Christmas Dresden

I have wanted to make a dresden quilt forever!!!  Seriously.  I have pinned more dresden quilts than any other kind of quilt.  About a year ago I bought one of those easy dresden acrylic templates.  After reading several tutorials over the past few weeks, I also watched this youtube tutorial by the Missouri Star Quilt Company.  http://youtu.be/lcy_p4pryE4

Anyways, this is a short post because I have to go get the kids out of bed and to the babysitter this morning before I head to work.  I decided it was time to try on of these quilts last night.  Soooooo, about 9:30pm I got out my Christmas Fabric.  Yes, I always sew really late.  It is the only time I have.  I ironed, picked out fabric, reviewed the tutorial, cut a 5 inch strip of fabric from 6 different fabrics and got going.  The chain sewing of each individual piece certainly made the sewing of 100 different blades go super fast.  At 10:15 I was ready to iron all those pieces which took about 20 minutes by the time I turned each one of them out.  I sewed one block together and ironed.  I pull out some white fabric to lie it on and here we are!!!!

I didnt' find my instructions sheet until later last night.  It has the template for the middle circle.  Mine turned out a 1/4 in bigger than the template.  Do you think it looks too big on the block?  I already whip stitched it to the block, but that only took 2 minutes so it is easy to pull off if i want to change it.  Whatever i decided on this one, I would follow on the other blocks.  I am planning on a small 4 block quilt.  I am also going to cut a set of smaller blades to make one Christmas quilt pillow cover like this.  Now, that will be super super cute!!!  I am so excited.  Now that I look at the picture again I wonder whether I should pull the center off all together and make it white.  I think I have enough of the fabric I used for the center circle to make the border for my quilt. That would be beautiful.  I want it to pop and when I look at the previous picture and this one the middle pops more when there isn't anything in there.  I really like that I chose the white background.  I was going to choose and off white fabric to match the tons of all the pieces in the block, but I love the white.

At the end of each night...that moment when all I want to do is go hop in bed, I always make sure to put away my rotary cutter and my scissors.  A curious 4 1/2 yr old is certain to hurt herself if she wakes up early and I leave them around.  I either lock them in my sewing box or put them on the top of my fridge.  Safety is a priority as a mother and I am always checking the kitchen to see what they could get into.  I have to mention that this is the child that would always find the one cleaner I left out when she was a young toddler.  Sadly, her dad taught her how to spray a water bottle when she was super little.  I called poison control many, MANY times when she was a toddler.  They are the most amazing people ever!!!  They are there to make sure that you and your child are fine and they often call for follow ups.  I like them more than my actual doctor sometimes and I love our pediatrician.

Anyways, random...Hope you enjoyed.

Remington's Bed room

Well, I am playing blog catch up and posting pictures of past projects.  Remington's room is going to be awesome...in a couple years.  Right now I just did his curtains, table runner for his dresser and his crbi quilt.  We are going to be building him a loft bed...like his sister.  Ugh.  I don't even think I have ever posted pictures of her castle bed, but I will.  I am hoping someday to have some time to refinish the dresser in his room to look like older wood and match the tree house.  It is an amazing dresser that we got to keep when my grandparents passed away.  We used the mirror that was a attached for a framed mirror in our half bath.

The quilt was time consuming and somewhat frustrating.  I originally started quilting it with swirls.  I hated it!!!  I took four months to unpick it while I sat at work and then did a stipple stitch.  I LOVE it now.  It was totally worth the work.

The back is one of my favorite parts.

The quilt is a tumbler block design.  I made a small pinterest board dealing with tumbler blocks when I was researching quilt patterns for his bed.

We are going to be building him a tree house.  It will have a rope ladder, murals on the wall, a full tree built into the corner of the room.  I am currently collecting material to make log pillows and such.  It is going to be fun.

The curtains are lined with a heavy dark denim on the back.  When I was sewing them, I couldn't find the dark green corduroy that I have been using on all our curtains to make them more black out.  I love how these turned out.  I am imagining some kind of tree looking or wood curtain rod when we finish his room.  Russ says he will start his room when we put him in a toddler bed.  We won't put him in a toddler bed until he starts climbing out of the crib or he starts nighttime potty training...so basically probably another year.



Hope you enjoyed.

