Tayla's Quilt...

The horse fabrics are leftovers from the wedding album I made for my niece's wedding 5 years ago. She has since had a baby, and I found the leftover fabrics again. I thought it'd be neat to make a quilt for the baby out of her parents' wedding album fabrics!

The quilt measures 49" x 52" - a good size for a toddler to haul around.

The back is made from a scrap of coordinating horse fabric with the blue and brown sewn on to extend it's length and width.

Stashbusting:

3 -1/2 yards of leftover fabrics

1 spool of thread

Sewing small projects...

 

Working on some small projects by request. My daughter wanted some pretties for her kitchen, in various colors and patterns so she could change things around when she felt like it.  She bought two fat quarter bundles (5 fabrics) and this is what I came up with.

 

The Southwest fabrics. A variation of the 10 minute tablerunner. Bowl cozies and potholders, too!

This green and pink bundle is to match her Jadeite and LaCrueset pieces. I sewed the squares in the tablerunner together, not realizing that I got 3 rows backwards! I had to take most of it apart and re-do the sewing. GRRRR! I had the brilliant idea to make round potholders...forgetting that I abhor curves. Yeah, those potholders got taken apart, too. At least the bowl cozies went together fast. 

Stashbusting:

1 partial spool of pink thread

1 full spool of white thread

1/2 yard of navy backing fabric

1/2 yard of green batik

1-1/2 yards of leftover batting

Quick Baby Boy Quilts...And A Baby Girl Quilt, too!

A week or so ago, someone commissioned a baby boy quilt, no preferences.  I had some boy fabrics in my stash, but still ended up needing to buy some yardage to finish.  Fortunately, I bought an entire roll of Warm And White batting at the last sale, so I have plenty of that!

I'm not sure why the colors didn't come out true camera-wise. This quilt is navy, red and gray, with the focal print the anchor fabric. The top strip is gray, not that muddy greenish look! I've had the anchor fabric for about 2 years, taking up room in my stash. The back of this quilt is white.  In real life, this quilt is very striking.

 The plane fabric has been in my stash for about 2 years.  The red stripe has been in my stash for about 15 years! I picked up the other fabrics to finish the quilt, the top strip is a pretty, soft taupe, not that same muddy green! (Hmmm. the camera may be losing it's ability to discern color at the top of the lens).

The back of the above quilt is the remainder of the plane fabric and the chevron fabric. 

I had cut the center panel and the two white strips for the plane quilt above. Then I realized I'd made a mistake in the length. So had to remove it, re-cut, and then re-sew. When I finished the other quilt, I took the remaining fabrics and put this little quilt together, too.

The back is white with a strip of the remaining stripes fabric.

 I also finished a baby girl quilt that I'd started ages ago with a 5-set of tropical colored fat quarters I've had laying around for years. The white fabric edging is an old stash fabric.

 The back of the baby girl quilt - 2 pieces of leftover fabric from other quilts!

Bought fabrics to finish each quilt:

8 yards

Stashbusting:

5 yards fabric

2 spool of thread

1 40 X 40 piece of batting leftover from another project.

Another bear quilt finished...

This is the second quilt I made for a friend's grand-niece.  She gave me 3 bear panels, and I worked the 9-patch quilt around the single panel. The back is flannel for extra snggly-ness. :)

 

Stashbusting:

1 spool of thread

2 yards of various scrap fabrics

Quilts Of Honor

I've been pretty busy lately, and part of my time is going towards our local chapter of Quilts Of Honor. A kind soul donated a bunch of patriotic fabric panels and some yardage.  I've been putting borders on my batch, getting them ready to quilt. Another QOH member will be long-arm quilting them, and yet another member will be binding them. I've finished the six below and have six more to do.

 

 

Stashbusting:

3 spools of thread

About 5 yards of my fabric donated to the cause

From Chef's apron to more...

