For Colleen and Ashley

This quilt my friend Jana and I made for our other friend Colleen. So she had her baby like 8 weeks ago, and we just gave it to her today. In our defense, she didn't find out the gender of the baby before hand. This one I made for my friend Ashley's baby boy. It was a lot of fun. I want a 60* ruler now, I borrowed Jana's.

Halloween aprons

I made these aprons for my friends Jana and Colleen. They were belated birthday presents. They were from the same set of patters as the one that I made for Heather. I'm getting pretty good at making these.

Apron for Heather

It was almost 2 years ago that we were on vacation with my husband's family and my SIL and I went into this little quilt shop that was in town, and while looking around she found a pattern for an apron, and asked me if I would help her make it. So we got home, and a while later we made it over to my local quilt shop to pick out the fabric. Then it sat. And it sat. Then last Christmas we went on vacation together again and we thought that it would be the perfect time to work on the apron. So I was in charge of bringing the supplies, and my SIL said she'd bring her sewing machine. Well, she forgot her machine. So it didn't get done. And it sat. Then a week ago or so, I was downstairs cleaning out my sewing corner, and I found this bag. As it turns out, it was just recently her birthday, so I thought that I would just go ahead and make one for her. At this point I have 3 kids, one being a newborn, and she is now pregnant with her 3rd, her next oldest being not quite 1 yet. We really are not moving in the right direction to have sewing lessons right now. It turned out super cute. She was very excited to see that I had made it for her.

A decorating idea

So I've done exactly three things to change the nursery from Graham's room to Olivia's room. I put up a pink mobile, I changed the photo on the shelf from Graham to Olivia, and I hung up these dresses. I didn't really have anything special hanging from these hooks really since I put it up in the new house. I don't even remember what I hung from them when this was in Nate's nursery. But several weeks ago I thought how cute it would be to hang some dresses up there. The thing is that I have all of these super cute dresses, and all they do is hang in a closet where no one can see them. (Well, aside from when Olivia wears them to church.) So I picked 4 of my favorites and have them hanging here. (Well, when they are ironed that is.) This is the dress that my mom made for Olivia. It's not exactly her blessing dress, because she'll wear this dress that my mom got in Belgium that 4 or so of the other girl cousins have been blessed in. But I still consider this her blessing dress. She hasn't worn it yet, it's closer to a 3-6 month size, and I'm kind of waiting until her blessing day.

Look at all of the smocking, yeah, my mom's a rock star.

These little pleats came at my special request. I was thinking in bed one night before Olivia was born, and I thought about how cute it would be to have a dress for her with little half inch pleats along the bottom. So I talked to my mom about it, and she did it. Yeah, she's a rock star.

I was walking through Kohl's the other day, and I saw this on the rack, and I didn't really even think about it, but I decided that I needed to have it. Love it!

Look at the little bow at the top!

This is the dress that I bought online specifically so that she could have an impossibly cute dress to wear to church her first Sunday back. It's huge, she'll wear it until she's 17.

I love the eyelet work all along the skirt, and the white lining sticking out of the bottom.

I bought this dress I think before Graham was born. Like, I wasn't pregnant at the time or anything. It was super cheap at the Carter's outlet, and I saw it and thought that I should probably have it on account of how cute it was. It too is still too big for her.

I love these embroidered flowers.

The problem of course is that all of these dresses need to be ironed, and I'm sometimes slow to get down to do the ironing. Two of them, the white polka dot, and the pink one, she wears to church right now, so they get taken off of the hooks. I've started to replace the empty spots with other dresses that I don't love quite as much, but are still cute. Then of course there is this other dress that my mom brought back from Belgium. It'll fit her when she's two or so. I'll have to take a picture of that as well. It's got handmade Belgian lace, and is very beautiful. So much so that I have no idea when she'll wear it, but one day she will.

So what unusual ways do you decorate your kids' rooms?

A fun giveaway

My incredibly talented friend Joan is hosting a giveaway on her blog- customizable Kidlets- stationary and more. You should go over there and check her out. I'm going to have her do my baby announcements for Olivia too.

Olivia's Second Quilt

The second quilt that I made was much more simple than the first. I decided that I wanted to make a trip around the world after I was looking through old pictures on the computer, and saw a picture of a trip around the world quilt that I had made for someone else. I knew that I wanted the squares to be smaller, and of course, the quilt to be small. I found a pattern, and made it work. It was done by tube piecing, which I've never done before. It wasn't too bad though. The unpicking is minimal, so it was OK. It was hard to get it all even though, but at the end of the day, it's hard to tell. And my corners are phenomenal. (If I do say so myself.)

