Christmas and Halloween Countdown

One day my mom gave me a bunch of her old fabric. With the batch of fabric came a pattern book from Nancy Halverson. As soon as I saw it, I knew that I had to make my dream quilt, the Twelve Days of Christmas. It is on my list of dream quilts to make. I have been collecting fabric for it for a few years now. However, this post is not about my dream quilt. But, I have to share one more story, sorry. I served a mission for the LDS church in Uruguay several years ago. While I was there I bought a few gifts to bring home for my family from Uruguay. I brought home a little wood engine that I thought would match her decorations in the kitchen. It was a changeable calendar in Spanish. She actually put it out and would change the date on the engine. I was happily surprised. I tried to take a picture of it the last time I was at my mom's house and she has put it away. I will have to post a picture later.

So, in the same pattern book she gave me there was a Christmas countdown. It was kind of the same idea as the engine, but something that would be put out only at holidays. Since my mom loves Christmas I thought that it would be a great to make a set of the countdown Christmas numbers. So I probably spent a year working on this project. Other's got in the way and in the end I didn't even finish before giving it to my mom. Terrible huh. I have not finished the block that stays up the whole month and says Countdown To... I will have to get that done this year.

Then again...when I first gave it to my mom it was missing the 6 and it took me all of Oct. last year to get the 6 to her. Ah, some projects just take forever.

The last story I promise to share in this post it the following. Looking at this project really makes me sad. I started working on this while I was pregnant. At the time I would take all of my sewing stuff to my grandma's on Sat's while Russ was at work and work on my sewing projects. I started cutting out the numbers while i was at the farmer's market that summer selling baby blankets. When I think of working on this project I think of my grandma. I got out their old card table to sew on and sat there next to my grandma's arm chair sewing. I miss her terribly. I miss taking by all the projects that I am working on and showing them to her. I could go on and on about the things that I miss, but I won't.

Here is a picture of the holder my husband made with his welder and spray painted gold.
He used hot glue for the feet. I now need him to make me one. :)

Here are some of the Christmas numbers.

Here is the Halloween side.

When I made this set, I made a matching set for me. I however, have not finished sewing all the layers together on mine. Maybe I will finish it for Halloween this year.

Hope that you enjoyed.

4th of July pillows

I had a few blocks left over from my English paper piecing quilt. I have had them sitting on my table for a few weeks. Every time I see them I think about ways that I can use them. I have seen many different pieced pillows online when I have goggled English Paper Piecing.

So I decided to attach the blocks to a white background, added borders and sewed them to a back. As I was sewing the front I was realizing what a great quilt it would make with just the front of these pillows sewed together as blocks. I may need to do that with some fabric in the future.

After deciding to do pillows I realized I would need pillow forms. ya, they are not the cheapest things in the world. I got them on sale which was nice. However, that is when I realized that I was going to make sham and be able to change out the pillow covers along with my other seasonal decorations. It is a great use of small pieces of fabric that I don't know what to do with and don't want to store. So here they are. (The small one in the front is just stuffed an permanent.)Here is the back.Hope that you enjoyed!

Madalynn's room completely finished

So remember the pictures that I posted a while ago of Madalynn's room, well all the unfinished parts are finished, new projects added and while she is in her third bedroom in her 12 1/2 months of life, she has always adjusted well to our moves.

When Russ first put the shelf up he told me that part of the back had torn out and that one of the screws was not in a stud in the wall. He told me that I should not put any weight on it besides what I was planning on decorating with. Well, unfortunately when I was adding the large butterflies one night I put my hand on the shelf, in a moment of complete forgetfulness. The shelf fell of the wall. The hanging letters all fell to one side putting the weight off balanced. I managed to catch the left picture between my arm and the shelf, the glass flower vase between my head and my shoulder and all the rest in my left hand. I yelled so loud for Russ to come help me, that Madalynn who had walked in just then started screaming. Russ thought that she had been hurt and was checking her as I am telling him to grab the picture that is falling and I can't hold anymore. If it had fallen it would have fallen on the edge of her bed and probably broken all over. It was really funny. So, here it is..all finished!!! If you want a closer look just click on the picture.

I finished the letters and hung them up on the shelf Russ made for her. I painted them pink and then used embossing powder, acrylic stamps, a heat gun and brown chalk to decorate them. I first chalked around the edges. Then I added all of the white and brown patterns. I then took the same stamp and turned it around and around and added clear embossing to the rest. I really like how it looks like the wood had its own printed design all over. I love the feel of the design popping out. You can't see it really well in the picures, sorry.
When I had Madalynn, my brother and sister-in-law brought flowers to the hospital. They were in that vase. I have kept the vase in the hope I would find some use for it and sure enough, I thought it would look great with some flowers I found in my craft box. It was really fun to put together.
One night when I came home from work, Russ had been to the craft store without me and bought the pink azalea flowers. I quickly added them to the shelf and I was super thrilled.
I have always loved butterflies and for some reason this is the year of butterflies. Every store has butterfly decorations, butterfly baby clothes.... Well, I decided to add them to the shelf. I think the reason that I like butterflies so much is that they are such magical creatures. They are a part of nature but they flit in and out and they are just so beautiful with their varying varieties. It is kind of like rainbows. They are so beautiful and very rare. So, without doing any princess themes or stuff like that, I found a theme to add that is easy and fun to change around. I found a bright orange paper that I was going to use to decorate the front of her doll cabinet and I decided that I would take some of Russ' scrap wood and make a peg hanger with it. We have been so blessed with Madalynn to have all sorts of people give us clothes for her. She has an abundance of jackets and sweaters and they don't fit well in her drawer so i thought it would be nice to hang them up.I also bought a fun butterfly hanger at Rod Works to add to the theme of the room.
Last but not least, I added one more pillow to her rocking chair. I bought this pillow at a yard sale last summer. It used to see a brown swede. I learned how to make my own cording and I sewed it into the pillow. The fabric is the same as the lamp shade and the toy box cushion to tie that fabric into the room. I love how it turned out.
Well, hope that you enjoyed the progress. I am excited that it is finished.