Little projects

I seriously feel like there must be a trail of smoke following me because I've been on fire lately!  I have been blitzing out projects like crazy, and I thought that I could share at least two of those fun project with you.

 

 

 

This is a cute little quilted pillow that I'm bringing as my gift to exchange to my women's small group Christmas party.  I had never made a pillowcase before, so I wanted to give myself plenty of time to mess up, but it went together without a hitch!

The pretty little colored bits of fabric are from some samples given to me by Kay Fant of Kay Fant Designs here in Destin.  She was so sweet to think of me when she was cleaning out her old fabric swatches!

 

 I have to admit that I think it looks just smashing in our living room... maybe there will be more cute little pillows in my future.  

The next little fun project is screen printed!!!

 I am so excited that this worked!!!  This blue bunny was my first attempt at screen printing; I did this practice bunny on a ratty old t-shirt.  Paul was watching me with a disbelieving look on his face when I was getting everything prepped, so he had to stay and watch me actually print it.  We were both pretty amazed.

 

 Here is the t-shirt that I will actually be wearing!  I just LOVE it!!!

  So I bet you've guessed that I will be posting tons of screen printing projects as well as quilting projects in the future, so LOOK OUT!

Ps. once I've made the screen it is very simple to make another t-shirt.  If you are interested in buying a cheer up bunny t-shirt I would be happy to make one for you for $10. 

Rectangle Squared Quilt continued

 

I LOVE how this quilt turned out!!  This is a quilt that I made for me, and that's a pretty great feeling.  I really whipped this one out quickly!

 

For the backing I used a mellow Kona gray pieced together with white and some pretty scraps from the front.  I used the stripey fabric for the binding, and it is just so much fun!  I think I'm going to use stripes for binding more often because it's so jaunty!

So here's a close up of the quilting I did.  It's just a basic free motion meandering design, and I like the way it turned out.

  If I ever do this type of stippling again I will have to try and keep the stiches a bit farther apart, and that will make the quilt even more comfy.  Although, it's pretty comfy already!

 

Again, if you want to know how to make this quilt check out the tutorial at Film in the Fridge.

Rectangle Squared Quilt

This is the quilt top I just finished!! Now I'm off to baste it and quilt it. This is the biggest quilt that I have so far attempted to free motion quilt, so hopefully it goes really well. I don't know yet what kind of design I want to do, so if you have any suggestions leave a comment .

If you feel like making this quilt yourself there is a tutorial here. Happy Saturday, and I hope that the rest of your weekend is splendid!

Sweet lavender baby quilt

This baby quilt was pretty fun to make, and I finished it just last week. I started out thinking I was going to make a double hourglass quilt, but you know what they say about making plans...



I used various lavender and pale green prints with a charcoal gray Kona cotton solid. Once I had cut all my fabric and layed it out on the floor I wasn't loving the charcoal as the solid color. It looked too drastic. So I changed my pieces all around, and I really liked the result.



The quilting is another free-motion design using a petal-y flower design.



For the Backing I used the charcoal gray with a lot of the extra scraps to make this funky design; I'm not totally sure I like it.



I am eventually going to make that double hourglass quilt using the pale green and the lavender material, but I am going to use a pretty solid white instead of the charcoal. I think it will make the quilt even more girly.

If you are interested in making your own double hourglass quilt Cluck, Cluck, Sew has a great tutorial here, and even if you don't want to, her blog is full of AMAZING quilts! It's totally worth checking out!

Wonky quilt

This quilt is a really fun one made up of wonky stars, flying geese, and cute little houses! It started out as random wonky pieces that I was thinking about using to make a bed sized quilt, but I lost interest. Instead I used the pieces I had completed, and worked out a way to make a crib sized quilt.

A few of the blocks are based on the classic log cabin quilt square, done with a wonk!



The backing is a really fun fabric that I picked up at Joann's a while ago, and I just love it!


The quilting design again comes from Patsythomasdesigns.com, and I think it's called peacock. I'm really glad I chose to use gold thread because I think it looks nice with the quilt top and the backing. Although you can't really see it in the pictures.


I don't have any plans about what to do with this quilt. I was thinking about selling it, but I decided to hang on to it for the time being.

150 foot tall giraffe!!

This is a baby quilt that I finished a month or two ago for some dear friends of ours who just had their first child, and this quilt was especially for him.

It's a pretty simple square quilt design with his name appliqued to to the front, fussy cut animals in some of the squares, and a soft flannel for the backing.


The star animal has to be this 150 foot tall giraffe!


I particularly liked this picture of the bright orange binding.

I've been working pretty hard trying to get my machine quilting skills developed, and I think it turned out pretty great on this quilt. I got the quilting design from Patsythomasdesigns.com. That site is great if you need some creative ideas for the actual quilting!


I hope baby G grows up to love the quilt as much as I love him already!!

