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
**********************************************
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.

You Are Not the Boss of Me

I have had my present Viking 936 serger for seven years. Until this month, my serger was the boss of me. I was intimidated by it. So intimidated that I only did three thread overlock and three thread rolled hem since those two stitches did not require that I change any needles and I could tie off threads to change thread colors. It was a loooooooong sewing session when I broke a thread and had to rethread it from the directions. Coverstitch was out of the question, way too complicated.

Before Christmas I spent an hour in a one on one session with the local Viking dealer and she showed me a few tricks that gave me the confidence to thread the machine and change the needle position. She even went over the coverstitch with me, but I was going to need a lot more practice.

This past Friday a Baby Lock dealer in my area was offering an all day intermediate serger class, and I went, even though I knew I would not get a lot of support for my Viking machine.  Enter Kate , another class participant and a free lance Viking teacher with a machine just like mine. She sat right beside me and interpreted all the Baby Lock instructions for me in the Viking language. She loaned me her specialty feet and was truly a blessing to me and the other Viking owner participating in the class. She had lots of tips and recommendations for additional resources.

We did a lot of things in the workshop, inserting a zipper. making and inserting piping, pin tucks, and of course the dreaded coverstitch.

Here’s my zipper sample, and yes, I know it’s not centered, but I learned how to do it, and it’s a breeze.

Piping and insertion was quick and easy too, Kate showed me how to turn a corner.

Did the Baby Lock dealer want me to spend $3,000 on a new machine? Yes. Was I willing to do that? No. I spent several hours this weekend threading and re-threading my Viking machine, changing from overlock to coverstitch and back again, and my confidence has improved to the point, I can tell my serger, “You are not the boss of me!”

I do want to say that if I were buying a new serger today I would likely buy a Baby Lock. My machine is great, but the Baby Lock has it beat as far as ease of use.

eBay listings

Seems like every year I get the itch to list a few things on eBay. If you want mid-twentieth century ladies’ accessories, Lauffer stainless flatware, Royal Copenhagen figurines, or Steiff bears, head over to eBay and check out my auctions. User name: Sandcrab66.

white kid opera gloves anyone?

Steiff Bear?

Vintage handbags and scarfs?

My Favorite books from 2011

I have read a lot of books this year. Most were very enjoyable; a few were standouts. Here's my list of standouts. I have included the Amazon link for each of them, not so you will order from Amazon but so you can get reviews and author information. My library "saved list" is full of titles I want to read in 2012

Fiction
Partitions
I Married you for Happiness
History of Love
State of Wonder
The Imperfectionists
Sister

Non-Fiction
Country Driving, A Chinese Road Trip
America Aflame, How the Civil War Created a Nation
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
Emperor of all Maladies: a Biography of Cancer
House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home

What I’m reading

The book list starts off a Michael Connelly book, Nine Dragons  In my very limited opinion, he’s one of  the best crime writer today.  Add to the list John Grisham books, The Summons  and The Broker, Nelson DeMille’s Spencerville and John Sandford’s Buried Prey. Tom and I listened to them on some recent travels. Best of the bunch, the Michael Connelly or Grisham books.

The book I’ve been reading for the past two months is America Aflame, How the Civil War Created a Nation. It was fascinating reading, but over 500 pages. It read more like a textbook than other non-fiction books I’ve read lately. If you think political squabbles, ineffective legislators, greed, financial collapse are something new to our era, this account will change that perception. The relevance to today’s events was uncanny.

Two quick reads were A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff and I married you for Happiness by Lily Tuck. Vintage Affair was about a young woman who resigns from Sotheby's auction house to open a Vintage clothing boutique. It is filled with descriptions of the clothing and the designers who made them. The plot however is more serious. If you enjoyed Russian Winter, you would like this book.

I Married you for Happiness is a slim book that is spare, but very powerful. On the first page you learn that the narrator's husband has died and the rest of the book is remembrances of their lives together. Sounds maudlin, but it's not. Lots of mathematics and probability references. I'm not a mathematician, but I found them very interesting. It is a post-modern book, so the does not move in a straight line, and often dreams are mixed with the present as well as the past. Not an easy book to read, but compelling. It will make the best of the bunch list for 2011.

Orphan block tote bag

I just finished a baby quilt, and had left over fabric and an orphan block. After an evening in the studio, here’s the result.

I used Molly’s 20 minute tote pattern as my starting point, but added some additional features.  I quilted the fabric to canvas to give it body, covered the straps with companion fabric to dress them up, added interior pockets, boxed bottom corners, and added a bottom to the bag.

Here’s the quilt that inspired the bag.

Getting ready for Christmas

I am still obsessed with the fabric circles and wanted to find a way to use them with my Christmas decorations. I’ve beaded them and added ribbon and toppers. The toppers are meant to be slightly bent and remind me of a Dr. Seuss  illustration.



I stopped in my favorite thrift shop and picked up candlesticks and plates and made stands for them using instruction from prettyhandygirl. I wanted them to be all white or frosted, so I painted the clear ones with acrylic paint. As my mother would say, I did a good job “tackifying” them.

New addition to the studio

A few years ago I bought a Horn sewing table for an extra machine in my studio. It was never quite right. It was not possible to adjust it to fit two of my machines in the flat bed area, and it was too high for my serger.
My sister started sewing again, and bought a new machine. I sold her my table and went shopping for a replacement. At a thrift store I found exactly what I was looking for at the unbeatable price of $10. It’s the perfect height for a sewing machine or serger. It is just the right size to fit against my existing table and it’s on casters.


Now that my serger is out all the time, it needed a cover too.  I used some existing fabric, quilted it using two threads in the needle (a metallic and a variegated) and added the beaded fabric circles.



Now if I could just become master of my serger. Right now it is the boss of me.

Crimson Heart Studio Giveaway

Get right over to Crimson Heart Studio and enter her drawing to win the red and green fabric circle tree featured in the latest issue of Cloth Paper Scissors Gifts.

But maybe I shouldn't tell you...I want to win it!

A Trip to the Fair

The county fair opened today and I went to view the home goods entries. A significant portion of the exhibit area was devoted to tableaus designed by many of the county schools on the theme of Barnyard Beach Party. I found this backdrop from the juvenile detention center alternative school display to be peculiar.



On one level, it is funny and creative; cow in orange jumpsuit, barbed wire border, expression changes on the characters,  but on another level, it begs the question,  “Where will these kids be when they are 18?”.

My take on the Fabric Forest

In this post, I wrote about my obsession with the mixed media topiary trees in the 2011 Cloth Paper Scissors Gift magazine. I am fascinated by these little circles. I knew I did not have the patience to hand fray the edges of the circles and I was not happy with the results of washing them with a load of towels, so I beaded them to add texture.
The process is positively addicting. I finished two trees today and have ideas for more projects I want to do with them.



Maybe they will be my holiday dessert. They do look pretty enough to eat.



Here’s an idea for a pillow from Fiskars that would use these lovelies instead of the pictured yo-yos.