Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Christmas Crafting

Wow, it has been a busy month.  I didn't get everything on my schedule finished, but I got what was needed finished. First I basted my Starry Night Christmas Quilt, which is on the schedule to quilt during the rest of Christmas Break.

I also basted the last shirt quilt (which I didn't get a picture of) and my Slide Show quilt.



Next on the list was cutting out the fabrics for a new Christmas Quilt.  I asked my brother if I could have some of his beach photos to hang on my wall, (He takes great Ocean wave and beach shots and sells them on his Surf Report Website, Nimbuss Grand Strand Surfing, under the Seascape Photography link.)  He said he would gladly trade me some of his ocean shots for a Christmas quilt, so I picked out 20 red fabrics, and 20 green fabrics and got cutting.
I actually cut out enough to make a couple different Christmas quilts, but for now I focused on making my brother's quilt. 

 I started turning the squares in to Half Square Triangles and was on a roll laying them out and sewing blocks together when my daughter came down with an illness.  We took her to the hospital a day later when we ruled out a stomach virus, but it was too late, her appendix had burst and she and I had an all exclusive 6 day stay in the hospital.


There wasn't much to do for six days in the hospital other than watch TV and play with our tablets and that got boring after awhile, so I brought my knitting needles along and finished up some Christmas presents.  I knitted 10 dishcloths while waiting things out in the hospital.   I had a few already made from the past couple months, and made a few more the last couple weeks before Christmas for a total of 35.  
(The photo below only has 31.  I mailed four before I thought to stack them all and take a photo.)



I made a total of 9 sets that I gave away for Christmas.


And as always, my pets are always close by when I am crafting.


I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.

=^..^=



Thursday, December 6, 2012

2 More Finishes


Shirt Quilt #5 of 7.



I finished adding the binding yesterday.
This finish #17 for the year.






Shirt Quilt #6 of 7.


It is similar to shirt quilt #3, but it has different quilting.

 This is finish #18 for the year.



2 more done, only one 1 go,
I'm on the home stretch!

=^..^=





Tuesday, December 4, 2012

4th Shirt Quilt Finished

This is the 4th completed quilt of the 7 Shirt quilts I have been working on.

I finished the quilting last night and put the binding on this afternoon.


This quilt is similar to finished Shirt Quilt #2
The main difference is the rotation of the 9 patches, and the quilting.


This makes finish #16 for the year.

I have two more shirt quilts almost finished.
They have been quilted for awhile now, they just need binding put on.
I'll get that on tomorrow and then I will have two more finishes for the year.
Then I will only have one shirt quilt left to finish.
I can feel these being done in plenty of time for Christmas.

=^..^=



Friday, November 30, 2012

Leaf Blocks


The leaf part of my blocks are all finished. I am excited to add the corner stripes, but that will have to wait till next month.  The sewing machine is booked up the month of December with Christmas projects.
First on the list is finishing up Aunt Darla's shirt quilts. They have been in my care long enough and  it is time to push and get them finished in time for her to give them away at Christmas.


=^..^=

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Back to the Leaves

I haven't been sewing much lately because I have been spending most of my evenings painting the upstairs rooms. We have slowly been working on turning our attic into two rooms since we moved into this house and are on the home stretch so I have been excited to work up there, which means my sewing time has been almost non existent  The few minutes I could squeeze in this week I worked on my leaf quilt.

I have most of the blocks sections sewn together.  Next I need to finish the paper piecing sections and make 19 more stems. Then I can sew the blocks together.  

I have been flip flopping between this project and my orange wedges.  Mainly because I am not sure how to finished the wedges. So instead of thinking too hard on that project, I went with easy sewing this week.


=^..^=

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Playing With Triangles


I got all my triangle wedges cut out and laid them all on my design board.
I started out with this...



Then added a few more triangles. 


But I felt like it needed a little something else so I added corners.
Now I just need to figure out fabrics to put in between all these triangles.
All black or more orange? I'll have to fiddle with it.


=^..^=

Friday, November 9, 2012

More Orange Strips

There hasn't been much sewing going on lately other than the three blog hops I participated in and Halloween costumes, but this week I was able to sneak in some 15 minute intervals of sewing time and got some progress on a couple projects.
 
First I cut and sewed together some more orange strips.

When I originally made my mini quilt for the Wicked Blog hop I had 10 wedges left over.
I played around with the leftovers and added some black sashing.
Then I decided a lot more wedges would make great throw size Halloween quilt that I can use next year.
So I made 6 more oranges strips.  They are all pressed and ready to be cut into wedges.
 
From each strip I can cut enough wedges to make 2 spider blocks.



After I sewed and pressed my orange strips together I got back to cutting out my fabrics for my leaf block.
I cut most of the pieces to make 19 more leaf blocks

 
 While I was cutting and trimming I noticed that my Kaleido-Ruler is the same size as the corner strips on my leaf block.  When I made the first block I paper pieced these corners, but I am thinking about sewing strips and then cutting wedges for this block as well.  If I do that though, I will have opposite wedges that don't go in the block so I will have to come up with something to do with the extra wedges.