My 1st purple quilt

I have been collecting purple fabric forever. It has always been in the back of my mind to find a pattern that I really liked for it. So, it did take me by surprise when i was frantically looking for a pattern the other day and I re-found this pattern that I had bought. Yep, I am still in love with it. (I did change and add an extra flower on the large flower applique and I like it a lot better with the buttons that I chose.)That is when I realized that all I needed to be able to make this quilt was a lighter fabric with sparce print. yep, I went over to my favorite quilting store and asked them to help me find a white fabric with a small sparce purple print and this was the only one that they had in stock. The pattern called for 1 5/8 yd of fabric and that was EXACTLY what they had left on the bolt. (which of course meant that I got it off 10% for finishing the bolt.) Then I went to Abby's house for a sewing day and after a while of trying to decided what purple fabrics I was going to use, here is what I chose and how the top turned out.
It took me forever to decide on the inner border fabric. I had all sorts of shades and hues of fabrics, but I think that the light purple helps draw away from the darker colors in the middle and get ready for the really pretty border. So the reason that I finally decided to start working on this quilt is kind of interesting. I was looking at my blog stats the other day. My most viewed post is my post on Back Porch Bouquet fabric. I thought that was interesting because it has been a while since that line of fabric has been in the stores and yet I still have at least one search for that on my blog a day. So, I was looking at the pattern and had remembered the purple pattern I posted and went and looked at it. It is simply too modern for me.

I am waiting for a new book to arrive. I finally ordered 501 Quilting Motifs. I really hope that it is all that the reviews say it is. When I get it this week I will certainly have to do my own review. It is supposed to have great diagrams and instructions on some different quilting designs. I am waiting to decide how to quilt this quilt so I can try something new and interesting. We will see how it goes.

I have been making quilts and wall hangings to put up on my ladder that I can change out monthly. I am going to be making a hexagon purple quilt here in a little bit. So I am deciding the month that I would put purple up in. I have though about maybe Sept or April or May. April usually has Easter so I think I would put up spring colors then. I will put up fall colors in Nov and so I am not sure yet what to do with Sept. Back to school colors? That would just be weird. Fun random quilts, that might be likely. Ah...I just love creating things and so it won't really matter, but it is fun to think about.

Hope that you enjoyed my new project.

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!

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.

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.

Memory Quilts

Wow, my last post was my hundredth post. I can't believe that I have written that much on this blog. I hope that my ramblings are not too much, but it is nice to keep track of what I am up to. Having noticed that I have posted that many times made me think about the memories that I have since starting this post. It is interesting.

As I have read different blogs online and talked with various people on etsy, twitter, quilter's club of america, facebook and similar sights I have learned that there are all sorts of memory quilts. There are the type where you use photos and old clothes. There are the types that you spend so much time on that they become a part of you over the years and it is somewhat bittersweet when you finish the quilt. For me, I think that a memory quilt can be anything with which I can associate any strong memories. The following quilt made me think about this when I went to bed last night and I was putting the blanket back on the bed so I could stay warm.

This tie quilt was probably the first thing that I made when Russ and I first got married. In fact I also made Russ a dark green and black one, but I simply don't know where that is. I think that it must be in a box out in our storage unit because I could not find it in the boxes here at our apartment. I remember going to the fabric store in Las Vegas with my in-laws and Russ. We had just been to a sporting goods store that was going out of business to see if they were selling the racks that the store used to hang things on. I remember sitting on the floor at my in-laws tieing it for a whole day on their newly tiled floor. It was one of the only three Christmas's that we actually have spent in Vegas. It has been hard to visit for holidays since Russ got on at the post office because his co-worker always takes the day before and after a holiday off and he is the sub that has to work for her. I remember my hand cramping because I was trying to finish them that day so I would not have to bring them home to work on them. I remember my brother-in-law asking me for the first and certainly not the last time why I would spend so much time working on a project like that. I told him that it makes me happy and it is fun and relaxing. That is why I do any craft.(By the way for anyone that does not know how to make this kind of quilt you simply line up a front and a back. I made this out of fleece. Then you cut slits in the side fabric and you make a square knot. It is super easy and fun and only requires fabric and scissors.)

Now I use it on my bed as a second layer under the comforter to keep me warm. Russ could sleep with a sheet on almost all year long and no other layers, and yet it is nearly summer and I am still sleeping under multiple layers. Until we got new quilts and blankets in the living room, I would always get it out to stay warm while I read a book or watched a movie.

