Wool Sheep for Mom

I finished a project!  (insert applause here)  I've been working on a lot of projects recently but it seems like it's been quite some time since I actually *completed* one.  So yay for me!

Confession time- I started this wool felt appliqué picture for my mom over a year ago.  It wasn't a hard project, I was just never very motivated to work on it.  Maybe because we didn't really have a good place to hang it?  Maybe because I tend to be a lazy crafter if I'm not struck with inspiration?  Let's go with that first one. Makes me feel a little better about myself...  ;) Anyway, my mom recently rearranged some of our living room and made the perfect spot to hang it.  That gave me the little push I needed to get it done.

Mom and I took the finished shepherdess to the frame shop today.  So it should be completely framed and ready to hang in a couple weeks.  Very exciting!

"E" is for Evangeline

Companion to my mini-quilt M, Keely put together this little E for daughter two who is spunky, expressive, and sweeter than sugar.



Evie also adores elephants, hence the embroidery accent.  Keely freehanded him based on an image we found on Pinterest.  Unfortunately, I can no longer find the inspiration image to give credit, but it was darling.

 

The tiny flower buttons came from Columbia, South America.  We have a dear friend from there (what little Spanish I know is thanks to her!) and she brought us a container full of beautiful little buttons after one of her visits home.  We treasure these little buttons and use them judiciously, but they seemed perfect for this little project.

Daydream Love

No matter how busy I am and despite the fact that there's always something else I should be working on, I can't seem to read a Moda blog hop without participating!  The recent Moda Love Blog Tour was no exception.  I guess seeing a pattern made up so many different ways inspires me to try it for myself.  And since I had some Daydream laying on my shelf with no particular project in mind…

I think I love it.

There were so many beautiful versions of the pattern in the blog hop (Here's the link to the free pattern!), but the way April Rosenthal and Pat Sloan distributed the colors in their quilts really influenced my take on the pattern.  It was surprising how such a simple grouping of squares and half-square triangles could look so very different depending on color placement.  I know I'm not a very spacial person, but still...  They were all gorgeous and oh-so different.

When it comes to half-square triangles, there is nothing quite as wonderful as this Fons & Porter/Omnigrid ruler.  I use this little thing all the time and love it!  Every quilter should have one, preferably two.

I may have pieced this darling when I shouldn't have, but I am going to wait to hand quilt it until after my Happily Ever After pineapple.  Speaking of which, I've worked on several more blocks.  I'm think I'm close to half way done!

Wedding Memento

As we helped clean up after the wedding reception of my best friend, I couldn't help but notice that all the cotton fat quarters that had been used to add color to the centerpieces were being tossed in a box.  So I casually asked about it...



It turns out all that lovely quilters cotton was going home to live in someone's garage because they didn't know what to do with it.  Well, I did!  It's now being turned into a first anniversary quilt/wedding memento!

We had watched The Proposal during the bridal party luncheon and had all ooooh'd and aaaah'd over the Baby Maker quilt.   Although the wedding colors are nothing like the quilt in the movie, I still liked the idea of trying a pineapple quilt.  I made a sample block, but I couldn't picture how the design worked together.  Four blocks later, I have a better idea of what the quilt is going to look like.  And I like it!



Please pardon the fact that it needs ironed.  This little guy decided my project box made an excellent napping spot and I thought he was too adorable to move...



I'm guessing I'll need about twenty-five blocks total to make a full sized quilt.  These blocks are really fun to put together, but they are not quick.  Since I plan to have it hand quilted by their February anniversary, it's now priority one for my craft time!

Spell It With Fabric - M is for Mercedes

I enjoyed reading Moda's blog hop "Spell It With Fabric" so much, that I wanted to do a letter or two myself.  But I didn't want to do a full alphabet quilt, so how could I use the blocks?  The answer: mini quilts for our dear friend's darling daughters!

Daughter one is a thoughtful, pleasant, and fun-loving five year old with a smile that will melt your heart.  Keely rummaged through our scrap bins and pulled out an assortment of fabrics that felt shabby chic, while I modified the M from the blog hop because I felt it just wasn't quite right.  I wanted my M's center to be a bit deeper.

For a little bit of extra charm, I added a little bunting across the top.   It was such a fun way to use lots of different fabrics!  My fray check was old and dried beyond all usefulness, so a dab of Elmer's glue on the edges was all the finishing I did.  It worked really well and dried completely clear.

I used flannel for batting and hand quilted it in an evening.  Such a darling, quick project!

How Much is that Dolly in the Window

I ran across this free doll pattern on Pinterest so I obviously HAD to try it out.  And it ended up being  a super fun little project.  I used the pattern pretty much as is only I embroidered her face and added the pigtails.  I think she turned out rather charming- though as her parent, I may be a bit biased. ;)

I love her stripy little legs.  And her pigtails.

