Sunday

Cool new trick as explained here.  Worked like a charm!

   These new clips are great!  You can just sew right on past them, without having to remove them first.  Love these things - and just look at the resulting binding corners!  Oh my.

It only took 9 years to finish up this quilt!  First I got tired of cutting and sewing strips together.  There were soooo many.  Then the strips got cut up and sewn back together again, then there were lots of squares that needed squaring up.  This quilt sat for a long time before I picked it back up and pushed through it.  Once the top was done, it sat for a while longer because I suffer from Indecision-itis.  I couldn't decide how I wanted to quilt it and I did not want to spend money to send it to a professional.  So it sat, and sat, then sat some more.  I finally just hand quilted in the ditch with perle cotton.  Originally I wanted circles or orange peels or something like that, to offset all of the straight lines and curves, but then I thought the quilting might take away from the stripes fabric.  So I kept it simple.  It's not too dense either, so it should stay nice and soft.  Just right.

Shirts Part II

This quilt was made from shirts that belonged to my husband's late grandfather.  My husband and his cousin had a hand in the initial design.  Haven't delivered the quilt to my husband's grandmother yet, but I hope she likes it.  I've got lots of fabric left still from the shirts still, so I'm going to make some additional quilts for other family members.

Here is the quilt being basted.  Basting spray is the best!

My little one determined to made the quilt a stage for her ballet moves.

 And yoga apparently...

Winner!

See this? That's me! I won a giveaway! Woo hoo - so excited :)

 

photo from Sew Mama Sew's website 

Rando' Stuff

 My mom made this for me for my birthday (in March!!).  Isn't she the best?  I absolutely love this piece!  It hangs on our living room wall so I get to admire it every day.  The kids each signed this themselves and my mom stitched it up.  Love it :)

 I've been itching to sew by hand, so I got this alphabet pattern from Sublime Stitching.  I'll probably turn it into a little mini wall hanging for the girls' room.

 This is just a random UFO.  I had traced this pattern from Cinderberry Stitches about a year ago.  I came across it the other day and decided to stitch it up.  Maybe it will turn into a needle book, but who knows.

 This is just pretty :)  My hubby took this pick from our backyard.

 Gramma teaching Melanie to sew!

 We've got some birds building a nest in our backyard.  Pretty fun for the whole family to watch.

 Here is the quilt I made for my friend, Tiara.  Can you see why I couldn't get a good photo?!?  Ah well, it was fun trying to get a decent shot anyway.

QAL Finish

I finished this a week or so ago and have been trying to get Mel to fall in love with it without any luck!  She is still stuck like glue to her original blankie.  The one that no longer covers her toes and needs to be rebound. 

 The new quilt was made entirely from stash fabrics.  I didn't buy a single thing to make this quilt.  Mom provided batting and the backing which literally was just wide enough to work.  I'm talking about 1mm extra on the side at one spot! But it worked :)  The binding was re purposed from the nursing cover I used for Mel.  So even though K is using this quilt right now, it's got to end up with Mel!  It's hers.

 When our power was out during the recent snow storm I took advantage of the great light and free time and did some hand quilting with Perle cotton thread.  I even added antenna to one of the 'butterflies' in between the pluses.

This quilt was made using the Across the Sea QAL blogged about here.  I did omit the final border since this quilt is for a tiny little thing (not even 2 yet) and because I didn't want to have to buy new backing fabric.  It's the same fabric as the original blankie, but much brighter and it still has the swirl pattern.  It's crazy how much minkie fades and loses it's swirl pattern.  No big deal though.  Still super soft.

Revised

Phew.  Glad I caught that before the quilt was finished!

Quilt Label

I'm all about subtle little details.  And simplicity.  This label of sorts is going to be worked into a border.  I love the T in this label!