New Quilts in our house

My Mom is the gifter of quilts in our home. This year for my son's 5th birthday she made this super-cute froggie quilt. He loves it. I love the bright colors. It is fantastic for a little boy's room

A few days later another super-cute quilt arrived in the mail. This time for our 2 year old daughter who had recently moved into a big girl bed. It is a pattern of Dick and Jane fabrics.  As you can see our daughter was not so accommodating in allowing me to photograph her on her quilt.  She does love it and I do too.

Sadie's Quilt

 This is my niece Sadie's quilt.  It is a labour of love that began last summer and was conveniently ready for the Express Post mailing for Christmas this past week.  The pattern is called Broken Dishes.  I consider myself to be a new sewer, having only been sewing for about a year and a half (although, I'm sure 10 years down the road I'll still be considering myself a new sewer as I look in awe at some of the projects that people have done).  I'm very pleased with the way this turned out.  In truth, when I finished the quilt top, I was so in awe, I kept asking my husband to hold it out for me to view from the other side of the room.

 This quilt started in a fairly typical Kris fashion of me thinking, well, I could do that.  I fell in love with the pattern and found a tutorial at About.com quilting.  (Seriously, this is what I do, I have learned to sew by reading and watching online tutorials and asking my mom and my friend Jill questions over the phone and via Skype).  I have made Sadie a few other little things over the past few years and discovered from my sister-in-law that Sadie loves the homemade stuff.  (We live on different coasts of the country so it's nice, I think, to send a little bit of homemade from one home to another).  So after I made my bee quilt, I thought, I'd really like to made a quilt for Sadie.

 I had a lot of fun collecting all the fabrics for the quilt.  I knew instead of a stationary white, I wanted to use a variety of pinks.  I also knew that I wanted to back it with a soft flannel, so it would be cozy to snuggle up with.  The bolder prints are a variety of everything.  Sadie is 5, so I knew it should be something that would appeal to a little girl, but I didn't want it to be so little girl-ish that it would be too young for her quickly, I wanted it to be something that she can treasure as she grows up.  So there's really a bit of everything in there.  I found some fun polka-dots and cute little girl storybook prints.  I used a couple of fabrics that were the basis of the rag doll I made her for Christmas last year.  I also added in some of my 30's Storybook prints, the fabric from the dress I made my daughter last summer and other odds and ends that were sitting in my sewing box.  This quilt took a life of it's own.  Though it follows the Broken Dishes pattern, there is also the element of the Eye-Spy quilt as each block has a matching fabric pattern randomly scattered throughout to find.

I know the quilt is far from perfect, and I've already asked my sister-in-law not to look to closely as there are several mistakes in it.  It was a real lesson in sewing for me.  I did a lot of ripping out with this one, repiecing, and re-sewing.  And it really did come down to the wire.  I knew there was a deadline.  I wanted Sadie to open it on Christmas Eve and that to Express Post from where we are to where she is takes 3 business days, I had to have it packaged, addressed, and leaving the post office on Monday, knowing confidently that if it missed being delivered on Thursday, they could still pick it up on Friday (which is what happened).  The true test of my patience came on Saturday night as I was finishing what I thought was the second to last line of stitching, my needle broke.  Not only that, but it was my last sewing machine needle.  And I don't live in town.  Town is 30 minutes away and Sundays where we are, not everything is open.  Fortunately a lady in church heard my tale and 'happened' to have a stash of a variety of sewing machine needles, and offered to drop on by after service to see if she had what I needed.  (Never doubt that God answers prayer!).  I finished that afternoon with what was almost the last of my pink thread too!
The real joy came this past Christmas afternoon hearing my sister-in-law thank me for the quilt and tell me how much Sadie (and she) liked it.  I'm glad.  I'm also a little bit tickled because Andrea also mentioned how she wished we lived closer so I could teach her how to do stuff like that :)
The tutorial and pattern I used can be found here.  I did make this bigger that that as it is a quilt for a little girl, not a baby.  I made 8 squares for each row (64 squares total).  Each original square that got pieced off to be a 'broken dish' was 4"x4" instead of 3 7/8" x 3 7/8".
I hope you enjoy your quilt for years to come Sadie!