I have no idea what I'll end up doing with her, but for now she sits on my nightstand and smiles at me.  And I think I'm okay with that.

Windy Days Baby Quilt

Some quilts are beautiful because of the design.

Others are beautiful because of the fabric choices.

But sometimes it's the quilting itself that gives the quilt its particular charm and appeal.





I'm pretty sure that it's the orange peel that makes me love this beauty.  Even taking into account the fact that each 4" block contains approximately 500 stitches and took me over an hour to accomplish...  Gee, am I glad I decided to do this on a baby quilt!  :)

This bright and cheerful quilt is finished just in time for baby's birth.  He has a quilt-lovin' mama, so it'll get a lot of loving use.  That makes me happy, happy, happy.















 Quilt Details:

Pattern: Windy Days Quilt from the Moda Bake Shop

Pinwheel, Background, and Backing Fabrics: Miscellaneous scraps from my stash, mostly from JoAnn Fabrics

Border Fabric: Old McDonald by Deborah Edwards, Norcott Studio

Biding Fabric: Aqua Rain Basic from Timeless Treasures

Batting: Warm N' Natural

"Lucky" Holiday Weekend

With a less busy work schedule due to the 4th of July, I turned on Netflix and settled in for a nice, long evening of marathon quilting…  Only to discover that you can't marathon quilt when you quilt by hand.  Eventually you loose all feeling in your fingers tips.  And once you've reached this point, you've passed the point of no return.   Healing those monster callouses takes time… :(

So my holiday quilting plans were foiled and I turned to Plan B: Camille Roskelley's "Lucky" quilt made with Kate Spain's "Sunnyside" collection.



A dear friend pointed out Sunnyside to me one day while we were browsing the local quilt shop, and it didn't really do much for me.  But she LOVED it.  Initially I was going to buy her some precuts as a gift, but then it dawned on me that a busy mommy of three might enjoy the fabric more if it didn't require time she really doesn't have at this stage in life.  So I won't be keeping this, though I'm really pleasantly surprised and pleased at how well I like it.  Now that the fabric is in a quilt, I think it's really fun and cheerful.

My quilt came out a little smaller than the original pattern as I made the huge mistake of washing my precuts.  Oops!  I had been told that you don't have to wash precuts, but from day one of my sewing journey the rule was wash that fabric!  So I did…  Moda fabric is lovely and it didn't shrink much at all, but it did lose it's perfect square shape.  In fact, some of them became quite wonky.  I had to trim down my pieces a bit to make them nice, even squares again.  Lesson learned!






Keely volunteered to hand quilt it, and I just might let her.  After all, I'm in the middle of hand quilting two other quilts right now and I'm impatient to send this beauty off to it's new owner!

Quilting with Peter

I've been spending a lot of time with Peter Rabbit recently.  I think we're buddies now.  :)

My "Souvenir"

This year, while on our beachy girl trip, we discovered a quilt store.  Wait it gets better. Not only a new quilt store to check out, but we also realized a person could indeed ride a bicycle to this shop from our condo.  Awesome, no?  Picture me riding a cute little bicycle with a basket on its front to the quilt store and looking ever so cute in an Audrey Hepburn kind of way...  I even wore a scarf on my head to complete the look!  Okay, so maybe not the scarf but I did ride there on a bike.  And yes, I admit it was a thrilling moment for me.  Not only was riding there awesome,  but this quilt store carried a lot of fabrics that our quilt shops at home do not. So exciting!  All this to say, I came home from our beach trip with these fabrics as my "souvenir". 

I'm thinking about making them into a triangle quilt but haven't officially decided yet.  Any suggestions?

Welcome! and a little project...

Welcome to the first post of our new blog!  Keely and I are so excited to have a little corner of the web in which to share our crafty endeavors.  :)  We dream big, start many things, and occasionally procrastinate on finishing...  But we love it!  Crafting is our artistic outlet.  We don't (usually) stress over our projects; we just try to enjoy the journey from fabric store to finish.

The first project I'm going to share is also my most recently completed.   My local quilt store owner knows I'm obsessed with Camille Roskelley's blog Simplify, so when the new patterns came out for Bonnie & Camille's line April Showers, she handed me one the moment I walked into the store.  I'm not usually a bag girl, but as fate would have it the little plastic bag in which I keep all my quilting supplies had just developed a hole and I'd been finding my things all over the bottom of my tote for days.  So...



My notions have a new and significantly prettier home!  I used fabric from the Happy-Go-Lucky collection and I LOVE it.  Now I'm wondering why I put up with the raggedy plastic bag for so long...  This is so much better!