A Double Sided Wall Hanging

I don't know why I do these. You would think I would learn how hard they are. First both sides have to be the same size, second I have to have a binding that matches both sides. So with one side Halloween and one side Christmas I was practically tearing my hair out trying to find a binding that would work with both. In the end there was a tiny bit of black in the Christmas side, and the Halloween side was dark enough that I could get away with it. It's a miracle I pulled it off. And now it's on it's way to a very happy life in Iowa.

Dahlia's Quilt

For Dahlia's birthday this year I wanted to make her a nice quilt for her bed. She has a full size so as I was working on it, I realized it needed to be bigger than I thought. I love the way it turned out. It is so bright and pink, just like her personality. I had enough fabric for matching pillowcases too - that was a nice bonus.

A quilt for Tige

Jamie brought over fabric for a military quilt for Tige's birthday. She said I could do whatever I wanted for a pattern (yaaay) and quilt however I wanted (double yaaay). It turned out so great! More later.

Alterations were in order

Dahlia started pre-school this week. She has twenty students in her class. Six girls in her class have this same backpack, and all over the rec center were little girls with this backpack. I couldn't send Dahlia to school and expect her to bring the right one home every night. So I trimmed the edges with pink feathers and added buttons on the front to look like jewels. I ran ribbon down both straps so she would know which one was hers from both sides. "It's Fabulous" she said, in her princess voice. Yaaaay!
Lining up for pre-school, I heard a mom ooooh over my backpack with her friend. Double yaaaay!

Iysha's Tesselation

This year's Quilt of Dreams quilt was influenced by a number of factors. First, as I was getting ready to look at the fabric, a 2 year old girl passed away in our old ward. I wasn't really close to her family but her story really affected me. I have never named a quilt after a person before, this is the first one. These are all the things she could have learned and I loved the idea that this was a quilt of knowledge. I began selecting blues and purples representing water and the sky. I decided on a tesselated pattern that really had a lot of movement to the eye.
The next factor was looking at the dreams of the children. A few of them said that their dream was to go to high school. I started thinking that I could put high school into the quilt. I doodled and looked up references for things from high school. I made a list of subjects and started filling in information you would learn and fun things about high school. I ended up with more than I thought and a lot of fun things went into this quilt.
Biology - a plant and an animal cell, a heart
Chemistry - part of the periodic table
Math - the tesselation, also acute, obtuse and right angles.
Art - a pre-raphaelite painting by Millais (thanks for the book Dad)
P.E. - footballs, baseball and a badminton set.
History - I put three WWII planes a British Hawker Hurricane, a Japanese Zero and a U.S. P-61 Black Widow. I also wrote about the Berlin wall. There is also, and this was for my mom, Charlamagnes throne.
German - a few words
English - a quote from Shakespeare and one from Charles Dickens.
I also put in a locker and some fun things about high school.

Around the edges was a list of classes and also a list of some clubs from school.
In the end the quilting turned out to be more what I did in high school so at the very bottom I put FIS class of 92. I had a lot of fun making this quilt and it became very personal.

The Finished Product and the aftermath.......

So the quilt is wrapped and ready to go out the door. I took a photo and looked up at my sewing table strewn with little bits of fabric and even the ball of tape that was used when I sewed in the straight lines on the pillow shams. What a mess, but what fun it was!

Four Alarm Frenzy? Fire It Up? Oh I can't decide!!!

This is quilt number 2 for Mrs. Thompson. She is having another boy and using the same fabric I needed to make another quilt, different enough that they would be able to tell them apart. The first one was all fire trucks and the quilting was all fire trucks. This time I quilted flames into the quilt. So the first one was TFD#1 (the fire department) and this one is the fire. I hope that it isn't indicative of their personalities. This one is backed in red, and the other in blue so there should be no question as to which is which. She also asked for a pillow sham, so I made two because there will be two boys and I've learned from experience that they argue over things and they will both need one.

Here's the message I attached to the quilt:

I made the plain sham first, and then realized that my boys fight over everything and if there was one there had to be two. I found some scraps from the last quilt and used those to make the second sham – which actually matches the first quilt nicely. This way there are two quilts and two shams. When I made the first quilt the fire trucks were very much in my mind, this time it was the fire. I made flames and little fires all over the quilt. When I was done I realized that this really reflected my boys personalities, the fire and the one who puts them out. Thanks so much! It was so fun to work with the same fabric and do something completely different with it. I hope you love it as much as I do!

