learned a lot from her blog. She has beautiful stuff.}

I really hope it doesn't take me too long to make this quilt. I hope to be able to show you some pictures of progress very soon! And, if you see Spare Time can you tell him to stop by my house, please?! I need him!

P.S. Did you notice I was successful with my posting of pictures from other sites?? Yay! Thanks for your help. :-)

Quilt Finally Finished

Friday night I finally finished this baby quilt that I have been working on for two months! I don't have as much time to quilt as I'd like. This is what the package looked like, folded together with the bow, when I delivered it to my friends. Sorry for so many pictures. My husband and I took quite the photo shoot of this quilt. It was actually quite hard to want to give away. I fell in love with it as I was finishing it up. Once I got to their house, it was so fun and easy to give to them... and their baby is SOO cute!!

So much blood, sweat and tears went into this thing. I LOVE this quilt. {Probably because I spent so much time with it!}

Front of the quilt.

Back of the quilt.

Doll quilt on top of baby quilt.

Doll quilt label with baby quilt label. (Some names were smudged in photoshop). Thanks, Amy, for printing these out. Thanks, Grant, for designing the labels (with my initial ideas, of course). You guys are the best!

Baby quilt label.

This is the first time I've made a quilt label. It was harder than I thought. If I had originally bought and used the right kind of printable fabric, then it would've saved me a lot of time and effort (and Amy's ink). If you ever want to use them, make sure you get the "colorfast" printable fabric sheets, instead of the kind that you have to "dry clean only". What good is that on a baby quilt??

Doll quilt label (back of quilt) on top of the front of the baby quilt. I posted this one only because I really liked the detail and the colors.

This is the two of the quilts folded together, again, just turned around. I really like the look of all that quilted-ness, binding, crinklieness together. That's all.

Now I have to make a couple more, similar to this... but twin size, for MY girls. I have quite a bit of the fabric left over (did that on purpose). My 6-y-o daughter kept adoring the quilt as I was making it. She kept asking me to make one for her, like it. My 1-y-o daughter would take it, lay it out on the floor and lay down on it, whenever she saw it. We grew quite attached to it. Glad a beautiful little girl can enjoy this quilt and the doll quilt, when she's old enough to carry her own babies around.

Now it's on to the next quilting project...

Christmas Quilt - gift

I am going to make a zigzag quilt like this one at a quilt is nice. I'm making one for my husband's boss and his family. Every year we go to a Holiday office party at his house and I always hand make something. It never really feels like enough, though. This year the quilting bug has bitten me again. It's really been years since I have quilted. I think I had forgotten how much I love it.

I thought I should get started soon to have it finished by mid-December. Only because we have Halloween and Thanksgiving and three kids birthdays in our family, etc., etc. to worry about between now and then.

Right now I am having a hard time with fabric. I just can't decide!! There are the "okay" ones at Joann's and Hobby Lobby. They are fair priced. Then there are the designer ones online that I like a whole lot more, but are almost twice the price of the "okay" ones. ... and then there's shipping, if you buy online!

I've got my eye on Michael Miller's Funky Christmas, Free Spirit's Christmas Snow Flower, and, Moda's Figgy Pudding. (That's just a few of my favorites.) I'll probably end up with none of those and just go with what's cheapest. Unless there's a miracle... in the form of a super, smokin' deal on one of my favorites!

A quilt and a skirt

I love Amy Butler fabric. I had some leftover Amy Butler fabric from a bag I made last April (I never posted a picture of it). I knew I wanted to piece a quilt with the leftover fabric, but I really wanted a few more fabrics to make the quilt more interesting. I went to the store closest to me, that carries some Amy Butler fabric and found out they were on clearance for 40% off! I got much more than I needed for just that quilt. Who wouldn't?

{The back of the baby quilt}

{A closeup of the front}

I made a stacked coin quilt and a matching doll quilt for a friend who is adopting a baby girl any day now. (Hopefully she won't read this before I finish it and give it to her!) I still need to quilt it and bind it. But I am excited about how the piecing turned out!

{Front of the doll quilt}

{Back of the doll quilt}

I have so much extra fabric leftover that I want to make skirts for my girls and they have also requested a quilt each. Well, technically my 1-year-old didn't, but her 6-year-old sister requested one for her. She loves it when they have matching stuff. Since they share a room and bunk beds that will be shared in the future, I thought I could accomplish that request. It will probably take me till she's in a twin bed, to get the quilts done anyway.


I had originally thought of making a simple skirt with the Oliver +S lazy days skirt pattern . My daughters already have a few of these. But, I was ready to give them something different. Just yesterday I found such an adorable skirt made by the ladies at Roots and Wings Co (you have to scroll down a bit on that post - it starts with a Halloween craft). They used Heather Bailey fabrics that are sooo adorable! I'd love to find some of her stuff at 40% off! Anyway, they got the pattern and tutorial from this lovely blog. Shelly Detton of the 7 Layer Studio.

I will be busy making those matching skirts for my girls.

... and finishing the quilt, of course! (quilting it is my favorite part!)

I hope to show you the finished product, soon!

Doll Quilts

About two months ago, I finally bought myself a darning foot for my sewing machine. I didn't know it would be so cheap (under $4)!! I should've bought one years ago! I could've been "free motion" quilting for years. I haven't quilted in years. I guess it's probably because I have been busy with little ones. Well, that's not exactly a good excuse, since there are plenty young moms out there that find time to quilt and sew and craft. They're just the supermom types! But... not this mama!

So, back to the doll quilts. I bought the darning foot to try my hand at stippling a quilt. Yahoo!! It was so much easier than I thought it would be (you should totally try it, if you haven't yet)! It was so much fun. I sat in my kitchen until 1am the first time I tried it, and I was so giddy as I was moving my quilt all around under the needle! My husband must have thought I was so silly as he was listening to me from the other room.

I thought making doll quilts would be a good way to practice my piecing again and for sure on practicing the stippling. My girls would be less critical of my early mistakes, than anyone else would be. So here are my first two doll quilts. I hope to make some more, before I start making baby quilts again, and eventually twin quilts for my kids beds.


Here's the first one I made (don't know why the broken pencil made it's way into the picture):



And a closer look (don't look too close. It was my first time. Go easy on me):



Here's the second one I made:



The back of the second one:


A little more of a close-up, to show a little more of the stippling:


The second quilt I made is adapted from the whirly giggle quilt I saw on Crazy Mom Quilts blog. It would've been all whirly giggles and less white, except the border maybe. But. I wasn't thinking when I cut the fabric. I had my fabric facing back sides together and the whirly's were sewing opposite. It wouldn't have worked out right. Bummer. Oh well. Now I have enough of the other that I can make another quilt! :-)

The first one I made, the stippling was much too small (in my opinion). The second one was a little better. It looks fine for a doll quilt size. These pictures were both taken pre-washed. They looked very scrunchy/crumbly/quilty after being washed. Yum!