Thursday, June 30, 2011

Finished! Toomuchery quilt

So i was impatient and found some backing fabric last night for my quilt and quilted it last night with a quick and easy stitch in the ditch. I didn't think that anything more complicated would help enhance this quilt. I sewed the binding on today while I was at work. For the backing I just found some fabric that doesn't necessarily match but something I didn't mind where it went. I actually think it turned out pretty nice. I know that it doesn't look like much more than the quilt did as a top, but it feels sooo much nicer with batting and a binding.
While I was waiting for my friend to come home, I was playing in my friends backyard with Madalynn and she decided that the quilt was a blanket and was playing with it. I just couldn't help but add a picture of the fun that she had with the quilt.Hope that you enjoyed!

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Toomuchery quilt

While I was at the store the other day buying safety pins to help me sew the back on my levi/fourth of July quilt and I was looking for a few green fabrics for my whimsical garden quilt. I have scraps for the whole quilt, but I have never really bought green fabrics and there is going to need to be some green for the stems of the flowers.

While I was looking for green fabric I saw something that I could not pass up. The following quilt was made from a panel fabric with added borders. The fabric line is printed by P&B Textiles and is called Toomuchery by Helen Dardik and Lilla Rogers studio. The whole line is awesome!
The whole quilt top took 30 minutes from cutting, sewing on the borders to ironing the finished product. I can't wait until Friday when i have the day off and I can take the time to get everything out of Madalynn's closet and find fabric for the back. Then I will sew it and bind it and it will be a great addition to my living room. I think that it will look great next to my whimsical quilt next summer. Ya, I am pretty much in love with it.

Hope that you enjoyed.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Homemade do it yourself bow maker

After doing some research a while ago on the internet and watching all sorts of bow making ideas with forks, bowdabra's and such, I saw an idea that made me excited. It seemed that people had done all sorts of things to get the width that they needed for a bow. I had my husband use his tools, some scraps from house projects and this is what he made. I love it! The only difference i would make is that we did it really fast late one night and the holes are not exactly straight up and down. As you will see that doesn't matter, but it would be nice.

Supplies needed:
Some kind of board I used a 2 by 4
Two dowels
Drill

Draw a straight line down the middle of the board. Measure two dots 2 inches away from each other. Then depending on how many bow sizes you would like to make you draw dots 1/2 in away from the original dots. These will make 2in, 2 1/2in, 3in bows etc. I have made holes for up to a 4in bow. Choose a drill bit the size of your dowel width and drill in the holes. This is what my board looks like

To make the bow you need the following supplies:
Ribbon for the bow (see the bottom of the post for lengths needed for each size bow)
Small 1/8in wide ribbon to tie
4 1/2 inches 3/8in grosgrain ribbon
Scissors
Lighter
Glue gun
Hair clip- alligator clip, or barrette

Here is a video demonstration making a 2 inch bow:

This is a video of me attaching a bow to the alligator clip. I unfortunately called my glue gun a heat gun during the video. Sorry, but know that I am using a glue gun.

Lengths of ribbon needed for each size bow:
2" bow: 11 1/2" ribbon
2 1/2" bow: 16 1/2" ribbon
3 " bow: 21 1/2" ribbon
3 1/2" bow: 26 1/2" ribbon
4" bow: 31 1/2" ribbon
just add five inches to each length for 1/2" size of bow.

Hope that you enjoyed.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

My whimsical garden

So, I have seen this pattern at the Quilting Cottage in American Fork for a while. I haven't really liked it before. Mostly, I just knew that the whole quilt was applique and would take a while. Well, the last time I went in there, I couldn't resist and I bought the pattern. I spent 3 hours yesterday copying the pattern and cutting out the pattern for the applique on the blocks and only finished cutting out 9 blocks of the pattern. So, hence...a long project. However, I am stocked!!! I am going to use scraps from all my bright colored quilts. I think that I have decided that I am going to use a white background for the blocks and the borders are going to be orange and I haven't decided on a second color. I think I will see how the blocks turn out first before deciding on a second color. As I work on each block I will post the finished products. I searched the internet for pictures of finished quilts last night and could only find a handful. Here is the picture from Pieces o-Cake website (the ladies that designed it).

Can you see this hanging on my wall come next summer (for even if I finish the top I don't think that I will finish the whole quit this summer) Well, here we go on a long project.

Hope that you enjoyed.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Drawstring Bags

So, Friday night I was at dinner with my brother and sister-in-law. She is in charge of a girls camp for the young women in her ward (church group). They had ordered some mesh bags for mess kits. However, the lady that ordered them didn't measure the kits that they had bought and the mesh bags were way too small. My sister-in-law was worried about getting new ones since yesterday was all taken up with my grandma's funeral. (yes, I have not been sewing much for over a week since my grandma started getting really bad a week and a half ago and then passed away from her cancer. It has been a very emotional week.)

So I suggested she come over and look at my canvas fabrics and I could whip some up in a few hours...which I did. 16 later here they are:

I know that they were not very perfect and they had lots of mistakes, but they will work. Since they needed to be done when they leave at 6:30 tomorrow morning they didn't need to be really extra perfect. I think that the fabric is really cute and will be really fun so their camp week.
Hope that you enjoyed.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The internal debate

As a crafter I think that often times people start projects and don't finish a project before they move onto other projects. Sometimes I don't finish because I simply loose interest, sometimes I don't have all the supplies to finish and need to get to the store, and sometimes I just don't know exactly how I want to finish it.

The last few weeks while I have had quite a bit of home-time I have found the extra time and energy to finish bunches of projects. I am determined to finish two more before I move onto my new projects and I am simply stuck. I am in one of those stages of not knowing exactly what I want to do with a project. I am working really hard to decide. Remember this quilt?I finally cut out some stars to applique in various places through the quilt, I just can't decide how to place them, because I can't decide whether I want to try and quilt it on my sewing machine or just tie it. I really want to decide this today or tomorrow night because Russ is out of town and if I am going to tie it right now would be the perfect time to set up my frame to tie it. Russ doesn't mind if I set projects up in the house, but he doesn't like them up too long. Since this is my last free week until August I would need to finish it this weekend or not work on it until August.

With the stars, I have not ironed these on so I can move them. If I tie it I will put them in close sections all over. If I quilt it I want to have space to sew a couple stars around the individual stars for some added dimension. Therefore, the stars would not be so close together. Or the last idea that I have for quilting around the stars is to only quilt star shapes around the circumference of a larger area of stars and not around each individual star. I don't know if that makes sense...but it does to me.

What does you think? If I tie it, I will be using dark navy yarn (in fact the same yarn I used on the levi quilt I posted a couple weeks ago.) Should I quilt it? Ah....the decisions. The idea of how to make it came together so much better than the finishing the project, but I MUST finish. This is my goal.

Hope that you enjoyed.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Shayla's Table Runner

So, as part of my posting recently I have been needing to post pictures of all my projects since I didn't post them this last year. As I was thinking about all my projects, I remembered this table runner and alas I found that I never took a picture of it. So, Shayla was so great and pulled it out for me and let me take a picture yesterday.

This table runner was made from a fat quarter packet I picked up at JoAnn's. They have this little section called fabric central and they have a pattern and then some precut fat quarters, charm packets or jelly rolls that you can use to make the pattern. I love the colors of this table runner so much.
To quilt it, I just did a stitch in the ditch design since it was pretty easy and quick and holds the layers nicely together.

Hope you enjoy.