When we were first married, before I let Russ put a TV in our bedroom, he would fall asleep on the couch a lot watching TV and I would go and put his blanket on him in the middle of the night and turn off the TV. After that I let him put a TV in our bedroom, but he can watch for no longer than 45 minutes and the timer on the TV must be on so it turns off after we are asleep. He is so much better about it now that he rarely uses the TV in the bedroom and always gets to bed after watching a show.

It may seem crazy that such a quilt seems to important to me, but it is important. I have the worst memory ever. Unless I write something down, I don't remember a lot of memories. So, to have a memory about making it, and where it has been since is nice. Off course it shows me that my fascination with butterflies is not just a passing whimsy now since 4 years ago I was already fascinated with them.Well, hope that you enjoyed my ramblings. Until next time.

Fall and Christmas--officially finished

Yes, I finally finished my fall and christmas quilts. I am super excited. I had the tops done for over a year before I got them quilted and then it took several more months for me to take the time to sew on the binding. It is awesome. Well here they are. The only complaint that I have is that I forgot to put on my paper not to quilt on the applique on the Christmas quilt and she quilted on it. Yuck! But that was my fault for forgetting to write it down. From now on I am going to quilt my own things with my darning foot, so I won't have this problem anymore.

Here is the quilt. If you look back about 10 or so posts I have a wall hanging with ornaments that matches the quilt. I am excited to put them up together this year. I have only been wanting to get this quilt finished for almost 2 years now.
Madalynn's was helping me take pictures first thing this morning. She was really smiling when I push the button to take the picture, but my camera takes forever to take a shot so this is what I got. It is a really funny picture.
Afterwards she really wanted to help me put the quilt away.
Here is my fall quilt. I made it from a pattern called Chatterbox.
Madalynn thought that the quilt was a great play mat and I let her play on it for a while this morning.
Here is the back. It has the same border as the front. I just thought that that would be fun to have them kind of match...that and I didn't want to cut the inside fabric anymore.
Hope that you enjoyed!

My summer quilt

I got this quilt kit from Shayla Bott. I love it!!! Unfortunately while I was finishing some other projects it sat in my to-do box at the bottom for over a year. It is kind of sad when that happens and you want to get to a project.

One day right after we moved into our current apartment, Madalynn was sleeping and I was cleaning out all the craft stuff that I actually have at the house. I saw it in the bottom of the box. I decided that I would take a look at the pattern again and see exactly what i needed to do and gauge the time that it would take to make it. Ya, two days later I had sewed the top, appliqued on the flowers and finished stitching them. Shayla has a blanket stitch on her machine and I am so grateful that she let me borrow it to stitch on the applique. Honestly, it would take much longer without steam a seam 2. They now sell it by the yard and not just in 8 1/2 by 11 sheets. This is so wonderful. I don't have so many tiny little pieces left over anymore.

I wanted to get started on the backing and quilt it by myself with my darning foot, but I have decided that I will get to that this fall when I take it down. Right now it is on my quilt ladder adorning my family room and adding brightness to my day every time that I look at it.

This quilt used the pattern In Bloom by the Crazy Old Ladies and I don't know all the fabric lines in the quilt because I got it as a kit but I know that some of them are from Neutral Territory by Terry Atkinson and Liz Lois for Red Rooster Fabrics.


This is a picture of the flower closer up. The picture turned when it came into my post and I don't know how to turn it here, but I am not going to take the time to do it again. Sorry. I think that the flowers turned out soooo good.Hope that you enjoyed.

Madalynn's Room- the almost complete version

Ah...during Christmas break I determined that I could not work on the babies room until I had finished working on all my unfinished projects. So, I made a list of projects and went down that list one by one. They were mostly wall hangings that I needed to put backs on, sew and bind. Most everything required stitching around the applique and so I borrowed my friends sewing machine that had a blanket stitch and sewed for a straight 5 days and finished my list. It was wonderful.

During that time, I was looking for a pattern to make the babies quilt out of. I walked into the Quilting Cottage in American Fork, Ut and I saw a quilt. I drew the design on a paper and asked if I could have a ruler to measure the blocks. It was a finished quilt on the wall and there was no pattern, thank heaven, or I don't think that they would have let me measure the quilt and made me buy the pattern. It was easy to figure out, and i am proud to say that I sewed my first quilt without a pattern!!!! I knew that I could do that. So many quilt blocks are made in similar ways and i am learning more and more the more small quilts that I sew. So....here is her quilt!!

