What Did You Call Me? Holiday Fun

Festive holiday quilting is one of my favorite things to do. I love to create new wall hangings and quilts that can be displayed each year for others to enjoy. I can't lie, I'm a bit selfish with my quilting and find it very hard to give away anything I've made. When I make items other people get to enjoy but I get to keep it's like the best of both worlds for me. 

My days quilting have been greatly modified into minutes or hours of quilting now that I'm a parent. Don't get me wrong I LOVE being a parent and could play with C all day, but when I want to quilt it happens in about 2 hour blocks while he's napping or after he's gone to bed. 

Last night I decided to just go for it and take on the "What did you call me?" Witch Wall Hanging pattern from Happy Haunters by Kelly Mueller. My husband, C and I spent the afternoon at a pool party with family, so when we got home everyone was exhausted-- except the baby! Even for skipping his nap he just wasn't ready to sleep. 

At about 5pm my husband made us dinner. While he was working on that and C was in his high chair I started on the applique tracing to the heat n bond, precutting, and ironing. Before dinner was ready I had all my shapes ironed on. 

About 7pm we put C in bed and he finally caught on that it was time to sleep. At that point I was ready to pass out, however quilting tends to give me a second wind so I headed back to my quilting room. I cut out all my appliqué pieces, which for this pattern was actually a lot. This was one of the first patterns I've done that has required a lot of layering of the appliqué.

 I was able to use my appliqué pressing sheet which was a life saver. I placed it on my ironing board and then layered my appliquéd witch on top.  Once I was happy with the placement of all the pieces I ironed the witch down. Then I was able to pull her up in on piece for easy placement on the backing fabric. 

I had already added my preliminary border to the quilt background fabric so next I started placing the witch and the letters for "what did you call me?". Then I added the batting and went to town sewing down the appliqué. I was able to get this all complete by 11pm!! Including about a 15 minute break where I seam ripped an entire section of sitching I had done on the witches head but also caught whole other part of the quilt top. WHOOPS! 

In the morning C got up at 7am so we played in his room for an hour and then I took him to the quilting room where he listened to Old McDonald on Baby Einstien and watched my quilt while playing with toys in his high chair. 

I had a short timeline to get the wall hanging finished as we were leaving the house at 9:30am to head to breakfast with family. 

MISTAKE ALERT: 

I always buy extra fabric thinking I'll need it for additional projects. Really my brain must just think it's for backup because without fail I almost always cut at least one piece completly the wrong size. And well this wall hanging was no different. 

I cut my background and borders perfectly, however my backing fabric I cut too short the first time, grr! I had decided to increase the backing measurements from the pattern so I could bring the backing to the front and have a built in extra border and mitered corners. Well my first cut I cut at the shorter of the two lengths I needed. Thankfully though I had bought almost an entire extra yard of fabric. So I did my second cut, success--- or at least I thought. 

I ironed the lines I needed so I'd know where to sew and create the borders/mitered corners but there was about an inch extra lengthwise so I had to readjust placement of the quilt top and re iron. Then I sewed the first corner. It seemed really off so I didn't cut it, I just flipped it to take a look. Sure enough it wasn't going to work. The side borders were an inch wider than the top and bottom and it wasn't making the corners got correctly. So I had to take an inch off the sides. :( Scraps for the future I guess. 

With that in order I sewed all my corners, clipped them, and turned them... To find that my magic border/mitered binding trick covered the border I already sewed onto the quilt top! Oh my.  

This would not have been a problem if the hat for the witch didn't go into the border for the quilt top. So I took out my trusty seam ripper. 

This was my first time undoing appliqué and I wasn't sure how it would go because of the heat 'n bond. However it came up fine and I was able to applique it on the new border. Woo!! Finally success. 

After that dibacle I was able to wavy stitch the border/backing down and add a hanging sleeve.

Even with all of those snafus before my morning coffee I was able to complete my wall hanging by 9am. 

I am so happy with the finished product and want to make another one which I can send to my Grandma Y. 

Since I was young Grandma Y has had a sign in her garage that says something to the effect of "this isn't Burger King, so you'll have it my way" which makes me think she will think this is pretty funny too. 

Wedding guestbook quilt

In March, a wonderful couple my husband and I are friends with were married. At their wedding they had charm squares which they had purchased through Missouri Star Quilt Company, and fabric pens available to their guests. Guest were asked to sign the quilt squares instead of a guestbook.

My friend  does not quilt so I had her bring all the squares over so I could put the quilt top together for her. We spent an afternoon sorting the quilt squares in determining which spots. She wanted which squares to go in. She had a mix of signed squares and squares that had patterns printed on them. We did the initial layout on my dining room floor. And from there I took the rows to the machine to sew the quilt top. 

Because the quilt is something that she will have forever, I did not feel comfortable attempting to quilt it for her. Especially because I know my limitations and machine quilting, and binding. 

Once she has it quilted, I will update the post with the final photos and if it is okay with her I will also share where she got it quoted and the process for getting that done.

