Wally had better watch out...

Because I'm in love.

With this Little Folks fabric. It's spectacular! No really, I got a bunch of it for Christmas thanks to my mom and aunt who traveled three hours to find it (and my mother in law who helped support the cause!). I've been planning on making a simple quilt just squares of the fabric all together ... letting the fabric really speak for itself. Well it turns out that after cutting most of the squares out I was scared to sew them together (afraid I'd screw the whole thing up).... Well I finally did it today! It looks (and feels) great! It's the biggest quilt I've done so far  - and Wally wants me to add to it to make it bigger! lol. Right now it's a generous lap quilt for our couch. Our family quilt. :) ok so probably one of many. I love it! I do have to say that the fabric is dreamy but sometimes hard to tell right side from wrong side. That was my only complaint. I just love staring at the colors.

I'm thinking of a medium gray solid for the backing. Not sure what kind of quilting I'll do for it... not free motion though since I think it'd detract from the patterns. We'll see. I can't wait to work on it more!

New projects...

Strips... lots of them!

I got this fabric from http://www.connectingthreads.com/ for really cheap last week. Just waiting to try something new. I decided to give the chain pieced log cabin blocks a try. I hadn't thought of it this way, but when you are using strips instead of measured pieces (or tiny scraps as in my case) the sewing goes a lot faster!

I made 8 of these in a matter of about an hour. Also, added in some other blocks...

 I don't even know the proper name for it. Whatever I think they look pretty fun. I'm planning on adding some solid colored sashing between the blocks - likely white. I'm up to 16 blocks done for this one already. So rewarding!

Potholders.

Yesterday Mary came over to sew, and we decided to make some potholders. It was fun, teaching Mary how to make the wonky 9 patch blocks. It was her first time making a true patchwork piece which was fun. Also, a lesson in broken needles and unscrewing the bottom of the sewing machine at 1am to find the needle that fell in there.... lol. In the end I think we would agree that one layer of the insul-bright batting maybe would have been enough (they were really thick and a little frustrating to sew through). However, I'm sure our hands won't get burnt! Here they are:

Here are the three that Mary made.

The two I made.

Happy Valentine's Day to my Mother-In-Law. (tutorial here)

And of course... a cute pic of the little girl!

Finishing project and baking bread!

Yesterday the baby (wow, she really isn't a baby anymore) took a nice solid two hour nap. So - with Wally out running errands I got a good two hours of sewing time! As you could see by my last post I had finished up the housewarming gift for my mother in law. Also, I finished binding the second doll quilt for my neices (a practice of my free motion quilting). I actually used the blanket stitch on my new sewing machine for the binding (after sewing on a double folded strip - I was planning on hand sewing it) It turned out really nicely and I'm really happy I gave it a try. I wouldn't probably do binding that way for a full size quilt... mostly because I do like the time I get with a finished quilt while hand sewing the binding.

Also, for a random change, my husband decided to make bread with me. Don't get me wrong, I don't make bread often - just had the idea in my head that I wanted to make some. So we did. This time the yeast was not old and it did turn out great! And... we had a blast doing it. (The baby was already in bed).

Yum!

A Housewarming Gift...

A couple weeks ago my mother in law (whom I get along with just great!) moved into a new condo. So, a housewarming gift was in order. I decided to make a set of cloth napkins, a table runner (so I could once again practice my free motion quilting), and a matching potholder. It turned out pretty well. I used kind of an improv block for the table runner and had made four blocks - the extra I used for the potholder. All made out of 100% cotton thrifted sheets. Enjoy!

All folded up.

Washed, dried and hanging on my door.

A close up of the quilting.

Potholder. (Two layers of cotton heat resistant batting... can't think of what it's called offhand).

Pretty napkins. Cut 12" squares, sewen together and turned inside out. A little topstitching, very simple.

I've been busy.

But not much for finishing projects here recently. :)

I've been working on a sample quilt. It is mostly because I'm relatively new to this quilting thing, and I'd like to try a lot of different things without dedicating the fabric to a large project. So I'm making blocks of about 16" square using various different types of blocks/tecniques. Sashed with a white cotton sheet (thrift store). Using 4" charm squares given to me by my great aunt (I have a million of them). Using the 4" squares has limited me a bit, and as a result the patterns I've come up with are smaller than normal. It will be refreshing to try some on a large (normal) size. Basically instead of making doll quilts I'm going to put them all together as one. Hopefully it works!

Also I've made a batch of about a dozen cloth napkins, and nearly finished a quilted table runner. More pictures to come!

Happy Birthday Michelle!

Last week was my best friend Michelle's birthday. Now, we don't usually buy eachother gifts, but I figured I would send her one anyway.

So here is the mini-quilt that I made for her. I was testing out some new techniques including free-motion quilting. I used OhFrasson's tutorial (from Sew Mama Sew) for the tiny patchwork.

Here's the back too. I backed it with a really soft bedsheet. The quilting started with just lines, and I added the stippling last. I wasn't completly happy with it pre-stippling. I'm getting a little more confident with free-motion quilting!

Here's the scarf. Made using the tutorial here.

I hope she liked them as much as I liked making them!