Baby quilt patterns

Jodi Nelson over at Pleasant Home Quilts has photos and tutorials for wonderful scrap quilts. They are simple patterns, but her choice of colors are just delightful.

The first one is a scrappy Roman square done in a variety of green prints. Clicking on the photo will take you to her website

This one is a variation on the Roman square using pieced rectangles and white.

 

She has also posted a tutorial on the Moda website for a pinwheel quilt using 5” squares. Our group has lots of 4 1/2 squares, and those would work just as well.  In the tutorial, she cuts her printed squares in half diagonally, then pairs them with a white triangle, cut from the same size square. To avoid that bias edge, I would suggest the method below.

Pair pair two squares, one solid color (or white) with a printed square of the same size. Put them right sides together. Mark the diagonal line with a pencil and sew 1/4” from each side. Using a rotary cutter and ruler, cut apart on the line you drew.  Open your triangle and press to the printed fabric. Clicking here will open an easy tutorial on how to make them.

Using two 4.5” squares, and this method, you will get two triangles, just slightly larger than 4” (4 1/8”)

Here are some of our recent creations

 

 

 

Fantastic footwear art

Meet Kobi Levin, a footwear designer from Israel. His blog features some fantastic creations. If you don’t get enough here, you can go to his website to see all he has posted. I was amazed.
This one is named Elephant

Toucan

Olive Oyl

Blonde ambition

Miao

chewing gum

Compassion Quilts

Recently I started a group at my church for people who wanted to learn to sew. We had the goal of making 30 tiny baby quilts to make available to our local hospital. These quilts are given to families who lose a child at birth.
I collected sewing machines, applied for start up funds from our mission ministry and set up a time. We currently have about ten women who come regularly. Some have never sewed, others haven’t sewn in years, and only one of them was familiar with modern quilting methods.



Our first quilts are comprised of twenty five 4.5” blocks with 2.5” borders. This makes a quilt about 24” square.
Everyone got busy, cutting, ironing, designing and sewing.




Here’s one of our quilters with her very first quilt. She had never operated a machine before. Can’t you just see the satisfaction in her face?

At our last meeting we covered the quilt sandwich, and one quilter starting a cross hatch pattern. I’ll post updates as we progress.

Be My Valentine

It’s my annual Valentine’s Day post; a photo tour of valentines I sent as well as those that Tom and I received. To see more of our family valentines, check out Patti Wagon’s website
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Here’s the outside of the one from Tom to me


inside (Hoodoo photos were taken this fall in Bryce Canyon)


Mine to him had a political flavor


and the inside


From Laurel


inside




From Patricia outside


Inside, an adorable hand knitted scarf


More from Patricia
outside


and another knitted embellishment


The ones Tom and I sent to Patricia are on her website, along with the ones she sent and the one she received from Laurel.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Middle school lock-in

A few months ago I did a pillow painting and sewing project with the young people at our church. They did a great job, and we had lots of fun. This past weekend, it was the middle schoolers who had the opportunity to have a similar project.

They painted 18” cotton duck squares, with Pebeo setacolor and Jaquard fabric paints. They used a variety of techniques including masking with painters tape strips, cutting shapes from freezer paper, stenciling and stamping. They let them dry for an hour or so then came back and embellished them with Tulip Glow in the Dark dimensional paints. I only had a few bottles, so they made dots, squiggles and added some text.  I don’t recommend the product for covering large areas, but was great for small beadlike embellishments.
The next morning the paint had dried and they sewing their pillows and stuffed them. They loved learning to use a sewing machine. One of the boys told me that he thought sewing was going to be boring, but he now loved it. He was the one who wanted to wind and load bobbins, thread the machine and see how everything worked.

These photos were taken in daylight, but in the dark, they were absolutely glowing.

Home Decorator Sewing

Recently my sister in law came for a visit. JoAnn’s was having a home decorator fabric sale and she purchased several fabrics to update her screened porch.
She doesn’t sew, but I agreed to be her “sewist”.  First stop was a tablecloth for the round table. Then reversible green and blue napkins. So far I’m just cutting and doing a rolled edge on my serger.

There was enough left over from the tablecloth fabric to make placemats. I used simple pillow case construction  and edge stitched them. 


 
Next were covers for the porch swing and two wicker chairs. Again, easy sewing, no cording, no boxed cushions, just simple construction.



















She purchased some additional fabrics to make a curtain for the west end of the porch and cover some dining chairs, but these are no-sew projects with duct tape and a staple gun.

She also bought 100% cotton decorator fabric for two tablecloths for her indoor dining table. This was supposed to be a simple serged rolled edge.  I washed the fabric, cut off the selvedge and was left with only 49” of width; not enough for a nice drop.  I found a pattern by Janine Babich  I had cut out of SewNews from 2005 and decided to adapt it for a wide mitered flanged border that would leave no raw edges. It took several stops and starts, and my brain cells were definitely on “firing” mode.  Now I’ll do another one in blue. Since I now know what I’m doing, it won’t take long at all. I’ll have enough fabric left over to make some placemats.  But that’s another day.