Still Sewing

Yay for finished projects! Both babies are napping so I thought I'd do a quick write up about this quilt.


The front is obviously very basic patchwork. These are simple 8.5" squares made from some Kona Cotton solids (if you sew and quilt a lot a Kona color card is an amazing tool for picking out just the right color for your project) and a fat quarter bundle of Chirp! fabric by Katie Hennigar. I always take pictures of the layout of my quilts before I start to sew. Somehow it is just easier to see what would look better where when I see it on the computer screen instead of on the floor.




The back was a little more complicated. There was a really cute panel that came with the fat quarter bundle, but it was on a green background that seemed almost neon. It definitely didn't go with my quilt so I couldn't use it as is. After getting some input from a friend on what to do, I cut out the scenes from the panel, leaving a 1/4" seam allowance around each of them. Then I used some 2.5" strips of Kona Snow (white, but not bright white) to achieve the layout I wanted. At that point I still had to make the back of the quilt a tad bigger:


I decided to go with a thin brown border (the same brown from the patchwork on the front) and then a wider yellow border to finish things off. The small detail on the yellow border was the happy result of coming up just shy of enough yellow fabric to finish the whole thing off. One of my favorite quilters puts a similar detail into each of her bindings as a tag, and so I shamelessly stole her idea, mostly out of necessity.


Speaking of binding, normally I love to hand bind my quilts. I've found that it's a really soothing thing for me to sit and sew by hand, plus it helps keep me occupied while watching a movie on the couch (because I can't just sit and watch a movie). But being the procrastinator that I am I just did not have time to hand bind this, so I took a leap and did machine binding using this handy tutorial. I used invisible thread and I loved the finished look. Here's a picture of the folded quilt where you can see the binding on both the front and the back:


The front looks so professional (I'm not bragging about my skills here, it was really simple and a result of the tutorial!) and the back has some spots where the stitching wanders a bit, but it's invisible thread so it hardly shows up as a flaw. Plus it was so fast! I bound this quilt in probably a quarter of the time or less than it would take to do the same work by hand.

The quilting is an all-over meander that is really fun to do now that I have a sewing machine that can handle free-motion quilting (and that is a shout-out for my ultra-generous hubby who encourages me in my hobby by providing all the fun tools of the trade).

This was a really fun project, and if you're in SLO and in the know I can tell you that this quilt is for a Baby Beaver. :)



*Please excuse the quality of the photos in this post, I usually sew at night when the kids are sleeping, so the light is not really great!

Picture Post

Some fun patchwork that is making me happy!

Quilting!

So, what have I been doing lately?

Well other than general wife-ing and mommy-ing, I've been quilting!

Here's the thing: I've always loved fabric and I've owned a sewing machine for going on 5 years and I've done absolutely nothing about with it. But something about having two under two inspired me to start some quilting projects. I think the basic thinking behind this is craziness, or madness, or the idea that I'm already up to my ears in busyness, so adding another hobby can't make that much difference, right?

Anyway, I signed up for a quilting class and in less than two months finished my first quilt. It is rough. There are a lot of bobbles. But I learned so much from making it and my next one (already in progress) is going to be loads better. But I'm not going to point out the flaws because I'm told that's just not done, but here it is all finished and happy.

Knitting Help

Can one of you crafty peeps out there translate this knitting pattern for me? I understand all of it except what the numbers in parentheses mean.

K4 (border sts), *K1, YO, K6 (5, 4, 3), K2tog twice, K6 (5, 4, 3), YO* rep between * to last 5 sts, K1, K4 (border sts)

Ethan's Birth Announcement

As promised, here is a scan of Ethan's birth announcement. This was my first ever stamping project that I designed completely on my own and it was so much fun. And hey, it only took me 2.5 months to get these out to people!

The colors didn't scan so well, but all the blues sort of complimented each other when you see them in person.

Craftiness

So, I've just gotten into stamping and card making. I wanted to make my own birth announcements and when I went to the stamping store in downtown Oak Harbor, I found out they do a (free!) card making session each Friday. It's really great -- you can go in anytime during the day and they have all the supplies out to make one card. Plus they set out a sample for you, so if you're like me and not really all that good at making stuff yet, you can just copy their design. The above is what I made yesterday.

The scan didn't come out so well, but it is a scarecrow stamp on creme colored paper, colored with pencils and a little strategic glitter placement. Then I used what looked like a mini shaving cream brush to put some distressing ink all over the paper. Then I took the metal side of a ruler and scraped up the sides of the paper. After that, I put some straw around the orange card and put Mr. Scarecrow on top of it with some little adhesive squares. Easy peasy! Again, this was all done from someone else's example, so no real points for creativity on my part unless you count the coloring job.

But I did design and make Ethan's birth announcements all by myself and they are looking pretty spiffy. It only took me 2 months to get half of them finished! I think they will be in the mail after Thanksgiving, but I'll put a sample one here after I mail them.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, prayers would be appreciated for Ethan and I -- we are taking a big trip to Kansas City to meet all of his great-grandparents and great-aunts and uncles (basically all of my extended family). Steve is not able to go because of work, so I will be braving the friendly skies alone. Alone, but with an infant. Mainly I'm just daunted by getting through security with a car seat, stroller, diaper bag, myself and, oh yeah, the baby! Anyone got any tips?