I'm still not good at blogging

So I have finished three baby quilts and a cute tiny wall quilt since I last posted!! Why are there no pictures here you ask?? Well the answer is... I just haven't got around to it. I'll try to post them soon!

Yards and Shelves

These past few weeks have been so much fun! Paul, and I worked on a bunch of projects that we have been wanting to start for months. It feels like we got something important accomplished!

Our poor little yard is mostly sand and weeds, and we have been pretty overwhelmed with the idea of fixing it up. We started last week by clearing out part of the yard of all the weeds, then we got some seeding soil and grass seed and layed it all down. The best part is that the grass is actually starting to grow!!

The next project we tackled was building shelves in our kitchen. I REALLY wanted these shelves!! I really needed more storage for dishes, and cooking supplies. Every time I got a plate out of the too small cupboard I had to tip it diagonally!! I had the perfect spot for them too. There was a random bit of counter with lovely wall space just above it that wasn't being utilized at all! We have had all the supplies sitting around the house for months, but we hesitated starting because it seemed like a project that was a bit beyond our ability level.

We went to Home Depot and bought a powered circular saw to cut the boards, used a stud finder and my quilting ruler to hang the supports.

Then I painted them white in the garage. It took four coats to make it nice and even, but all the time was definitely worth it in the end. I love how much room I have for my small appliances now. The space in the cupboards is now much more organized too!! Wahoo shelves!

I'll post some pictures of a baby quilt I'm working on tomorrow. I hope that everyone else also had productive weeks too!

I always splurge on mermaids

So when Heather Ross first released her Mendocino fabric I fell in love right away. I had no idea at the time that I would grow to love quilting as much as I have, and spending eight plus dollars a yard seemed like an unforgivable extravagance...
Well, it turns out that I still love those enchanting little mermaids!

I found a shop on Etsy that still had some fat quarter bundles of this fabric, and I caved. On Wednesday I got five cuts of my very own!! Now I have been deliberating how to make the most of this little treasure trove.

I know it's going to a baby girl quilt (and I'm going to keep it), and I know that it's going to be beautiful, but so far that's it... so we'll see.

The story of me and Little Foot

I feel like today might be a day where I can write everything that has happened down, if not for some reader’s benefit then for my own. When I was younger I always imagined myself as a mother. I practiced carrying my dolls, and sweeping the kitchen alongside my mom. When school years came and I realized that most kids my age wanted to be astronauts or firefighters I tried to pick an occupation that I could share with my teachers and friends without feeling silly, as if a mother isn’t a noble profession. I decided that the job that I could aspire to that was second best to actually being a mother myself, was to help women become mothers. I wanted to be a “doctor who delivered babies”.

Later on I realized that becoming a midwife was probably a closer fit to what I actually wanted to do, although if I weren’t so afraid of what people thought I would have just stuck to my original dream, being a mom.

Since I’ve married Paul I have realized how blessed I am. I found a man who not only understands my desire to have children and have that be my job, he desires that for me … and for our kids. I have had to continually battle other people’s expectations of me, but have tried to learn how to rest in the assurance of God’s love for me, and His plan.

Anyway, whenever I looked toward the future as a little girl I always expected to find Prince Charming right away and then start having babies, right away. Well I found Paul (who is the perfect man for me in every way) easy enough, so where are the babies?

We had been married almost three years when we decided that the time was right to start trying to conceive. We weren’t going to track my fertility or anything like that; we were just going to wait until it happened on its own in God’s perfect timing. I was still a bit crazy though. With the possibility of a child in my grasp I lost sight of “the waiting for God’s perfect timing”, and I did everything in my power to conceive a baby. We got pregnant the first month.

While I’m writing this I wonder if God was annoyed with me for trying to control things, and by not waiting on his timing I brought on some punishment, but I realize that that is a short sighted view of my creator, and I need to get my brains back in His word so I can know him more. Geesh!

My first forray into the blogging world

I have been reading so many great quilting blogs lately, and getting TONS of great ideas for quilts that I would like to try. I thought that maybe I could post things that I'm working on too. Who knows maybe someday someone will get inspired by something I make.



I thought that I could show you what I have made so far. This is the first quilt I designed for my cousin's beautiful daughter Kennedy. The sleepy whale and bird were machine appliqued, and the whole quilt was machine quilted. I didn't really know how to make sure everything was secure, so there are some "oops moments" on the quilt back. Overall I like it very much.



The next quilt I made was for my sister Kassandra. It was a present for her birthday. This quilt was a big step up from Kennedy's quilt. It is a classic kaleidoscope quilt with thousands of tiny pieces. This picture doesn't really show the vibrant colors very well.



Here's me with the quilt I most recently finished. It was made for my baby brother Liam who was born in September 2009. The lion is based off of the art by cheerfulmadness at www.cheerfulmadness.com

Again it's all machine pieced and quilted, but this time the backing is fleece. I quilted free-motion leaves for the background, circles for the lion's fur, and rainbow things for the mane.