Heat Wave

It sure has been a hot summer. Makes us want to stay in all the time. I am fine with that because that is where my sewing machine is. :) Fabricards had a postcard swap with the theme of "Heat" in honor of the heat waves some of the members were having. As soon as I saw that swap I immediately thought of an egg frying on a sidewalk. So I signed up and made this post card. The bottom of the card looked empty so I added the text "Heat Wave" in yellow. The letters turned out OK, but I do believe I need to work on my freehand letters a little more.

Squaring Up 388 Times

I spent some time over the past week squaring up 388 1 1/2 inch half square triangles. They are scraps left over from a quilt top I made years ago. They have been in the sewing closet for over six years and I figured it was about time I turned them into something. So I got out an old flannel board and started laying them out and soon realized they were all different sizes, and not a one of them was square. I knew if I didn't square them up, the design I wanted to make would turn out horribly wrong. So I resigned myself to trimming them all to a 1 1/2 inch square no matter how long it took. I loaded Xena Warrior Princess Season 2 on the computer (which is right next to my cutting area) and got to work. By the end of Season 2 and partway into Season three, I finally finished. :)

Above is the leftovers next to all my half square triangles. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all these new leftovers. To the garbage I suppose... but, how small is too small for the scrap bin? Wouldn't they look nice in a clear Christmas bulb Ornament. Maybe I'll save them after all. Hopefully not another 6 years though.

Scrappy Lil' Doll Quilt

I decided to play along with Tracy's Scrappy Lil' Doll Quilt Challenge. The rules were easy enough:

~Quilt measures no more than 20" on any side.
~Must be a newly made quilt-not one you previously made.
~Must be made entirely from your scrapbag.

It may not be "scrappy" looking, but I did use my scraps to make it. I finished the binding on this little blue and white quilt yesterday. The pinwheels were made from the leftover blue and white scraps I had after making sashing for another quilt. It measures 11 x 13.

Foundation Piecing PC Swap

Here is another postcard I made for Fabricards. This one was for the Foundation Paper Piecing Swap. The original pattern was a square but I took the advice Janet gave me awhile ago and stretched it to fit a 4 x 6 postcard and I must say it turned out great! :)

It is fun using up my tiny scraps for projects like this. Makes me feel good that I didn't throw them away. Not that I would throw them out to begin with. It is always hard for me to throw fabric away, no matter how small it is.

Hand Embroidered Post Card

I really like hand embroidery, but I have to admit I am a real beginner. I bought a couple books a few months ago to help me learn some new stitches and I found myself spending more time pouring over those books instead of making the actual stitches. So for my 1 to 1 post card swap I decided to practice some of those stitches again instead of just looking at them. I pulled out one of my frog post card tops (I think I have about 20 left to finish) and got to work. I have to say these are some of my favorite postcards to make. I hope the recipient feels the same way. :)

Drawstring Bag

My daughter was invited to a birthday slumber party tonight. I didn't really want to go out to the store and just buy a quick gift. I always have hard time picking out a gift at the store when I don't really know what the person wants. That is probably why I like to create most of the gifts I give away. Most of the people I know always enjoy quilts and bags. :) This gift was no exception. But this time my daughter wanted to help in the creation. We decided to make her friend a drawstring bag with her name on it.

Here is my daughter posing with the present for her friend.


I got my pattern from the drawstring bag pattern that was recently posted at Moda Bake Shop. I had my daughter pick out the 5 inch squares from my scrap bin and had her put them in the order she wanted. Then I sewed them together. I had her do the ironing though.


When we were done making it, she kept telling me the strings were too long. I kept saying, "Are you sure?" So she posed for me so I could see how long the drawstrings really were. After seeing the picture to the left, I trimmed the drawstrings right up to the edge of the bag which made a big difference. That is my puppy Dean in the background in the above photo. He is 8 months old now.

I did end up changing the pattern from the website a bit. Since I wanted to embroider a name on it, I made the second to last row a solid color, and I also added a lining. I wasn't sure how much this bag was going to be used, but if it did get a lot wear, I wanted it to be sturdier and I felt the lining would help protect the seams on all the charm squares.

70 Nine Patches

Today I finished my last nine patch for the One A Day quilt along that AmandaJean posted on her blog. She started it at the end of April and July 5th would have been the last day to finish, that is if you sewed one nine patch a day.

Well, I read her post on the first day that this quilt along was announced, and even admired the quilt that sparked the inspiration for this particular quilt along, but I didn't even think about playing along. As the days and weeks past, I kept seeing other bloggers and AmandaJean post their progress on their blocks and I kept staring at the finished quilt. And the more and more I stared at it, I decided I wanted one of my own. So on day 42 of the quilt along I decided to join in on the fun. It wasn't really a block a day for me though. Some days I did 10 blocks a day, some days I did 5, and some days I didn't get to make any. But today I made one block and it was the last block I needed to finish all 70 blocks. Now I just need to cut the sashing, sew the top together, baste it, and then quilt it. That is the easy part... yeah right... ;) but since I am so excited to finish this quilt, I am hoping the rest of the project will go quick. I sure do hope all my scrappy blocks play well together.