Sorry. I know that that is not the best picture, but it is going to have to do for now. I went into the babies room while she was sleeping and turned on the lights for this post. She is really out because she did not even wake up as I made quite a lot of noise. I decided that for each of my children I was going to make a crib quilt as theirs to keep when they are older. I had it machine quilted by a worker at the Quilting Cottage. Because her middle name is Azalea, I had her put huge flowers in and this is what they look like.
Oh I love them!!! They turned out so perfect. I have not finished the bumper but it is going to have the fabric from the light border on the outside and the same blocks, just a bit bigger turned on the inside. I am going to use a bumper that my husband's sister-in-law gave me and recover it. I will post pictures when I ever get to it. Hopefully soon, since she has started rolling and now sleeps in her crib.

My second project was this basket cover. I used the same fabric that I used to re-cover the car seat (which I need to post pictures of. I think that it turned out quite good.) I had bought a lot of this fabric. I have found many uses for it already. A year ago I saw this fabric on a sight on-line. It is a Michael Miller fabric. At the time I thought, "I should buy some of this fabric because I would love to use it to make a diaper bag when I have a baby." Little did I know that we would be pregnant 4 months later and a year later they are still printing the same fabric. It is awesome. I made up the dimensions for sewing and the idea from a few different covers that I saw in the stores the week that I made it. I am really excited out how it turned out.
After working on the basket, I looked at the dresser that we were going to use for her. It was originally my dresser from before we were married. When i bought it it was a light pink color. Russ painted it with wall paint from our first place because he didn't like the color. However, he didn't use primer and the paint is chipping off. I was looking at all my scrap fabric that I keep moving from house to house and decided that I needed to make something with my fabric. The following table runner to cover the dresser emerged. I really should take the whole thing off and take a good picture. I love it!!! Just look through many of the other pictures and you can see parts.
In this picture you will also see other objects that I used in her room. I wanted objects in her room that with will remind her of the things that are the most important to her in her life. I think that it is important to have a picture of Christ in her room so that she can look on him often and learn that she is loved by him. There are also three other willow tree figurines (that will eventually be on the shelf that you will see in a little bit and not on the dresser.) One is of an angel praying, so that she can remember to always pray for help and guidance. The other is of a man holding his child. I bought this for Russ and gave it to him as a present on the day that the baby was due and didn't come. The first time that I ever saw my husband hold a child, he held his first nephew like this and held him for hours and just stared at his every feature. I wanted my daughter to know that this is how I saw her father the first time holding an infant and how I knew that he would hold and care for his own daughter. The other figurine is a mother and a father holding their child. Russ gave this to me a few days after Madalynn was born for my first mother's day. Here it portrays us a family and how we want to always be--close and loving.

Russ made the following items for her bedroom. An ABC block for storage. It is really nice and has a nice divider for me to put small items on the side. It is not finished quite yet. I didn't get him a font to put the letters on before Madalynn was born, because I wanted to make sure it really was a girl first. I know, silly silly. I had only seen her being a girl 4 times before I had her, but I was still uncertain.This toy box is already full of toys thanks to Madalynn's grandparents and other gifts. I made the cushion for the seat out of some fabric that Russ' grandma gave me last April that I found in a box. I love the pattern and I am glad that I have been going through my fabric boxes to get rid of what I will never use, so that I found it. My mom provided the pillow forms when she gave me some of her old fabric last summer and I found them in a box too and used some more of the Michael Miller fabric to cover them. Sorry about the bag on the box. I didn't want to move it in fear of waking the baby up tonight. We are still working on making it child safe and finding some hydrological hinges or something to make sure that the lid does not slam down and hurt a child.

I just couldn't resist putting this picture in the post. Russ took a picture with the baby on the box right before we moved out of our last place. I hadn't finished anything yet obviously. Ah, my husbands little doll. The best story of putting together the babies room is the story of the ottoman that Russ made for me. I knew that I would need one to use the glider that I bought at a garage sale 5 years ago. The chair has the straightest back and it not very deep. So to sit in it and hold a baby would be hard. So I told him that it would be nice to make an ottoman or buy one. Well, one day while Russ was delivering mail he saw an old Glider in an irrigation ditch that had been partially burned when the farmer had burned the weeds. He went back that afternoon and got it out, took off the top of the chair, sanded down the burnt wood and painted it to cover up the other flaws. I had some upholstery fabric and part of the cushion left from making the toy seat cover and we put it on the top. I think that we did a decent job and here it is--a great big, wide ottoman finished for just the cost of the paint.