Homemade Advent Calendar

I've been wanting a proper Advent calendar for a little while now. I get frustrated with the "holiday" calendars that some out each year with the cheap chocolate for 32 days. I really don't know why they are 32 days (maybe someone can explain that to me). I've wanted one that lasts for 24 days. Counting down to Christmas. I wanted something that could have chocolate for each of my kids (3) as well as some way of showing the days beyond an empty square. I found this cute idea at Make It Do.Com. Hers is seriously cute and much more professional looking than mine. But I love mine! The backing is a Christmas style pajama fleece - the tree and red front are also in pajama fleece. The numbers on the pockets are in white felt. The tree and numbers are attached with heat and bond. The ornaments are hanging on little jingle bells (picked up on sale at Michael's!). Each pocket is large enough to hold 3 chocolates (the good kinds) and an ornament. I do have a layer of quilt batting in between the front and back.  My kids really love it (as does my husband).  I'm pretty impressed that I can make stuff like this now.  I've only been sewing for just over a year.  This didn't take me very long at all.  I worked on it for  a few nights.  I did hang it just out of my 22 month old daughter's reach.  It's a good thing too - she has come up to me a few times already saying, "Choc-it mama pease!"  and pointing to the calendar :)
 

What I'm working on

I'm taking advantage of our storm day home and chain sewing all kinds of triangles together. I'm really glad for it as these seemingly endless triangles are to be a Christmas gift for my niece this year. Just what is it exactly? Check back and see in another month, once it's done and properly arrived in the hands of its owner ;)

All My Squares

I finished cutting out my 30's quilt top this weekend and last night laid out all the squares to get a sense of randomness of the pattern. I had no idea that this quilt was going to be this big! It's so big! It's 15 x 15 with each square being 5 inches square. I know that it will shrink a little once it's all sewn together, but I really was surprised. Here's the randomness: I couldn't fit it all in the picture from either angle:

*please excuse the lack of light in the photo - these were taken last night at about 10pm.

Squares

 I finally cut into my 1930's storybook fabric.  I've been collecting it for about a year now, but didn't really know what I wanted to do with it.  I just knew I liked it and wanted to make a quilt out of it.  I finally decided on a simple patchwork style.  So now, I'm cutting squares, lots of squares, about 225 of them.  It's a good way to relax at the end of the day, just stream a movie from Netflix and cut away.  I found these gorgeous quilts from Film in the Fridge's blog so that's what I'm going for.  Here are 3 of her quilts - aren't they lovely?  I especially love her double angled quilting on the purple one.  I'd love to try that - we'll see if I get that ambitious!

Bee Quilt!

Here it is! My bee quilt in completion. I've been working on this on and off since February. This is my second quilt. The first was a baby quilt made from a quilt kit. This one I made from reading a lot of quilting books and online articles and by spending a number of conversations with my mom on Skype asking, "Is this right?" and "what do you suggest I do here?" type questions. I'm pretty happy with it. Looking at it, I feel like I accomplished what I wanted when I first bought the material last fall. I wanted the bee fabric featured. And I wanted the back material to become the frame of the front. I know it isn't perfect and I still have a lot to learn about sewing and quilting, but I feel good about this.

My bee quilt

A glimpse at the back

All folded up

Opinion Please

I've just cut out the quilt top for my first non-quilting kit quilt.  The only part I haven't done is cut out the rectangles for the border.  The directions need 40 3 1/4 by 5 1/2 squares.  I just don't know what material to use.  I have a yellow, but I don't know if it should be all yellow?  I still have enough of the other fabrics left to cut out some with those.  What do you think? 

My New Toy - a re-post

I did it. After how many years of hemming and hawing and saying I didn't need one and feeling intimidated at the thought of having one, I bought a sewing machine.

I'm really glad it came with a how to use DVD because the whole idea of this really intimidated me.  I walk into fabric stores and get a feeling that the people working there are looking at me and thinking "what is SHE doing here?  SHE doesn't belong".  But I also look at the beautiful things my mom and a few of my friends have made and long to be able to do that.  It irks me spending money to have Stitch It hem my husband's pants because I know it's probably a very easy thing to do yourself. 

Once I got past all that and dove in, it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.  And I really enjoyed it.  I can see how some people become addicted.  I made a little quilt from a quilt kit.  Here it is:

I know it isn't perfect, not even close really.  But I had fun.  I can see the mistakes and take from them all because this was my first project and the whole point was to learn.  And I learned a lot.  Here's a few things that came up:

-always put the presser foot down - that was a bit of a mess
-watch out for pins coming up the line (I broke a needle because of this)
-a rotary cutter is necessary if I want to make more quilts - I hand cut all the pieces and they were a bit of a mishmash
-check the piecing together part over - one row of blocks is backwards and the rows aren't straight

I actually didn't intend to make a quilt, I wanted to make O. some leggings, but I saw this kit and thought it would be a good little project for me. I really like how there are so many different textures in it for her little hands to explore. I think she likes it too.

Side note: The back is the green stripe flannel.  I just didn't take a picture of that.