So I made my sister a chef's apron a few year ago, and she asked me to cut it down to a half-apron.  I did so, then I used the leftover fabric to make her a microwave bowl cozy, and a small table runner.  To make the table runner more absorbent, I used an old microfiber towel as batting. 

 

The "new" apron, a microwave bowl cozy and a tablerunner.

Stashbusting:

1 yard of assorted scrap fabrics

1 microfiber towel as batting.

Sewing small things again...

The new, black and red kitchen set for my daughter. 

2 embellished towels, 2 microwave bowl cozies, and 2 potholders.  

Combining two techniques...

Different things going on in my sewing room...

 I made a crocheted baby afghan and then backed it with fleece. The fleece is  the blue and green zigzag - a remnant of a fleece blanket from Walmart.  The blanket was cheaper than buying a yard of fleece fabric, and it matched the crocheted afghan perfectly. 

 

 

I am making some kitchen items for a couple people who have decorated their kitchens with red and black.  I bought 2 fat quarter bundles at Walmart in the colors and will be using them for various items.  In this photo is the first microwave potholder bowl.

Another old project...

I first started this project about 10 years ago. It got buried in a storage box, too.  It's a pattern, still available, from this company.

http://www.swdecoratives.com/proddetail.php?prod=111102

Everything was done except the decorative elements, quilting and binding.  

I used silver conchos on the belt, the necklace has real beads, and the basket's decorative braids have silver beads at the ends. 

I free-motion quilted the sky and the sand dunes, outlined quilted the cacti and woman. Did some crosshatch on the lowest cactus, too. The borders are stitched in the ditch. 

I didn't want to quilt the skirt or top - I washed the quilt so it'd wrinkle a bit, giving the skirt fabric authentic folds. 

Stashbusting:

All the fabrics used were scraps I had laying around, except the gray borders. 

The backing fabric was given to me by a neighbor many years ago. 

Used several bobbins of different colored threads for the quilting.

Old Project, finally finished...

Back when I first started getting serious about learning to quilt, I took a class to learn to make this specific quilt.  That was about 20 years ago. The quilt is from a Trudi Hughes quilt book.

Although I finished taking the class, I never finished the quilt because there were several flaws in my sewing, and it made the quilt wonky. It was also supposed to have an additional border to make it twin-size. The additional border was to be made up of 9 patches that matched the center of the hearts (so that's what that extra fabric was for!!).  

I had hand-quilted the entire middle when I discovered that it was supposed to have this extra border and that the back was all crooked. Being an inexperienced quilter at the time, I had no idea what to do, so I put it away to finish later.  

We then moved a couple times and the quilt ended up in storage.  The extra fabric for it ended up in different boxes. At one point, due to mice getting into our stored stuff, several boxes were thrown away due to the nasty mess they made. The extra fabric was part of that garbage. So now I had a dilemma...how to finish the quilt.  So I took the easy way out.  I put it back in a box and forgot it. 

Well, in my current quest to finish everything on my project list...this one came up. I decided to just finish it as is.  The entire center is hand-quilted around the hearts, the blocks and the first border. So, bind it, and stitch down the outer borders and call 'er done!  

As you can see by the sides, I ate up some of the blue flowered border by folding the wonky back over the front to make the border. 

It took me about half an hour to finish this quilt of Damocles that has been hanging over my head for 20 years!  LOL

Project-busting:

1 quilt - DONE!

Small gifts...

In the past few days, I've mostly been doing clothing repair:

3 pairs of pants hemmed

1 shirt collar remade for better fit

1 pair pants cut into shorts and holes repaired

1 pair of pants repaired hole

I took some old flour sack towels, cut them into 4ths, and made cloth "paper" towels for kitchen use to cut down on the waste of paper towels. 

Then I made 2 of these clothespin bags for gifts.  The hole is a bit larger than I thought, so I re-worked the pattern I created for future use. I bought the fabric specifically for the project, as well as the child's hangers. 

Stashbusting:

About a yard of binding tape

1/2 spool of thread