Just as I am thinking that I have been typing for 30 minutes and posting pictures----you must also be thinking is this post ever going to end...... Well, there is so much more in sight. Now that I am taking pictures and realizing just how much I have done for her room and the small details that I have made I am really in awe. I just had to run back upstairs for a couple other pictures that I missed on the first trip.

I realized that I really wanted some wall decor and a lamp for going into her room at night and not turning on the room light. Since her middle name is Azalea, I thought that it would be nice to have pictures of an Azalea in bloom to represent the birth of new life and a picture of the flower open, vivid, and beautiful to show the growth of a child and their beautiful potential in life. The buds are a photo that I bought off etsy from Nadine and Kathleen. We cut it down to put in the frame. The larger photo we actually got from Wikipedia.The lamp was a journey. I was looking for a fun and different lamp bottom. I would stop at yard sales and look in every store from DI to consignment stores to Walmart and Smith's Marketplace. I finally found it in this totally run down and dingy store that I swear has been buying everyones junk at yard sales forever. The lamp shade that came with it was horribly hideous. I should have taken a picture, but I just threw it out. We spray painted the base a pink color...then I decided that that might be a bit too bright so we rubbed it with white paint.

I bought a lamp shade eventually for super cheap and decided after seeing lots of cute lamp shades in many consignment stores around American Fork that I could add some fabric to the shade to tie it into the fabrics and theme of the room. So, I cut out the fabric, used some spray adhesive and put it on.
Here is what it looked like before we rubbed on the white paint.And here it is after the paint. Of course now that it is finished I realize my one big huge flaw.....the fabric is an off-white and the base is a white. Eventually I will have to do something about that. It looked better just plain pink to me and maybe I will just spray it again later on. Many people have given us hair bows and headbands for the baby. I have seen some letter holders for clipping on the bows and so I bought this wood letter and covered it with scrapbook paper, chalked the edges with pink chalk, had Russ drill a hole for the peg to hold the headbands and had him staple on ribbons. It will eventually be hung on the wall over a round drawer knob and I will take pictures when we finally get it up.
I wanted some cute fabric boxes to hold her diapers, wipes and soaps. I decided that I would look online and see if I could find some cheap ones to buy and found a tutorial on Sew4Home that I decided to use instead. This project required some cardboard and fabric. Since we just moved, I had plenty of cardboard boxes I could cut up. The thing that I like the most about these boxes is that they completely collapse. The bottoms come out and the side fold in. That way I can store them a lot easier than i could if they were baskets. Bonus!! I made a mistake in measuring the middle one and so it was one inch smaller than I wanted, but that happens.
The following picture is a picture of a shelf that I bought at a garage sale that has a dowel that will have a wall hanging on it that I am finishing right now and the picture of Christ on the top and the willow tree figurines. This was my first project ever spray painting. I didn't know that I could be so terrible at something. However, there were tons of runs in the paint and Russ eventually sanded it down and re-painted it. It is going to be great. The letters Russ made. I cut out letters from a font on my circut machine and we traced them onto a board. Russ bought a jigsaw and we cut them out and sanded them. We are priming them right now and eventually they are going to be spray painted the same colors as the ABC block. They will be hung with ribbons stapled on them. The ribbons will be painted as well. Russ is going to make a second, much longer shelf for the wall that the letters will hang from. On that shelf the two photos of the flowers will sit. I am really excited for this project to be finished. It is the last that I am planning for the babies room besides finishing a bumper for the crib.

Here is Russ working on the letters :)Here I am after using a power tool to create something for the first time in my life. It was a practice letter and it turned out ok. We learned tools are made for right handed people. When i leaned over to look at what I was doing, the fan blew saw dust in my eyes and it was blinding. It took Russ a while to try to figure out why I kept getting saw dust in my eyes, even with glasses on. I thought it was funny afterward.
For her car seat, we bought a used car seat cover off ebay, washed it and I took it apart. I sewed fabric onto the top of the pieces and put it back together. Here is the finally product.
I also made a car seat canopy. Here it is.
Her room:

The ABC box is between the dresser and her crib. And here is my little on in her crib asleep for the night :)
And here is a picture of my little one at 3 1/2 months old..and just as happy as can be. She is the reason for all this work and it has been fun. Keep tuned in...the rest of the room should be ready and up in a couple week.