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!!

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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

Insanity Defense

Michelle May and the Bunnies

Sparrow In Flight

Quilted Delights

Quilting With a Marmalade Cat

Traveling Quilter

A Stitch in Time

Cherry Blossoms
Tea Time Creations

Moose Stash Quilting

Stitchin By The Lake

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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.

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Dots on Dots Blog Hop

Today is the day I get to reveal my Dots on Dots block!

When I signed up for the blog hop, I only had four different dot fabrics.

I like dots, but I never really knew how to incorporate them into my quilts unless they were scrappy.

So I decided this was the perfect challenge for me.

I had a yard of some lovely red dotted Henry Glass fabric that I had been itching to put into something. 

I just didn't know what that something was. 

When this blog hop was announced, I challenged myself to use my red dot fabric.

After some trial and error, and asking everyone in the family, "do you like it better like this, or like this?" (Any Brian Regan Fans? If you have a few minutes and need a good laugh check him out on youtube) this is the block I came up with.

I am loving the small design board I made from Lori's tutorial. It turned out to be the perfect display for my block. I even bought some blue dot fabric for the edging.

When I first started making my block, one of my original drawings didn't incorporate a center circle on my Dresden plate. None of my acrylic rulers cut a full Dresden petal so I went online to hunt for a template that would allow me to have a full Dresden without a hole in the center. I also wanted it to be small.  I found the perfect template on Shaw K L Designs Blog.  Her template is a full 12 petal Dresden and it finished at 7.5 inches from tip to tip.   

I did end up adding a top circle for my final block but I am still going to keep this template.

I like the look of the full Dresden plate and I already have an idea brewing in my head of something I can do with them.

This is what the block looks like with some buddies. 

Eventually this will turn into a 12 block quilt with four rows of three blocks each and a blue dotted border.

Thanks for visiting!

Make sure you check out the other Dots on Dots blog posts for today:

September 20th

Cherry's Prairie Primitives

Quilts From My Crayon Box  

Sparrow in Flight 

The Slow Quilter

Petit Design Co. 

Geta Grama

Quilted Delights

Di of Snippets 'n' Scraps

Nunu's Quilt World

If you missed any previous days you can see the whole schedule here:

You can also see all the creations on Pintrest

Happy Hopping!

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Faceted Jewels Completed!!

After more hours than I care to count I am finished with the quilting.

I quilted in the ditch around most of the quilt.

The only thing that didn't get ditch stitching was the smaller geese triangles.

Then I did freehand feathers, loops, and swirls.

The first time I ever saw this quilt was on Thelma's Cupcakes N Daisies blog and Instantly fell in love with it.

I have since seen this patterned also called "Eye Fooler" by Quail Valley Quilts.

It is my new favorite quilt.

So it was a little hard for me to put it in a box and mail it off to Asheville, NC.

It will hang in the 30th Annual Asheville Quilt Show September 28-30, 2012.

I'll go visit it on the Saturday though and I will get to take it back home with me on Sunday.

This makes finish #15 for the year.

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Cats and Deadlines

There I was, making good quilting progress on my Faceted Jewels quilt when along came Jasper.

He plopped himself right on top of my quilt and rested his head on the side of the machine.  

What is up with this crazy cat.  Doesn't he know I am on a deadline...

Or perhaps he knew I had been at the machine for a couple hours and that I needed a break.

Yeah, I think that was it.

Cats are smart like that.

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Tish's Crane and Fish Quilt

I finished Tish's quilt the other day and gave it to her during our quilt guild meeting on Thursday. 

She loved it and I do too!!  She wanted this one custom quilted and asked for a few specifications.

She wanted gold thread.
She wanted a crane quilted at the top.
She wanted bubbles quilted at the bottom.

I took it outside to take photos of it like I normally do for my quilts, but I couldn't get the quilting to show up like I wanted.  This is a photo of the crane outside.

At first I was intimidated by Tish's request of a crane.
 She said if I couldn't do it don't worry about it.
 But she had given me a challenge and I wasn't about to give up on it. 

This is the inside photo. The blue fabric color is not  depicted right in this photo, but you can see more of the gold thread.

I'll admit I spent more time staring at this quilt than quilting it.  I was worried about not being able to draw with thread what I saw in my mind.  Finally with the deadline looming I quit worrying and just did it.  I started out with the anticipation of ripping lots of threads, but it turned out great the first time! Probably from all my practice on those small fabric postcards. I have made hundreds of tiny thread painted images, this time I just had to increased the size. So I suppose the old adage is true, "practice makes perfect" - well maybe not perfect, but pretty darn good.  :)

At the bottom I added a fish to go with the bubbles Tish wanted.  

It is hard to see the quilting here, I traced around all the images of the panel in gold thread.
When Tish said she wanted gold thread my first thought was,"Oy Vey!" 

I had worked with gold thread before and it wasn't pretty. I don't even want to repeat what was coming out of my mouth.  This time around though I decided to use a better quality (more expensive) thread hoping it would improve my results.  I bought a 1000 yard spool of Sulky gold metallic. It was priced at $16, but I had a 50% off coupon!  Yay! Love those JoAnns coupons.

I also opted for a Top Stitch needle instead of a metallic or regular 90/14. The better thread combined with the top stitch needle made quilting with gold metallic thread a breeze. I can't wait to have another project that needs gold thread.  It is so beautiful in this project.

Full view inside on the design board.

I never knew my design board could hold up a completed finished quilt all by itself!!
I love my board even more!!

I really love this fish!!

Close up of the tail.

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AYOS - Dimestore

Finished with plenty of hours to spare.
I was actually done before dinner last night. 

Once the sashing was cut to size and the blocks were sewn the rest went together super fast!

It is always fun to see how everyone else interprets the pattern each month.
You can see the parade of Dimestore quilts on Sinta's and Sherri's blogs.

Of course Sheen had to test out the top.
It is Cat approved.

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Start of Dimestore

I will definitely be coming in just under the wire for this month's Schnibble project.  With summer vacations and school starting, for the kids and me, there hasn't been much time for sewing this month. I did take time to cut my fabric for my Dimestore Schnibble yesterday and today I spent most of the morning sewing blocks together. 

I am adding an extra row to make my top a rectangle.

 I wanted to use this red and blue flower print for the background, but I didn't have a charm pack that matched for the sashing.  So instead of going to my scrap bin and pulling out a bunch of different fabrics to match, I decided to take the easy route and make all the sashing the same.  I have sewn them into strips and will cut them to the right size.  So this ended up being a color cordinated quilt instead of a scrappy one.  I hope it turns out good.  I don't have any distractions later on this evening, so tonight I will be at the sewing machine finishing this top. It will be ready just in time for the parade tomorrow.

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Faceted Jewels Basted

 Last night, with the help of Sheen yet again, I basted my Faceted Jewels Quilt.

I drew out my quilting design last night too.
But I will have to wait till this weekend to start the quilting.
First I need to work on a quilt for Tish and finish up my top for AYOS.

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