Tam's Pumpkin Patch Lap Quilt

This is my newest finish.  The block I used came from The Quilter's Cache.  It is called Tam's Patch.  This quilt has been sitting for awhile just waiting for me to finish the binding.  I didn't want another Halloween to pass without it being ready to use so I sat down last night and sewed down the three remaining edges.



















For the quilting, I put the feed dogs down on my machine and just went to town.  I did some fancy swirls in the light colored blocks and did some close stippling in the black fabric.  The border also has some loopy swirls going up and down.











My Jack-O-Lantern fabric wasn't quite wide enough to fit the whole backing, so I added some black starry strips on each side to make the backing big enough.












I really love this quilt, but have decided to post it in my Etsy Shop in hopes that it can raise some money to help fund my quilting and fabric postcard addiction.  ;)   Fall is coming and those are my favorite types of postcards to make and recieve.   So you will most likely be seeing lots of fall postcards popping up on the blog soon.

Another Girly Rag Quilt

Another finished quilt.  I finished clipping all the seams last night but I didn't get it washed and frayed till this morning and since this is a rag quilt you can't really declare it finished until it has the ragged look.  This one is for another little baby that is due in the next couple weeks.  These quilts sure are soft and snugly. It makes me want to have a big one for myself.  :)

Crazy Cat

Have you ever known a cat to pass up a pile of quilts to sleep on? I thought for sure as soon as I placed this pile of unfinished quilts on my bookcase it would become the new cat bed. But I guess they weren't quite soft enough for my cat, Jasper. Here he is sleeping on top of a row of hard books instead. Crazy Cat.

Sweet Slice

This is my version of the Sweet Slice pincushion pattern. My son said he wasn't tempted to eat it, since it is a chocolate cake. So I suppose that leaves more for me right? :)

The pattern called for crushed walnut shells for the stuffing, but I don't have any stores near me that carry that, so I had to stuff it with polyfil. I really would like to try that crushed walnut. I think it might sit better on the table and not be so wobbly. I will have to wait for my next trip to the "big city" and hopefully I can find it there. For now, polyfil will have to do.

Design Wall Monday

Quite a few blogs I read post what is on their design wall on Monday's. So I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and show what is on mine. This quilt is what I made out of the 388 half-square triangles I squared up in July. I still have quite a few of the blue and yellow ones, but I plan to use those as part of the back of this quilt.

My design wall in this photo is really just a big flannel board. But it works for this small quilt. It currently measures 18x22 inches. I am debating what kind of border or borders to add to it. Should I add small ones and keep it a doll sized quilt? Or make them a bit bigger to make it a quilt big enough for a new baby? Decisions, Decisions... But first I need to make some cake, some fabric cake that is. I'll keep you posted.

Another Bow Tucks - But Smaller

My daughter was invited to another Birthday party. This one is an overnight party down at the beach. She is very excited to go. But we didn't have a present, and when I kept asking her what she wanted to get her friend she said she didn't know. I suggested last night that she make her friend a necklace with her beading materials. She didn't seem excited about that. She did like my Bow Tucks bag though and kept telling me she wanted one like it but smaller, so this morning when we still didn't have a present, I asked her if she wanted me to make her friend one. She smiled and said yes but wanted to know if I could put her friend's initial on it. I told her that would be easy and I got to work. I also told her to start making her friend a necklace in case I didn't get the bag done in time.


I started at 9am this morning and spent the first 30 minutes trying to figure out how to make my regular pattern into a smaller size version. There is a mini bow tucks pattern, but I didn't have time to order that and wait a week for it to arrive, so I had to come up with the dimensions on my own.




By 1:20pm I had the bag finished, photographed, and wrapped. Her friend came to pick her up at 2pm so I had finished just in time to relax a bit before they got here.

For this version, I tried a contrasting pocket for the front. I'm not sure I like it. It is the same color as the center of the flowers on the top fabric, but it just seems to stick out way more than I wanted it to. I am also not liking the green. It is the same color as the tiny leaves, but it seems too bright now that it is all together.

My daughter says it is great though and she loves it. I sure hope her friend likes it too. I had my daughter model the bag for my camera. Her and her friend both have the same first name. So this bag could actually be for her too. :)

Bow Tucks Bag

This is my newest creation. I saw this bag last October at my guilds "Make it, Bake it, Sew it, Grow it Auction". It was a fun activity where we all bring something we have either made, sewn, grown, or baked and we have our own little auction to raise money for our guild. Up for auction was this purse, but in different fabrics. I bid, but unfortunately I didn't win. It went for more than my budget would allow at the time. But I asked the person who donated it what pattern it was and she told me it was the Bow Tucks Tote pattern. Well I got a hold of the pattern in February and finally just had the chance to make it. The fabrics I chose are some of my favorites in my whole stash. I have been looking at them for months not wanting to cut into them because they are so pretty, but now that I cut into them I realize I can carry my favorite fabrics around with me where ever I go. :) I really like this bag and it was the first time I used fusible fleece for a bag, and I must say I love it! If possible I plan to use fusible fleece in all my future bags.

I still need a button for this bag though. I don't have one in my button collection that fits the bag. You can see in the photo the button loop but no button to hook onto. So I am on a hunt for the perfect button....

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Here is a photo of the inside of the bag per request. For the sturdy part at the bottom, I cut up my old cutting mat and covered it with matching fabric. I hated to throw out the old mat when I bought a new replacement for it, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. It turns out cutting it into bottoms for bags is the perfect way to salvage it.

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.

Some ATCs

These top ATCs was made for the QTC: Number series. These are four swaps #3 and #4. We had to make a card that depicts three or four of something. I actually made the #4 one first. I made mini four patches. and with the left over scraps from the four patches, I cut them into Triangles for my three card- "Triangles have Three sides."

This card on the right was made for the Fabricards QTC: Patchwork swap. I used some leftover pinwheels I had sitting in my scrap bin. and the Candy ATC was made for the Art 4 Mail Red and White swap.

Showcasing Stitches

Some of these new sewing machines have some really fancy stitches, so I created a swap in Fabricards just for that. I also opened it up for some hand work too if some were interested in that, but I chose to do machine stitching for mine.

My pink center fabric has free motion quilting all over it and the green edges showcase three of the fancy stitches that come on my machine. I really like the way this one turned out. The colored thread I used for the machine stitches show up nice on the on the green background.

January Flower Mingle

In Fabricards we are doing a monthly Mingle swap that showcases the Birth flowers of the year. This is the card I made for the January flower, Carnation. I choose to print out this lovely yellow one on white muslin, then added some fancy stitches from my machine around it and some free motion quilting on the edges. I also made a couple more of these to mail out to my current Art2Mail group.

Hearts, Hearts, and more Hearts

These are a couple of cards I made for valentines day. The first one was for two swaps one just called Hearts an the other Patchwork Heart. I like to combine ideas when I can, since that is the hardest part for me, coming up with the idea. Most of my time spent making these cards is spent trying to come up with the ideas for them. Once the idea comes though the cards get made very quickly.

This next Heart I made for a swap with the theme of Weaving. The only thing that kept coming to mind for this swap was those woven heart baskets that are around during valentines day, so I made a flat one to mail out to my partners.


This last card is an ATC. I printed this image on some white muslin, I figured it was perfect for this swap. There are all types of hearts hiding in this image. I counted at least seven.