Baby season part two: burp cloths

Being pregnant with my first child, means that I am in the nesting mode! I have been working on all sorts of things to make life easier when C arrives. Having made him blankets already, I have now started on burp cloths. I found a great tutorial from the Thinking Closet and followed it.

I went to Target and purchased a pack of Gerber 10 pre-folded cloth diapers. Then from a Ritz cracker box I cut out a cardboard template of the size of the diaper lengthwise that I was going to be covering with cute flannel. The tutorial I used showed that this was the easiest way to make sure you had your seem allowance that needed iron to be accurate for all of your burp cloths. 

I used some of the excess fabric left over from the receiving blankets I had made for C, and then I also used a fat quarter bundle of flannel fabric that I had purchased. 

I think the ironing took the longest part. But the burp cloth turned out great! 

I was very happy with the tutorial I used and the results of the burp cloth.

Learning to Make a Rag Quilt

My first project of 2013 was a rag quilt for my nephew. I decided on a rag quilt because I received a great rag quilt pattern book for Christmas, and my nephew lives in Washington state and would need something warm. 

A rag quilt is great because it is usually 2 layers of flannel and one layer of batting, and it gets more cozy with every wash. And with kiddos there is certainly going to be many washings ahead. 

For the fabric I picked three colors of green, three colors of blue and then yellow for the sashing. To make the quilt I had to cut a front, back, and batting square for each piece. Then I sewed them together with a half inch seam. 

When it came time to make the rag part of the quilt the instructions to clip the seam allowance didn't compute correctly in my mind. So I made a BIG MISTAKE, I tried to trim away all the seam allowance! If you've ever made a rag quilt or read a pattern for one you might now that seam allowance is what you need to clip to make the quilt rag. WHOOPS! Well not all was lost I was still able to cut the seams enough to get the rag effect (as you can see in the photo). 

From this process I found that I really need to invest in some scissors meant for cutting rag quilts. It seemed to take forever to cut all the seams, and my scissors had a hard time cutting. Hopefully if I attempt a rag quilt in the future I will pre-plan and take care of this. (UPDATE: While making my second rag quilt over one year later I still did not have rag quilt scissors, as soon as I finished that quilt I purchased a pair ASAP via Amazon). 

After I had the quilt washed and ready to go I added a iron on quilt label. This was the first label I've ever used and it was super easy since it was one you could print on your home printer. The only thing I would change with labeling the quilt was that I waited until the quilt was done so the sewing that held the label in permanently shows through on the back. 

This is the finished product that was sent to Washington just in time for Mr. Ephraim's 1st Birthday:

Gifts Galore!

Most of today was spent enjoy football, food, and the company of our friends. However, this evening I took some time to do a few quick quilting projects. 

As I mentioned yesterday evening, I wanted to make the Tissue Holder that was featured on the Riley Blake Designs website. To do this all you need is 3 pieces of 4 by 6 inch fabric. To make the tissue holder you form it inside out, then sew around the outside and invert to have your Right Sides showing. This was really quick and looks way cuter than carry around a plastic stash of klennex. I plan to make a few more of these, likely one with the peacock fabric, and the others from different fabrics I have a good amount of. 

Completed holder, showing tissue inside :)

Completed Holder Closed

Once completing this little project (less than 15 minutes!) I decided to see if I could reverse engineer my coffee coaster from yesterday to use less material. The Riley Blake Design pattern for the coffee coaster/hot pads calls for 5 squares of equal size, one square is your backing, and then the other 4 are ironed in half, and when you sew it together and invert it only 1/2 of each fabric still shows... this lead me to wonder if you really needed the underside of fabric. So I took the corners that I had cut off my Christmas Tree Skirt and used the seam ripper to borrow the 1/2 triangle squares then I cut down the 5 inch corner square to the size of the 2 half triangles (because they were cut just over 1/4 inch they weren't a full 5 inches together). Once I had this done I laid the fabrics the same way requested by the original pattern, but I did Wrong Sides up so when I inverted the Right Sides would come through. The results were just ok. In the original design the middle points of the fabrics meet but aren't sewn together which looks fine, but with this there was a good amount of gap, so I took my hand at sewing a few extra lines in to hold down the middle better.  The coaster turned out to be usable, but I wouldn't do this for future coasters, the original way was better. 

What I consider the Top

Bottom of Coaster

Once this was complete I decided to go back to the original pattern;  I had 15 charm squares left from my Mr. Claus set I'd ordered for the Christmas Tree Skirt, so I ended up using them to create 3 more coasters to go with the one I completed last night. 

Complete Set, Fronts of Each. To get the centers to meet I ended up pinning them and then sewing the outer border. 

Two Fronts, Two Backs. The Merry Christmas Fabric is on the back of all 4, 2 are Red, 2 are Green. It was the only fabric that required it go a specific direction so I figured I'd match it. 

So far that's what I've done for the evening, I might try a few more things but we'll see. I'll be sure to update if I do!

Quick and Easy Project I'm going to Have to Try!

I am always carrying around those darn packs of tissues in plastic, I'm going to need to make these so I can carry my klennex in style!