There is no ornamental quilting on this one. The borders are just too thin (I had only a certain width of the backing, which is the same as the other quilt, to work with.) But I did decide to quilt through ever single diamond, so it ended up being a lot of quilting anyway. But it was pretty fast. Of course, I could not avoid seams, so that was a bit annoying. Oh well.

Anyway, now she has her two quilts, and I hope not to have to hand quilt another quilt for a very very long time. My fingers still have not gotten over it!

Olivia's first quilt

It is FINALLY finished. This quilt was the longest quilting project in the history of mankind. Or so it felt anyway. It didn't take me that long to actually make the quilt top. It was the quilting that was insane. I like the way that hand quilting looks, so I have always hand quilted the quilts for my own babies. I think it makes them a little more special. Even though I could easily quilt them very cutely on me own machine in an hour or so.
So I start hand quilting this one, and very quickly realize the error of my ways. The best way to quilt this was to quilt in a place where I was quilting through like, 3-7 layers of fabric, just on the top, so not to mention the batting and back. Then there was the batting. I wasn't thinking, and I didn't get batting specifically for hand quilting, so even when I got to the places where I was not quilting through an insane number of layers there still was plenty of resistance. I got more than one hole through my thumbnail as I was pushing this needle through. So good riddance- it's done!
But it's it so cute! Like, you need to understand that these pictures just do not do it justice. Here you can see the construction. I got this idea one night at like 11:30 while trying to fall asleep. I was glad that I was able to figure out how to do it. As Jesse said, there will be plenty of pockets for goldfish crumbs and spit up.

The flowers are separately quilted as well, and then attached at the centers. I think that I attached them sufficiently that they won't be pulled off.

You can kind of see the hand quilting. The thread was a very close match to the fabric. But you can see the blue marker where I marked the designs. (That washed off by the way.) I quilted butterflies, dragonflies, flowers and swirls into the border.

And this one shows the back. So it's pretty much just an all around cute quilt. No matter which side you're looking at.

So tomorrow I get to start in on my next quilt. It's going to be a trip around the world. I have a goal to finish it by the time this baby comes. I have a little less than 4 weeks. I can totally do it. It's going to be smaller than this one. (And much less involved!)

Adrian's Quilt

Here is the finished quilt that we made for our friend Adrian who moved this past week. You can't even tell that I had to doctor it up! I really like the way that it turned out!

update

So the baby quilt is the slowest quilt in the history of the world. I'll tell you all about why this little girl had better love it more than her mother when I'm finished, but for now I'll say I'm ALMOST finished. My poor little quilting fingers have really had it this time, and the thought of picking up a needle this morning is painful, but I only have about 2/3 of the final border left to do. Then I need to cut out the little flowers that I have already sewn, and then attach them to the quilt. Bind it, and all done. My goal is to finish this quilt by Friday night. Saturday afternoon my friends and I are having a mini-quilting day of fun. Last time we got there at lunch time, and stayed until 10 or so. Today we'll start at lunch time, and be home by dinner time. Anyway, I'd like to start in on quilt number 2 for this little girl. I'd like to do a trip around the world with the same fabric as the first quilt. It should be super cute. I'll post pictures soon!

Call me the Quilt Doctor

So today I graduated from quilting medical school and performed emergency quilt surgery.

My friends and I have been working on a quilt for our friend who is moving. It is a picture quilt, so it's a little delicate. We've been trying really hard not to iron over any of the photos on the quilt, since that ruins them. We were doing really well, just one little nick. But then this morning I got the quilt out to sew the final border on, and I noticed that the same picture with the little nick- well, now it had a huge gash across the face. It was actually a good thing, because we were going to leave the little nick, but now we had to replace the picture, so it looked much better.

The major problem was that we didn't have any leftover fabric to make a new block. So I tried first to iron the whole thing off, but that didn't work so well. So I had to pick out the square. I was able to do it without too much unpicking. I hate unpicking seams more than just about any part of sewing, so I avoid it at all costs.

This is what the square looked like. Not acceptable.

I then turned over the ruined square, and I just pasted a new picture on the back side of it. It turned out quite well.

