Dare To Dresden

Dare to Dresden Hop is going on this week and today is my day to post.
It has been a weekend of dresdens for me as I prepared for the hop.

First, I had been itching to make a tiny dresden. This one measures 3 inches from point to point.
I turned it into a spiffy pin cushion. For my dresden template I took a small circle, folded in half over and over till I got eight wedges. Then I cut one of the wedges out as my template. Super easy and fast.

I also fiddled around with a 10 degree ruler and made a dresden with 36 plates.
The ruler I used orginally makes a 25 inch circle, but I cut my wedges from a 2.5 inch strip and got small flower petals so my circle measures 10.25 inches. I plan on turning this into a table topper. The wide center circle is the perfect spot to place a nice spring basket.

 I also worked on adding some more wedges to my pastel Dresden Quilt project that I started in September.
I still need to find 8 more pastel fabrics I like to finish up the circle.

It has been fun playing around with dresden plates the past couple days.  Make sure you check out all the other great posts going on today.  You can see them all here:

January 29^th, 2013

A Peach in Stitches

Nancy W @ “that Other Blog”

L3 Designs

Bungalow Bay Quilts

Quilted Delights

Quilt Crossing

Lixie Makes it

A Quilting Sheep

Charlotte's Creations

Quilt-n-Queen
Domesticity and Other Ponderous Things

Sew Much 2 Luv

A Quilt and a Prayer

Amanda Murphy Design

Little Mushroom Cap
Kathy's Quilts

Sandra Kaye Design

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Covered Notebook

My friend celebrated her birthday last week and I wanted to make her something special.
We are both attending college classes together so I decided to make a cover for her notebook so she can jot down notes in style. He favorite things are tie dye, peace signs, and rainbows.  So when I saw this fabric at the Hobby Lobby, I snatched it up and put it in my cart.

I didn't have a pattern, Instead I measured the notebook and cut the fabric to match with 1/4 inch seam allowance.  Next time I will give myself a little more seam allowance. When I turned everything inside out I lost more than a 1/4 of an inch and the note book fits kinda of tight.

This is my first completed project for 2013.  Last year I kept a running total of my finished quilts only.
Perhaps this year I will make a running list of other projects as well.

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Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

2012 was a great year for quilts around here. I completely finished 18 quilts of various sizes.

I was so close to getting 19 finishes for the year, I only needed to add binding to one more and I would have had it.  Instead I spent the remainder of 2012 playing games with the kids and visiting relatives.  The time was well spent and even though I didn't reach 19 finishes it all works out in the end. I got to visit and create memories and now I am super close to a finish for 2013. Hurrah!  :)

These are all 18 projects. A couple may look like duplicates, but they are slightly different.

Hopefully I can be just as productive for 2013.

I'll keep you posted!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

Beaquilter

Fun Thread Designs 

Stitch, Stitch, Stitch

Made By A Brunnette

Buttons And Butterflies

The Recipe Bunny

Quilted Delights

Sunshine Reflections

Louzeekreativ

Mice In The Mix

Rosemary - That Other Blog

The Fuzzy Hat Quilter

Sew We Quilt

!!!Happy Halloween!!!

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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!  

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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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