Bibs, Bibs and more Bibs

As fast as I can make these little bundles they are out the door. I moved on from just the bib of the month, where you get 12 bibs, one representing each month. Now I do dozens for girls, boys, Christmas, summertime and more! It's crazy. I used to use scrap fabric to make these, now I have to go hunt for novelty fabric that's got patterns just the right size for the bibs. I actually enjoy hanging onto them as the bib turns the corners and you can feel the fabric pulling. I really like sewing.

In The Garden

It's so rare that I actually use a pattern that I have to give thanks to my source, probably my favorite quilt book "Tesselation Quilts" by Christine Porter. She made a similar quilt called "Saturday Market" and I never had any intention of making that same quilt but I had gathered the fabrics to make a quilt and when I saw the pattern it fit perfectly.

Colors of the Sea

It's been a while since I did a big project, so this is big in size, but actually went together super fast. It's a panel from Hawaii, all I did was sew a border on it, make the backing, and quilt it together. Easy. The big part was it's size, it's a nice roomy twin size quilt. It's on it's way back to Hawaii next week, I finished just in time.

It's Summer! Maybe i'll get some sewing done.

This is the July wall hanging of the month, notice that June is absent. Where did the time go? I have a couple projects i'm working on now, so with the kids tracked back in we'll see what I can get done. This one was really fun, it's a moda panel and I snipped around the edges for a frayed border. I really like the effect.

A Dozen Bibs

It seems like lately I can't get anything finished. I have lots of UFO's at the moment but nothing complete. My only finished project is a stack of a dozen bibs for boys, in assorted prints. Although the achievement here is that I made 3 dozen, but only sold 1 dozen. So i'm ready for next time, unless I need girl bibs.

I

Washington's Sidewalk

Mom found some really fun fabrics the last time she was in Delta and sent some to me. I made up this block, thinking I would donate it to Fabric Boutique for their customer appreciation quilt. I didn't get it done in time, but now I really want to design a whole quilt around one fabric, made even more difficult by the fact that there is no more of the blue. I can always just enjoy it. It's a lot more fun to look at than the purple blocks.

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April wall hanging of the month.

The pattern for the bunnies was modified but did originally come from Quick Quilts magazine. I used a coloring book for the egg shape, then sewed strips together and cut out the eggs. They are machine appliqued. I had a good time with the quilting too, close quilting around the shapes makes them pop out. A tight stipple on the yellow border, and flowers on the Peanuts fabric.

The whole thing is about 24x30. Bigger than the last few, so hopefully it will fill the space on Melissa's wall a little better.

Do you see what I see?

Jeanette and I have been doing blocks of the month since last January. It would have been nice to put these side by side, but - can you tell the difference. Just by looking at the top I can tell which is her block and which is mine.

Jeanette sews to perfection and often I don't really try all that hard to make my points match up and my pinwheels perfect in the back. This is my new goal for this year, to make my stitches as perfect as Jeanette's.

As soon as you see the back, you can tell that she put more care into her construction. To be fair she doesn't have 3 kids pulling on her as she sews but I am going to see that my points match up better this year. It's my late resolution. Perfect points.

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Around the Corner

This is a great wall hanging made from the Around the Corner block. I wish the colors were brighter but when I went to mess with the photo it just looked weird and orange. I have this up in my living room and I love the colors. It feels really warm to me. I made this when we were buying the house. I figured we couldn't move into a new home unless we had a new wall hanging. Strange logic, I know. But there it is, living proof that I won't pack or move until I have a new wall hanging.

New Curtains, okay I copied

Well, Dahlia didn't like the pillow but she liked the curtains. Dahlia pulled the curtains off the wall last week and bent the curtain rod. It was a cheap metal rod that just bent in half under the weight of a swinging monkey of a girl. So I got a big 1 inch thick dowel from Lowes and replaced it with that. I took the curtains, washed them, ironed them and sewed ribbon all over them. I copied the idea from Maddie's curtains, they aren't exactly the same but I liked the effect. Took about 15 minutes, now that's an EASY project.

