Misc. Creations

This is just for my record, so I can remember some of what I made lately.

A candy bag for Munchkin

 My scrap quilt - now hanging on the wall of my cubicle.

 A Candy bag for Buddy - complete with fusible fleece letter and star.  With clip and strap to clip on the lacrosse stick.

Quilt Top

This is the top of my latest quilt, basically showing it here so my sister can see and critique... now on to basting and quilting it.  I think concentric circles in each block.

Back to work sewing

I am officially back to work now.  I am working a part-time crazy schedule.  Of course I had to decorate my office.  I also needed to use up a bunch of scraps around my sewing room.

I needed a coaster for my coffee cup, so I turned a few scraps into this. (ignore the corner, I had a binding issue)


It works great for my Calvin Mug, this mug is my work coffee cup and is used proudly every day.

 My office is a bare gray cubicle.  It needed a little bit of color.  I took the scraps from the bags I made for the teachers at Christmas and sewed them all together.  Then I added a bright yellow binding.  It is a fun mini-quilt for my cubicle wall.  I may need to make a bigger quilt for the outside wall of my cubicle, it is bare gray and boring.

Annapolis Quilt Show

Sometimes I am completely spoiled.  It is Fathers Day weekend and I am the one getting spoiled.  Daddy took all 4 kids to Grandma and Grandpa's house so I could go volunteer at the quilt show.  It is great to volunteer at a show, especially to be a white glove attendant.  You get to wear white gloves and walk around lifting up the quilts to see the backs.  You get to talk to LOTS of people and learn about lots of different quilts.  Plus you get into the show for free and at this show you get free lunch and snacks.  It could not be much better for someone like me.

Check out some of my favorites.This is a cool Log Cabin and in the 1st pic you don't see the houses stand out. 

 Then you take a step back and they pop out at you.  This quilt was hand quilted.

 This year's challeng was Quilt me a song. There were some very cool entries.  This is Raindrops.

 Abbey Road

 Fireworks inspired by her grandson's picture.

 I loved this quilt, it combined beautiful piecing with wool applique.

 This pineapple quilt was beautifl, the picture doesn't show it best, but it was beautiful.

 This was a wedding quilt where all the guests at the wedding signed the squares and then they were used as a border of the quilt. 

 I am usually not a big fan of thread painting.  It is making a quilt with different color threads, but this one was AMAZING.  Those leaves are appliqued on in a solid color and then they are detailed with hand embroidery.  Then the whole thing is hand quilted.  I was very impressed.

Look at the tip of that one leaf, thousands of tiny stitches.

 This type of family quilt is becoming more popular, with the ability to print on fabric you can add lots of pictures to your quilt. However this one is unique on the back.

 The creator added a block that shows each persons name and the details of the quilt.  In another 50 years you will know the names and the story behind the quilt.

 One of the best things about this quilt show is the country store.  All the quilters in the guild. (this guild has more than 100 members)  go through their stash and sell anything that they don't want.  So you can get lots of stuff for REALLY cheap.  I found some fabric I could use, but my best find of the day is this.

 Simple metal case, but open it up and there is 140 wooden spools of thread.  All for the bargain price of $10. 

 Look at those cool labels.

 Then for 50 cents I got all these cool spools of Belding-Corticelli pure silk thread.  I did a Google search and found this.  This thread was sold door to door in the 1920s and 30's, so cool.

So now that I found this treasure do I finally create the wreath I want? That has empty spools with paper wrapped around them and would be a waste of all the beautiful thread.  I don't know.  I am counting on my sister to give me some fantastic ideas about this one.

Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show 2013

I actually took a weekend AWAY from my children and went by myself to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show. It was wonderful to wander around the show and look at all the vendors without anyone else. I even took an all day hand quilting class.

These are some of my favorite quilts from the show. 

One of the challenge quilts was to make a quilt based on page 57 of any magazine.  This one had a beer ad, it just made me smile.

 There was a heart theme challenge and this was my favorite from that bunch.

 THis is individual paper pieced quilts appliqued onto a white background, the overall quilt was interesting, but I loved the detail on the paper pieced sections.

 This big quilt was beautiful and was hand quilted... all those little baskets.

 Finally this is my quilt... My class was on had quilting and this is the project quilt, it took me a few weeks to finish, and I like the quilting work, but I don't actually like the pattern.  (in a class there is not much choice.)  Now I don't know what to do with it.  I don't like it on my walls because it needs a dark wall and all the walls in this house are light colored.  For now it will be put away. 

Detail from the center flower.

Oh yeah, I finally made some labels for my quilts and other stuff, not perfect, but it works.

