A Boy Bag

My little boy loves toy cars. He tries his hardest to carry as many cars as he can where ever he goes. He shoves them under his arms, in his arms, and piles them high holding them in place with his chin! To make his task a little easier, I made him a boy bag to carry his cars in. I really wanted so cars fabric that was not connected to the movie (which is all I have in my stash). At Joann's, I found this great Alexander Henry Historic Highway print. I thought it was perfect for a bag to carry cars. My son seems to have mixed feeling about the bag. He loves to put his cars into it, but he wants me to carry it!

The Twin

I finished the second wonky star blanket! My older daughter had been very upset that I didn't do her's first. (I guess she is used to being first as she is the first child!) But less than a week later, her blanket is ready. She is very happy with the way it turned out, especially the minkee!

Half way there!

I have finally settled on a design for my wonky star quilt. It is going to be fairly normally laid out with five stars per row and six rows. Between the first and second rows and the fifth and sixth rows will be a row of 15 mini stars. I finally finished 15 large stars and 15 mini stars. I am so happy with them, I just wish that I could finish them more quickly! I am ready to see the finished product!

Five new mini stars!


A couple of stars to add to the constellation.


This is one of my all time favorite vintage prints!


My daughter's favorite:

Bee Quilt Top

I finished!!! The center has been together for a little while, but the border took a while to put together. I think it perfectly matches the business of the quilt.

Star Blanket

My little girls love the wonky stars I have been making. They asked me to make them a big wonky star blanket. This is my interpretation of that request! I made the wonky star and backed it with quilt batting and quilted it. Then I backed that with minkee. The first one is finished. Hopefully I will get the other one made very soon!

One New Star

One day, my sister came over to cut vintage sheets and exchange fabrics. My mom stopped by and was asking about wonky stars. I sat down and made this one quickly to give her the idea of how they are made. I know have 11. I am getting to the point where I hope to put these all together.

Water Bottle Holder

My little boy is getting big enough to carry his own water bottle, so it was about time for me to make him a water bottle holder. My sister wanted to make some for her little ones, but wanted help. I showed her how to make one while making Kyle's. Check out Megan's water bottle holders. I finally cut into my cogsmo fabric and used a little for this project. The quilting seemed to be a given with the fabric, but it took more effort than simple stippling would have. I love the results!

Working on a Border

For my Bee Addicted 2 quilt (it needs a name!), I am doing a "solid" border and a pieced border. The solid border is the tie-dyed blue fabric that is in the quilt. The pieced border is made up of scraps from the fabrics in the quilt. The strips are between 1 inch and 3 inches wide.


I wanted a random look, but not too random! So I started in an orderly manner.


Apparently, I am too orderly because I have several strips that are the exact same prints together! Look closely and you can see what I mean.


To be more random, I have now put all my scraps in a container and will choose them from there. I hope it helps!

200 I Spys

My sister and I signed up for an I Spy block swap. You send 20 4in squares from 10 different novelty prints, mail them to the hostess, and in a couple of weeks you get 200 different squares back. Several of the blocks were not really novelty prints, or were prints that I did not like (ie skulls), but overall, I got a lot of great prints. Thinking about how to use them, I came up with making three small I Spy quilts, one for each on my little ones. Then they can play with or against each other. We will see where the idea goes.

These are some of my favorites!

Face Blankies Once Again

Once again, I have made face blankies. I must say that I don't really enjoy making these, but they look great! I love my little boy's chubby feet being in this picture. These are for a friend who is pregnant with her third baby and her first little girl.

Reusuable Snack Bags

My mom started a bad habit of giving her grandkids pretzels when they are leaving for the ride home (all of 15 minutes). With all the plastic bags that accumulated in my sister's car, she decided to buys some reusuable snack bags on etsy. She bought some really cute printed fabric bags that were lined with a semi waterproof fabric and close with velcro along the top. I looked at the bags and knew I could make some for my kids.
I bought some ripstop (check out here and here) in blue and red and some velcro. When I got home, I realized I didn't really have many fabrics that looked good with the colors of ripstop I bought! I should have thought about what fabric I wanted to use before buying the ripstop, but I am a little too impulsive for that. I pulled out this hand print fabric I found at Goodwill over a year ago, and it was a great fit! I fussy cut the had prints and sewed them together. Then I sewed the ripstop and sewed the handprint fabric and the ripstop together. Finally I added the velcro. That is it, I now have three reusuable snack bags for my kids to carry their snacks in the car.

