Saturday, February 28, 2015

February ALYOF Goal Complete, but....

I'm not loving it.

My ALYOF goal for the month was to create a fabric pouch for my husband's family's baptism gown. And I finished it, so I'm glad.

But I'm partly frustrated because the orange chalk I used to mark the crosshatch quilting lines didn't come out when I washed it (any suggestions?). And my two attempts to stitch a Velcro closure were both crooked, so I opted to forgo a closure completely. And there was a tiny pucker where I joined my binding strips, and when I redid it, I ended up with two tiny puckers instead.

But...it's done! And I love the fabrics together, and love having The Lord's Prayer fabric surrounding a baptism gown. A baptism gown that has been worn by 17 people over three generations deserves a better package, imperfect or not!

I'll be handing the gown in its new pouch off to my mother-in-law in a few weeks for safe keeping until it's needed again.





Thursday, February 26, 2015

A finished quilt top! (But not for me!)

I have been dabbling in a bunch of different projects lately: a few for the Curves class I took at Stitched in Color, a few original designs for magazine submission and my own patterns to sell, a commissioned quilt, and another for a blog hop (posts on all of those things to come!). 

But the one project that did get finished is the quilt my two older boys (6 and 3.5) made. They are really proud of it, and I am proud of them! 


(And it's Batman Thursday, in case you couldn't tell. Every Thursday is Batman Thursday here.)

Here's the finished quilt without goofy boys in front of it. They are MUCH more interested in sewing blocks than in assembling the blocks into the quilt top. The last couple seams dragged on for several weeks, and I almost just sewed them myself, but I really wanted the quilt to be made by them. 

I think I will have some fun quilting it--great for practicing some new machine quilting motifs, because the stitching won't show much with all the action in the quilt top! 

I asked each boy to show his favorite block. They both chose the last block they made, which had some fairly appealing fussy cut sections.

Here's Josiah's:

A close-up of the block:

And Thomas':

And a close-up:

As for me, this is still my favorite block, because Thomas drew it first with crayons and then wanted to make it out of fabric. You can read more about that block here.

I'm off to finish my February ALYOF goal...darn February with only 28 days!

Monday, February 9, 2015

Valentine's Day: It's not just about the chocolate!

(Although quality chocolate makes for a pretty darn good Valentine's Day in my mind!)


With Valentine's Day around the corner, I wanted to share links to a few tutorials I've featured in past years. 

First up, a travel tic tac toe board:


And then the Valentine's themed version...with hearts instead of Os!

Click here for the tutorial and here for the heart-themed version.

And then an easy last-minute project you can do with scraps--fabric postcards!

Click here for the tutorial.

Happy Valentine's Day!


Friday, February 6, 2015

ALYOF Goal: Baptism Gown Bag

My 5-month-old was baptized back in October in a family baptism gown which has been worn by 17 people over three generations of my husband's family. (You can see it in the photo below.) As our generation has used this gown for our babies, it has traveled between our homes wrapped in tissue paper and secured in a ziplock bag. Something so special deserves better packaging!

When I got this lovely blue and white fabric printed with the Lord's Prayer (from Kanvas' Bible Study collection), I thought it would be perfect for a little quilted bag. And now it's February, and I still have the gown and the fabric. No bag. It keeps getting pushed down my to-do list because there's no concrete deadline for finishing it. So for my February A Lovely Year of Finishes goal, I am going to make the bag for the baptism gown! (And yes, we might still transport the quilted bag in a ziplock bag just to keep the gown protected from spills, but it will have it's own quilted home as well!)



And here's a sneak peek of what else I've been working on--batik strips for a cool curved table runner in the Curves Class over at Stitched in Color! (More on this later)