 

Twin Dog quilt

I am attempting to make my first large quilt.  I found a pattern I loved for Scout's bedroom.  His first word was dog and he is fascinated by dogs.
Here is the pattern, it can be made with sashing or without.  I haven't decided if I like it with or without yet.  I am leaning toward sashing.

I have a wonderful mother who let me raid her fabric stash and take as many blues, browns, wool felt and any other fabric I wanted.  That saved me a LOT of money.  I wanted a big variety of dogs. Here is my starter collection of fabric.  That is a lot of blues and browns.

This is the first 7 dogs, I have a lot more done now, but I haven't made time to take more pictures.  It was also a huge help when Grandma came and visit and made about a 9 more.  I think I have 21 so far and I need 30 to make the twin size quilt. 

 

 I think this white one is my favorite.

Though this one with the patch under one eye is pretty cool too.

 

Maybe it will be finished in a year, but I don't know.  I get frustrated and work on other projects and leave this one alone for a while. 

 

Hopefully someday soon this one will have a new quilt to sleep under.

 

Still Alive and quilting.

I am still alive and so is this blog, it has just been the normal stuff of life and not taking time to work on this to keep the family updated.  I will attempt to continue. (basically because my sister wants to know what projects I am working on and what the kids are doing) 

The next few posts are not necessarily in order, but in the order that I feel motivated to write them. 

1st up, my most current project for May.  I am hoping to attend a quilt guild here in MD and they all had some pretty cool nametags.  It is a very large guild, so nametags are a nice thing to have.

I had seen one on pinterest that I loved, see it here.  It had a cool paper piecing pattern with embroidered details.  I embroidered my name on it instead of using stamps.

 

I also wanted to be able to take it to quilt shows and put tickets, business cards and access cards in the back, so I added a little vinyl pocket on the back. Vinyl is slippery and I didn't really want to pin it and make holes,so that was a challenge.

Other than having a horrible time with the binding. I really like how it turned out.  It is not perfect, but it will work.  Now I need to make a lanyard out of scraps, because the boy scout one I found laying around the house just doesn't look right.

Quilt #9 Pineapple Table Runner

I think this is the favorite quilt I have made so far.  Even if it is not a typical quilt, but a table runner.  It has 6 paper pieced pineapples and a big expanse of red in the middle.  I actually quilted a pattern in that big expanse.

 It fits great on my new dining room table too.  Though I am not looking forward to the inevitable  food spills.

 My favorite part of this is the quilting.  I finally hand quilted something that has an actual pattern to it.  My stitches are not even, but I did something other than straight lines.  It challenged me.  Ignore the pulling around the binding, I have no idea how that happened, but I am not ripping it out to fix it. There is no such thing as a perfect quilt.

 I like it on the counter best, the light colored counter is a good contrast.

 This is the detail of the pineapples  and each one of those has 28 pieces, so it was a little bit of a challenge to put together.   The result is good though.

Quilt # 8 - Birdhouse

I finally finished another paper pieced mini-quilt.  It turned out great.

 My favorite part was this little bee, I was skeptical of how the whole thing would turn out, but once I finished with the embroidery, I love it.  I didn't take a picture of it, but I finally perfected the French Knot for the birds eye.  It made my day to do it right the 1st time. 

I hand quilted it around the outline of the birdhouse and quilted  along the double border.

 

 This little helper has been attached to me lately. I was taking pictures with him in my arms.  If he is not trying to climb on me then I need to find him because he is getting into trouble. This week it was finding the toilet brush and getting himself soaked "cleaning" the toilet.  And he likes the taste of kids toothpaste.  Munchkin let me know he was "drinking" it one day. 

It is good he is so cute.

Quilt #7 - Log Cabin

   We had a birthday party for a friend turning 5 years old.  I thought I would make her a doll sleeping bag and pillow, I didn't want to drag 4 kids to the store on a nice day, so I would use stuff in my stash.  I was going to do a simple pieced front.  I looked through the pattern books and I decided to do a log cabin. It would look funny with just the front pieced, so I did the whole thing.... Well after many changes, she got a doll sized quilt and a not quite square turned into a pillow.  I actually like how it turned out, even if it wasn't what I had originally planned.  I used all stuff in my stash and never went to the store.  It is about 30 inches square, and my piecing is getting MUCH better.

This is the pillow.

The back and binding uses more of the sparkly purple

It will still work for a sleeping bag, it just doesn't zip up.  This is why I didn't make it as such.  It doesn't look very good.

The picture of the machine quilting on the back, pretty simple.  It is some very thick fluffy batting, but it was what I had in the house and it just makes it nice and thick.