=^..^=



Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween!!


I hope everyone is ready for some spooky fun tonight.

Today is my day for the Wicked Blog Hop. 
I made a spider web quilt block and turned it into a mini quilt.

Which I plan to use as a mini table topper...


Or even a Jack-O-Lantern backdrop.



I had planned on photographing my whole process,
but the camera was quickly forgotten as I got engrossed in the project.
I did get remember to few shots that I can share.
I started out by sewing eight 1 inch strips together.
Then I used my Kaleidoscope ruler to cut out eight wedges.

I sewed the wedges together and added the black border.
Then I couched on some thick black thread on the seam lines.
The couched thread was originally the last step on my drawing,
but as I stared at it, I felt like it was missing something,
So I added some ghosts. 

Then I quilted it up and took it out into the night for its spooky photo shoot.

Make sure you check out all the other Wicked posts for the day

Wicked Wednesday,
October 31st




!!!Happy Halloween!!!



=^..^=




Monday, October 29, 2012

Bev's Scrappy Quilt


With Halloween costumes completed, I was able to get back to quilting and quilted up Bev's quilt.
She used all her scraps from leftover projects to make this beauty.  
To make the top she said she kept sewing one scrap piece to another and when they got big enough she trimmed them up into workable blocks.  
I think it turned out great!  



=^..^=

Monday, October 22, 2012

Halloween Costumes

Wow! What a busy month I have had.  I didn't realize I hadn't sat down at my sewing machine since my last post on October 5th.  I have been busy getting the house ready for guests, doing my schoolwork (I started back to college), playing at the State Fair, and trying to come up with ideas for Halloween costumes. I ended up making two out of the four this year, but very little was done with the sewing machine.

First I made this viking costume for my youngest.  It was made mostly with my crochet hook.  Something I haven't picked up in quite a long time.  I made the beard first - It is a free download from Ravelry. Then I made the hat to go with it.


My son specifically requested I helmet with a broken horn. Luckily I found a perfect one on Ravelry as well.
The pattern had a few errors in it, but if you are good at deciphering those out it is a nice helmet to make.
Finally I draped him in fake fur and he was ready to go.

Every Halloween my husband's work puts on a Halloween party for the kids. It is usually a week before Halloween. This year they did it a little early and I had to have all the costumes done by the 19th.  My second youngest was still undecided as to what he wanted to be the Monday before the event.  Finally I convinced him to be something that I could make really quick:  A Catcus

I found him some green sweat pants and shirt. I really wanted a hoodie, but wasn't able to find one, so I bought an extra shirt, cut it up, and made him a hat to match


Then I sewed on over 200 white pipe cleaners.
I folded them in half and zig zagged them onto the sweat shirt.
Then I added two yellow cactus flowers to finish it up.


I bought my daughter her flapper outfit, and her friend came over to join us for the party.


We always have the kids pose in front of the door before we head into the party.

It was a great night. The kids had a good time playing games and eating party food.
And to top the night off, the viking was one of the costume contest winners!
He got himself a $10 giftcard to Wal-Mart.
Yee Haw!!


=^..^=



Friday, October 5, 2012

Leafs Me Happy Blog Hop

Today is my day for the Leafs me Happy Blog hop.
I am really into batik fabrics right now and I knew they would make the perfect leaf block.

I shall name this one "Leaf's Sun"
Heh, I'm no good at catchy pun titles and the only thing coming to mind right now is Leaf Ericsson.
Doesn't have anything to do with leaves, but it sounds good.

I incorporated two different pattern designs for this block:
The corners of Bonnie Hunter's Spider blocks and a pieced maple leaf block I found here.  
The leaf pattern was for a 15.5 inch block, so I had to re-size it to fit in a 8.5 inch square.


I didn't have time to make a whole set of blocks, but I played around with one block in my computer and came up with what could be a finished project in my near future.  I was also anxious to see how the spider sections would come together. 




Be sure to check out all the other great leaf blocks today.
You can see them all by following the links below.

Friday 5




=^..^=


Sunday, September 23, 2012

FNSI-September



For the September Friday Night Sew In, I didn't really do much sewing.  Instead I spent the evening doing dome prep work for my dotty Dresden quilt.


 I turned this pile of fabric into a pile of neatly pressed Dresden plate petals.
 I also cut out all the brown circles I will need to finish my quilt.



While I was at it I also decided to press a different set of Dresden plate petals.  I was originally going to use these pastels for my Dots on Dots blog hop block, but I didn't have enough dot fabrics to finish the Dresden plate.  This particular Dresden pate will need 20 petals, and I when I started it, I only had enough dot fabric for 5 petals. I thought about duplicating fabrics, but I really wanted 20 different ones for this project.
 I have since collected a few more pastel dot fabrics, but I am still on the hunt for three three more to finish it up. 


Even though there was no humming of the sewing machine on Friday, I was still very productive.
Now that these petals are prepped and pressed, I can zip them through the machine in no time.


=^..^=