More Face Blankies

A friend at church had a little girl recently. As a small gift, I made two face blankies. I really love the combination of pink and brown. It doesn't look too girlie or baby.

Table Runner

When I got a little tired of all the "big" projects I have been working on, I decided to make a table runner for the top of my dresser in my bedroom. My hope is having something pretty on the dresser will help clutter not build up as I wouldn't want to cover up the pretty table runner. I have been holding on to my small stash of Katie Jump Rope fabric for something fun, and thought this was the perfect opportunity to use them. I just cut the fabric into strips of 1.5in, 2in, and 2.5in, then sewed them together randomly until the runner was long enough. It took more fabric than I thought it would because I am a bad judge of such things. The process of putting this together was almost therapeutic as my husband was sick and I was playing nurse.


For the back, I improvisationally pieced solid colors. The back took much longer than I expected! Improv isn't as easy as you would think! I started with big chunks of color, but when Adrian saw it, he said they looked like signal flags sewn together. So I started cutting them up and adding more colors in, but that took more thinking than I had wanted to put into it. Oh well, in the end, I think it turned well. Not quite what I want for my bedroom, but still nice.

Bee Addicted Quilt Top

I joined a quilting bee back in September. My month was November. When I asked my partners to make strip pieced blocks in various sizes, I had no idea how I would use them. (That is probably not a good idea when asking others to sew something for you!) Over the past few days, I sat down and drew out some ways of using the blocks to make an attractive quilt. As the blocks were very busy (per my request), I decided to tone the quilt down (just a little bit) by adding solid and print blocks to the pieced blocks. I am excited about what I have come up with!


I have received all but two of my blocks back, and those two should be on the way now or soon, so as soon as I get them, I will sew this top together! I am excited to see it come together.

Top Left:

Top Right:


Bottom Left:


Bottom Right:

A Gift for a Little Girl

As a last minute thought, I decided to make a little bag for a friend's daughter. I used upholstery weight fabric, so I didn't use interfacing. The bag isn't very stiff, but it holds it's shape pretty well. I hope it is used to gather lots of little treasures!

Morsbags

Sew Mama Sew has challenged their readers to make 5 reusable shopping bags by Dec. 22. I don't know if I will be able to make that many with the other projects I have going on, but I have made two.
Back when I began sewing, just over a year ago, I bought a bunch of fabric from thrift stores in upholstry weight fabrics. I haven't used much of it, so this is a great opportunity to use some of it. The fabric for the two bags I made are from an old sheet, but the weight is heavier than normal sewing/quilting fabric. I used the tutorial on the morsbag website. I did modify it a little. The bag they show you how to make is just sewing two pieces of fabric together along three sides. This leaves a line along the bottom and makes for packing the reusable bag more difficult. I squared off the corners to make a "flat" bottom that will hold cans or boxes without pulling on the sides of the bag or distorting the shape of the bag. I am really proud of these bags!
Sorry, but I only have a picture of one of the bags. The other is the same fabric but with the strips running vertically.

Working on a Tree Skirt

These are three blocks for the "back" of my reversible tree skirt. I decided the back would use all the same fabric. The recommendation of the tutorial by TallGrassPrairie was to use scraps from the front. She made improv Log Cabins, so I made improv Log Cabins with this bell fabric and made sure to keep the direction print all pointing the same direction. (That is a first for me!)

i

More Wonky Stars

I am coming along in getting my stars in line. I have 3 more big stars (for a total of 4) and 3 small stars. A layout that I have come up with calls for 21 big stars and 25 little stars. To make roughly a square quilt. I am not sure if I will stick to that or expand it out to make it bigger. For now I have a goal and I am having fun. The vintage sheets are fun to work with. I love the added thought that the quilt will have a history even when it is newly finished.

This and the next 2 stars are 12 inches square:




The next three are 4.5 inches square. They were hard to make than the big ones, but they are really cute!




This is the layout I am thinking about making. This pattern will repeat itself with little stars in the corners of the big stars.

(click on the pictures to see them larger!)