Then I had to sew it back into the quilt. It all was much easier than it could have been.

In the end, I managed to save the quilt's life. Recovery was quick, and it was in a box and out the door for our friend.

Now, we wanted to give it to her today, because it was the last time that the whole group would be together before she left, it was her son's birthday. The little technicality of the quilt not actually being completed, well, that wasn't all that important.

We ended up presenting her with the completed quilt top, and then this week we'll quilt it, and bind it, and then give it back to her. But it was nice to let everyone see the finished product.

Her reaction kind of speaks for itself.

This gives you an idea of what the quilt looks like. I'll post a finished picture when we get it quilted and bound.

Car seat cover pattern

OK, so I have a word format of the pattern for the car seat blanket that I have posted about. I can't figure out how to translate that to this format, so well, if you want the pattern, (Confusing as it may be to read, I'm no professional pattern maker) Leave me a comment with your email, or if you have my email, email me, or contact me on facebook. Or if you know that I have your email, just leave a comment.

Running Dreams

Last night I had a dream that I was running in a race, and it felt so amazing. I was running with a group of people, but they were holding me back, because I just felt so great while running.
I never thought I'd say this, but I think I miss running. (Remind me of that in 4 or so months when I start up again.)

oh the irony

Well, it's official- I've lost my needles. I had them this morning to sew something up, and now I can't find them. So I'm no longer losing my needles, I am now lost my needles.

And what I made with it

Thanks to a marathon quilting day with my friends Jana and Colleen I got the quilt top finished for baby girl. The first three of the block rings are pleats, which after I quilt it, I'll get a close up to see the effect. Also coming after I quilt it will be little flowers that I'll attach in the center of each block. They will be made out of the brown fabric with the pink dots, and if I ever get the brown fabric with the green dots that I ordered, that two.

Now comes the fun part- quilting it. Sounds like a mindless activity to keep my hands busy while watching conference.

I'm going to say it, I kind of wish that I had made all of the blocks look like the four that have the dark rings in the inside, and the light rings as the outer rings. I thing that would have been a better effect, but both Colleen and Jana told me I should do half and half. I honestly don't know which way I would have gone on my own- that's why I asked their opinion, because I didn't know.... I didn't feel like wasting all of the fabric to do them over again though. That is the problem with not having a pattern to work off of- you just don't know exactly what it's going to look like at the end of the day. Oh well. I still like it.

I also made another one of those suspended car seat blankets, and I promise to soon get the pattern up for those. Look for a give away on the family blog in the next weeks. I'm almost at my 200th post!

Look at what came today

My fabric came today. There are still some others coming. The pink dots that sits on top of the green fabric has a matching green dot fabric that I had to get from another site. I had also ordered the top two fabrics, the smaller pink dot, and the pink and brown in the matching green. They were back ordered, so I may have to see about that before proceeding. I'll be fine either way once the first green dot comes. The big flowers is going to be the back, and the striped is going to be the binding. Imagine it on the bias. Anyway, I'm excited to actually start making this into a real quilt.

Oh, and you may notice that the smaller pink flower print matches the car seat blanket that I used. The quilt shop in town only carries this line in blue, so that's what I used.

car seat blanket

A few months back I saw a picture of these car seat blankets on a blog, and it was linked to an etsy shop. When I saw it, I knew that I needed to make one. I always cover my infant seats with blankets, but sometimes they drag on the ground, or fly away, or do all sorts of things. This is designed to fit the car seat exactly without dragging on the ground, and it is fitted to the seat in the back to lessen the frequency of wind blowing it around. It has nifty little Velcro straps which attach it to the handle of the seat, keeping it in place.

And it's reversible. I'll probably use it on the flower side for the most part with this baby, but if we have a boy in the future, now I don't have to make a new one. (He will just have to look at flowers all of the time. :)

So there is one project for the new baby completed!

Winners creations

I finally have finished making the prizes for the winners of the give away. Rachel is getting this cute little artist case. Added bonus- the cute flowers I added to the front. I was toying with this idea, and wanted to see how making the flowers would work, so I tried it on this. I came up with the idea one night in bed. That's where I come up with most of my quilting ideas. Mostly the ones that don't work out so well, but these worked just about as I imagined them. So as soon as I can get an envelope, and work up the courage to make it to the PO, this will be headed her way.

