Stashing and Scrapping

Aren't these fabrics so cute?  Pearl Bracelet from Lizzy House, ordered from Sew Mama Sew.  I love these and decided to add to my stash - thinking of course of possible use in a baby quilt.  From the top are Essex yarn dyed in Flax, Crosshatch from Architextures in peach,  pearl bracelet in Persimmon, Watermelon, Peach, Ice skate, Glacier, Citron and Verbena. 

 We have had yet another snow storm - hit on Palm Sunday, and snowed a little all day Monday too,  8" of heavy wet snow.  So tired of the cold and snow and ready for Spring.  I'm thinking the Easter Bunny may need his Snowshoes :>)

Since my studio is in an outbuilding rather than in my house, this meant I had to once again dig out the snow boots and heavy coat to get over to sew. 

 

 

I had been blog surfing the other day and ran across this X Plus quilt.  It was big back in 2011, but somehow I missed it then. Badskirt Amy had a tutorial to make it,   I fell in love with the design and decided to try piecing a few blocks - Ha!  It is addictive.  And you think you are going to use up scraps , but uh, no, not so much. 

I started out doing pretty well with using scraps but then started cutting pieces to go with scraps... but I LOVE how the design is so interesting with the grid and the X's.

I have 12 blocks pieced now and am loving all the fun scrappiness (sorry for the bad photo).  Hope to get more done today. 

Thanks for stopping by, stop back to check on the progress of the X Plus.

Ethan's Quilt

I finished this quilt in a rush right before Christmas and realized that I need to post pictures of Ethan's I Spy quilt.  I had made a small baby quilt for Ethan when he was born.  But now he is 4 and has been sleeping in a big boy bed so he needed a bigger quilt. 

This quilt began with lots of super cute fabrics.  All kinds of fun "boy" things included.  Ethan's room is blue, so the fabrics focused on blues with lots of red and yellows and a few greens added.

This is a close-up showing the quilting.  I used a walking foot and straight line quilting 1/4" on either side of the ditch between the squares.  I have enjoyed reading the http://www.redpepperquilts.com/  blog for a long time.  Rita, of Red Pepper Quilts does a lot of quilts with squares and uses this quilting technique with stitching on either side of the seam lines and I really like the look of it.   So I decided to use this technique on Ethan's quilt.  It also kept it so the fabrics/prints are the most important thing, rather than the quilting being too busy.

Ethan's baby quilt had minky on the back, and he loved it.  So it was a no brainer that the I Spy quilt have minky on the back.  I was a bit concerned because the minky is so slippery, and can get wrinkles in it.  The quilt is 62" x 74".  So it was very large too.  I ended up pinning the minky to the carpet with straight pins, nice and smooth.  I then sprayed it with the June Tailor basting spray (from Joanns) carefully layed the batting on the back smoothing it out, and then spray basting the batting and laying the pieced top on it and smoothed it all out.  It was completely stuck together - no pins whatsoever!  I quilted the entire quilt on my Juki and the quilt stayed together throughout the entire quilting process - and there were no wrinkles or puckers on the back. 

 I was on a tight timeline to get the quilt done before the grandkids were coming for Christmas.  I had worked hard to get all the cleaning and grocery shopping done before some bad weather hit, so that I could work on the quilting during the storm (2 days before our family Christmas).  The storm hit, ice, snow and high winds, and I got to my studio, got bobbins all wound, everything set up and ready and started stitching, and quilted for 15 min. or so when all of a sudden the machine stopped - the electricity had gone out!  I was so upset and frustrated.  Just had to wait till power came back on.  It did finally come back on a few hours later,  and I got right back to the quilting and got it all done in time before the grandkids got here :>)

Ethan, loved the quilt, and even brings it with him when he comes to Grammy's house.  It's really fun to look at all of the fabrics, some of Ethan's favorite super heros, construction vehicles, bugs and animals... 

Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed seeing Ethan's quilt.  I have been finishing a lot of quilts in the past few months (It's been a long winter), so I plan to show more quilts in the upcoming weeks.  So please stop back.

Oh Baby

 

 

I can't believe how long it's been since my last post.  Been busy around here with our latest project.  My middle daughter (the one that got married last Oct.) is now pregnant!  We are all so excited!  They just had the 20 week ultrasound, and as you can see the baby is pretty cute :>)

Kelly is finally getting a bit of a baby tummy and was having a terrible time finding pants to fit.  So we did some remodeling of some old jeans she had.  I got some 2 -way stretch knit at Joanns and made a stretch panel, I cut off the old waistband, sewed the zipper shut and then sewed the stretch panel onto the top of the jeans.  They fit her perfectly and she is so excited because they are comfortable.

While I was at Joanns I found some shirting that was cute so I decided to make a maternity shirt for her.

This is how it turned out (I don't have the buttons on yet though).  I think it is so cute.  Unfortunately you can't get the full effect since my dress form doesn't have a baby bump :>)

This is the back of the shirt, I added darts.  Kelly thought a little shape to the back might help downplay her hips.  Kelly's husband Doug told her the other day he thought she was getting her "birthing hips".  Of course she is telling us this story and we are all looking at Doug, amazed Doug is still able to walk.  So now she is trying to hide the "birthing hips", just had to laugh at that one.

Detail of the pintucks on the front, they kind of blend in with the stripe in the fabric.  Overall, I am very happy with how the shirt came out.

 

 

 

BTW, have you seen these cute Denyse Schmidt fabrics at Joann's?  I ran across them at our Joann's the other day and had to get some for my stash.  I just love the dots on dots.  Wish they came in red though.

 

 

 

And just in case you thought I wasn't doing any quilting here is a sneak peek at what I've  been working on. 

 

 

 

And for those of you in the midwest, you will understand, this is what our driveway looked like one week ago.  Luckily it melted fairly quickly (within a few days), but it has been COLD all this week and was snowing a bit when I was out earlier.  I am so sick of winter and ready for spring. 

 

 

 

This is what my poor little daffodils look like.  I don't think they are going to make it to blooming by Easter.  So sad. 

 

I am linking up to Cindy at Live a Colorful Life, random thursday posts.  I have to say I am pretty jealous of those pics she has of the beautiful flowers.

 

Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoy my random thoughts.

Sylvia