Rag Quilt Finished

Here is the finished product. This quilt went together pretty quick. Most likely because I was excited to sew it. I love working with pretty soft fabrics and this one had lots of soft snuggly pink and yellow flannels. The yellow is only on the back, but because of the way the quilt is constructed, you get a hint of the yellow on the front inside the ragged seams.
This quilt is all little girl. I love it!

Back of the Quilt

Washing and drying it really made quick work on fraying the edges. The photo below was taken before the quilt had its trip to the washing machine and dryer. You can definitely see a big difference in the "softness" of the seams before and after.

New Rag Quilt in Progress

I told my son he could play on my computer today, and since my computer and my sewing machine are right next to each other, I use the same chair for both the sewing machine and the computer.

Needless to say, I couldn't sew since the chair was occupied. So I decided to cut out all the fabric for the rag quilt I have been asked to make. It is for a baby girl that is due in August.

These strips and squares are enough to finish the front and the back of the quilt. Now I just need to get sewing. :)

Months of the Year RedWork

I found these machine embroidery designs years ago on the internet when I was searching for "free machine embroidery designs". Each one symbolizes a month of the year. The set I have stitched out is the little girls, but there is also a little boys set.

In the past I have stitched out the January and February designs and used them for postcards. 

 But for the ones I have pictured at the top, I plan on using them as the centers of a double Irish Chain. I already have them set in the center blocks. I just need to make the 5 patch blocks to go with them. I totally forgot about this UFO so I better add it to my list, which brings the total to 11 unfinished quilt projects. I better get crackin'.

Unfortunately I can't remember the site where I downloaded the designs from, but I do remember they are no longer free to download. A couple months after I initially downloaded them, I went back to the same site and they were then listed as "for sale". I figure I got lucky on these. Unfortunately today, I can't find the web site again where these came from. :( Hopefully they are still out there and I am just not typing the right words in the search engines. So, if anyone knows who the designer of these are please let me know. I would love to be able to link to his/her site.

*UPDATE* - Vicky has found the designer, YAY! Heather's Home Designs. And she sells her designs here: OregonPatchWorks. Thanks Vicky!!

Pinwheels

Today I finally worked on one of my UFOs. I pulled this quilt top out a couple months ago, but that was about all I did with it. Today I started laying the blocks out on the floor to get a view of what order I wanted them, but my puppy decided that he wanted to play with my blocks and just wouldn't let me lay the blocks out at all. So I had to come up with a new way to display them. I remembered reading online about design walls being made out of tablecloths with flannel backs, so I grabbed the only table cloth I owned that had a flannel back and draped it in front of my fireplace. It wasn't quite big enough to fit the whole quilt (the top row didn't fit) but it still was very helpful in getting this top laid out and ready to sew together. It also made me realize that I was 6 blocks short for the outer border, so I worked on those today and added the yellow inner border. Hopefully tomorrow there will be time to finish sewing the rest of the outer border blocks together and complete the top.

Button Flower QTC

These little cards were made for the QTC Button Flower swap I joined. We had to use buttons as part of the flower in some way. First I quilted the red background with some black thread. Then I added the silk flower base and then the buttons. But I felt they needed something else, so I added some colorful beads to spring out behind the buttons.




As I was making the ones with yellow centers I thought to add some yellow french knots on the background to give it a little something extra for my eye to look at and some texture.

Crazy Stiched QTC

These four ATCs or QTC's (quilters trading cards) were made for the Fabricards QTC: #6 swap. We had to come up with any thing that embodies the number six. I had a good phrase in my mind when I signed up for this swap but a couple weeks later I totally forgot what I was going to use....Then I spent weeks trying to remember what it was till I finally decided to just make something different. So here they are. I used 6 Fabrics. Then I embellished them with some hand embroidery and other goodies. I like the look of them. The purple fabrics are leftover scraps from the costume I made for the community play that I participated in not too long ago. I still have lots of the dark purple fabric left so you may see it again in future projects.

Cat postcards

These are two of my long overdue cat postcards. They are now on in the mail traveling to their recipients. When I was making the faces, I put a smile on the first one, but then I didn't like it as much. So I left it off the next one. Later when I came back to look at them again, I realized I did like the smile after all. Go figure...

I am really enjoying paper piecing in such a small format. I just wish I could find more patters that fit the 4 x 6 size. Most of the ones I find are square. Which means I have to come up with something extra to fill the top and bottom of a postcard. This cat one was the first one I have found in rectangle from. Hmm, maybe I can work on making my own PP patterns... that is something to think about.

Spring Daffodil

Spring is here and it sure feels wonderful. The leaves are budding on the trees and the azaleas are blooming all over the place.

The March flower mingle for Fabricards was Daffodil, what a perfect postcard for the season. This is my version. I paper pieced this little flower and then added some beads and some yellow stitches to fancy it up a bit. The blue has very small stipple quilting all around it, but the thread I used blends in very well so it is hard to see in the photo. This will go out in tomorrow's post.