And this one is for Nanabear. If we have church tomorrow I'll try to remember to bring it there. I was pleased with how both of them turned out. And I love all of these fabrics. Of course, they were all in my stash, so of course I loved them, I picked them out.

Jana's Baby quilt

My friend Jana recently had a cute as can be little baby. So my other friend Colleen and I got to work on this baby quilt for her. Now, we've known that Jana was going to have a baby girl for well, 5 months or so, but well, we had a hard time getting inspired by the fabric and patterns that we were looking at. Finally, about 3 weeks after the baby had already been born we went to the local fabric store again, and we saw this fabric line that screamed "Jana!" (It actually screamed it, it was a magic fabric with a voice box.)
*side note: I was talking to Jana on the phone this morning, and we were talking about the quilt shop, and the new fabric lines there, and she started to describe this fabric line to me, and how she loved it, but was so proud of herself for not getting it. So I thought that since the quilt was finished, but we had not given it to her, I thought it would be fun to get it over to her right after we had that conversation. So that's what we did.
Back to the quilt though. So we bought the fabric, but had no idea what we were going to do with it. So I was fooling around with simple patterns that afternoon before I was supposed to head to Colleen's house to start working on it. I came up with this butterfly square, and I thought, well that'll be cute. And it was. So we made the quilt. It actually didn't take us very long at all. Looking back there are a number of things I would change if I should use this pattern again, just so that it would be more obviously a butterfly.

We had extra fat quarters left over, so we pieced the back as well.

If you look back at the first square, you can tell how I quilted it. I thought it added to the butterfly-ness of the quilt. On the border I just did chains of flowers. So hope you enjoy it Jana's baby. It ought to keep you warm through this cold winter we're having!

The Winners

OK, so since it took me such an insane amount of time to do the winners, I picked two winners, and they are:
Rachel B and nanabear!!!!!

Congratulations you two, please let me know if you would like the notepad or the coloring pad, and if you have any colors you would like the best. (And Rachel, I'll need an address to send it to, but we'll figure that out when the time comes...)

Nate's bag

So I'm going to keep the giveaway open until this Saturday, since well, I haven't blogged in so long on this site, but in the mean time, this is I think the very last project that I have completed and not shared yet. It is actually the first I made out of all of these. I made this little bag for Nate to take to preschool. I'd probably make it a little differently the next time around. I made it with double sided extra weight fusible interfacing, and it just didn't work that well for how I was making it. I also made the bottom of the bag seams in too far, and should have kept them farther out, to make a wider bottom to the bag. Oh well, that's what happens when you sew flying by the seat of your pants.

100th post giveaway!!!!

OK, I don't know that anyone actually reads this, but well, here I am at 100! I only started it over 2 years ago. I guess I got side tracked with the family blog.

Anyway, in celebration of making it to 100, I am having a give away. The randomly chosen winner will get a custom made note pad, or coloring pad, your choice.

The Notepad.

The coloring pad.

in order to be entered to win, just leave a comment with a list of 100 reasons why you think I'm awesome.

Just kidding, leave a comment stating one of your New Year's resolutions.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So I made this in November, and well, I just have not been up to blogging. You know, few projects being completed, and no running. My doctor told me that I was not allowed to exercise with this pregnancy, so it'll be interesting come August and I'm allowed to start exercising again. But I do have goals--- Run a sub 30 5K in November, and then train to run the National Half Marathon in March '11. Even though this particular half marathon was the worst experience of my life, I'm really interested to see how it would be if I were not pregnant and trying to support another life.

But anyway, long story short, I made this cute little wall hanging for Thanksgiving this year. My dear friend Jana gave me the pattern, and the hanger for my birthday two years ago. Thanks Jana!

Long time no blog

So, since I've gotten pregnant, I have been less than motivated to work on any sewing projects, and so I have not had much to share with you, but here are a few Christmas presents that did actually get made this year.

The first thing that I made were these art books for Nate and Graham as well as my sister Erin's kids whom we had for Christmas this year. I also ended up making one for Jesse's niece Meckenzie, but that one came later, and there is no picture of it.

There are plenty of room for crayons, or pencils, as well as a drawing pad.

I also made several of these note pad books. This one happens to be for my mom, but I also made three for the other members of the RS presidency, and earlier I had made one for the Enrichment leader that I worked with for a year, and was released.

Both of these came from a pattern book that my dear friend Jana gave me for my birthday this past year. Thanks Jana!