Easy Pillowcase with French Seams

I was up at Fiddlesticks today, one of my favorite shops, and picked up a kit for a Valentine pillow. It had directions for the roll tube, something I haven't done before. So I brought it home, thinking this is going to be a snap, the pieces are already cut and it should sew together in just a few minutes. Well.......20 minutes later i'm still looking at the instructions trying to figure them out. The instructions say things like: "fold the fabric in half" well, which way? So after a while, I did figure it out, and it did sew together pretty quickly. I hope Dahlia loves it when she gets home. So really this should be titled:

Easy (if you know what you're doing) Pillowcase with French Seams

Aprons

I needed a new apron, i've been wearing one that my Grandmother made, forty or fifty years ago. I used that apron as a pattern to create two aprons. It took two half yards of contrasting fabric to make two aprons, and now my daughter and I can cook together with our matching aprons! (Thanks for the fabric Nat)

A Valentine

"Love"
The first for this year, a classic wall hanging. This was made using the "Love is in the air" charm pack from moda (thanks Nat!)and some solid pink and yellow batiks. The white, well I couldn't find my white fabric, so Snoopy is made out of a Lands End no-iron pinpoint shirt (sorry Steve, i'll replace it). There wasn't a pattern for this, I got the idea because of MT and wanted to create a Snoopy, I was looking at the Peanuts fabric that is interspersed with the charm squares, there was one Snoopy holding a Woodstock. So I sketched it out, created a pattern (pattern available!) and began the applique work.
I made two of these, one went to MT and the other I delivered to Bec because i've been wanting to surprise her with something for ages! Look back over my blog, she always leaves such thoughtful comments, I really wanted to give this to her. Okay, so even though CJ was outside, I duct taped it to her door (sorry if that causes problems), took a picture and ran (well not really ran, that just sounds dramatic). Happy Valentines a bit early!

Corn and Beans

I'm working on a Civil War reproduction quilt and I came across a book of quilt blocks, some of which I wanted to incorporate into the quilt. The blocks need to be 12x12 so the quilt blocks in the book are exactly the right size. I started cutting up the Union Square, but there were so many pieces that I quickly moved on to the corn and beans block. I cut pieces for four blocks. They sewed up pretty quickly once the pieces were cut, I laid out the different sections and took a photo, to remind myself when I made the other blocks so that I didn't have to keep refering to the instructions. So once the block was sewn up and trimmed, it measured exactly 11x11. Wow! That's a whole inch off! It's still a beautiful block but now i'm faced with putting a border on them to get to 12 inches or just hoping there will be another project later in life where I can use them. I can't decide.

Fabric for Christmas

I got a surprise for Christmas last year, fabric from one of my favorite places Hancocks of Paducah. I love to browse through their sumptuous catalog and dream of fine fabrics. Thanks to Nat it was a dream that came true. So with a little wise and careful shopping I got 8 1/2 yards of fabric, three 5 inch charm packs and two patterns. All told it is fabric for two aprons, parts of several quilts and wall hangings, one of which i'm working on now. I got a whole bunch of patriotic/civil war fabric that i've been collecting to make a quilt for me (shocking I know). So thank you very much Nat! Merry Christmas!

I'm not a computer

This morning the great MT asked me about the bucking bronco from the John Wayne quilt. She wondered how i'd done it. So, I want to clarify that I made that. No computer sewed that using a program, I sewed it. I found a picture of a cowboy and taped it to my bookcase. Using it as a kind of inspiration I sewed it freehand, I usually wouldn't even have done that but animals are kind of hard for me, I have to watch to make sure that their necks aren't too long, or their legs are in proportion and have the right depth. That being said, no freehanded image is perfect. Here's the outhouse as an example.

Another one for the Duke

Another One for the Duke

A John Wayne quilt - twin size, approximately 60x80 inches. There are eight printed 8x10 pictures of John Wayne, four vertical and four horizontal. The pattern is divided into four quadrants, each identical. The sewing was challenging because the corners don't match. Sections were sewn together and then pieced by only sewing halfway down the block, finishing the next section and then completing that seam. It's very time consuming. It was a really great project, I had fun in the quilting too. There are signatures of John Wayne in the dark brown strips, movie titles, famous quotes and some cowboy illustrations randomly placed but mostly on the larger blocks. My favorite is the outhouse. And as will all my quilts I learned a lot, this time about John Wayne, I think this may be the surprise bonus, more learning.