Baby Morris's Quilt

Last Tuesday I started this quilt for baby Morris's shower on Sunday. Originally I was going to make the entire quilt from my stash because I was feeling the need to stash reduce after moving all of it but in the end I didn't like what I had and took a half a dozen swatches to Joanns to pick out the final few fabrics. Instead I came home with 6 yards of new fabrics and only used 3 out of my stash... so much for stash busting.


I selected this pattern because I knew that it went together quickly. Myy husband was betting that I wouldn't finish in time for the shower since my last baby sized quilt took all summer long. I let him help select the border and binding since it was a gift for his best friend's baby. I had been asking all summer what their plans for the nuersery were and finally gave up and selected the fabric. Two days before the shower the baby's dad posted on facebook that he was painting their nursery, raspberry tart and bamboo green. I was shocked that we had picked the same color scheme. I based this quilt of the Moda tutorial Baby Blanket.

July Crafts

 I found the time for some crafting this month, in addition to the fair and numerous weddings and showers.

This afghan was made for a friend from highschool who had a baby girl a month ago. It was made using the Delectable shell pattern and Lion Brand Homespun yarn.

I also made several burp cloths and two matching pacifier clips.

I have started on projects for our baby. This is the quilt top and I am currently working on hand quilting it and will post pictures when I get closer to being done. I am also working on a carseat cover and blanket as well as an afghan.

The baby recieved it's first present in the mail today. The socks are sooo soft and adorable.

Joshua's Quilt

My Christmas sewing is finally completed. Everything except for the sashing is from my grandma's stash. I plan on giving it to my cousin's newest son when we see them for Christmas in January.


I started this quilt using this pattern from Moda's Bakeshop. Everything was going great and then I miss counted how many coins there were per row so my blocks were not square. So I decided to venture out on my own and widen the sashing between blocks and piece in a sqaure in the center to make everything line up. Since 4 blocks weren't quite big enough I added a  5" boarder to make similar in size to this quilt.
 
This is the first quilt that was too big to use a single width of fabric for the back. So I used a couple of leftover stacks to create a pieced strip to make the backing wide enough.



I really liked how this quilt turned out though if I had it do do over again I would switch the border and binding materials.

Christmas Presents

This weekend is our final Christmas and I can officially say that I am done with the Christmas presents for this year! I still have a few more to post about including another baby quilt.


I made two of the Buttercup Bags from Made by Rae for my nieces.


Caden got a car playmat to farm with his new tractor.


Detail of the pocket


This is the back of the mat. I was hoping to find a cityscape panel for this side but this was all my local quilt shop had with roads.

ABC Book

Here is the ABC Book that I made using the tutorial from Obessively Stitching though I made some changes including a velcro clasp to hold the book shut. I used my cricut and SCAL2 to cut everything out. It took forever but I was very pleased with the turnout and will probably make it again.

Mom's Rag Quilt

My mom is not very subtle at dropping hints of what she wants. Rag quilts were one of the things she pointed out and ooohhed and ahhed about at every craft show we went to this fall. Since the only other thing she was interested in was hair bows for babies and Jason and I are not going there yet, I decided to make her and my sister rag quilts for Christmas. After several broken needles and a blister from cutting the edge, this is how my mom's turned out. She was thrilled.

Birthdays & Thanksgiving

The weekend before Thanksgiving we got together to celebrate a couple of birthdays. Here is the birthday boy (my nephew)with his cake. His mom makes amazing cakes and she was 9 months pregnant when she made this one.

 We also celebrated my sister-in-law's birthday and here she is watching our niece steal the candy off of her cake. She didn't mind though.

  As promised here is a larger picture of the quilt that I finished last week. Unfortionately I'm still not finding the right lighting to take good pictures in especially now that the sun sets so early. Even though in this picture the quilt looks really distorted, it really is square.

Sunday after our birthday parties we went to grandpa's house. Grandpa always tries to send us home with the latest thing he found in the attic or some more of grandma's crafting supplies. He's been giving away grandma's stash now for over four years since she died. Though he's given away the majority of it there is still a lot of selection if you know what you are looking for.  Whenever we go, I always bring things home from grandma's craft room and this time was no exception. I have now added to my stash 4 boxes of fabric, a half a dozen balls of crochet thread, a complete set (every size) of kniting needles in a couple different lengths and some for working in the round, a crochet hook thingy (we are not sure what it's used for but I was sent home with it to do research), all of the leftover thread and the display to hang on the wall and a various stack of pattern books. It's a lot like shopping in a vintage craft store where the tating shuttle is stored with the knitting needles which belong on the shelf next to the quilting fabric.  Though we have now gotten through all of the closets we are still finding new and fun toys to take home and play with. (Anna do you need more yarn? There are still several boxes to go through we could surprise you with one ;))

This Thanksgiving was the first that I have spent without seeing any of my family. It was a little weird buy I still had fun with Jason's family. We had traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Jason's mom's house which was only an hour late this year thanks to many extra hands. We then went to Jason's grandma's house, where everyone was looking through ads and planning their black friday shopping. The night quickly turned into a casino night as more people showed up.

This year Jason and I participated in Black Friday which is very unusual becasue neither of us enjoy crowds. We started our shopping at 5:00 and were back home by 6 with both things that we wanted. Jason then went to the farm and I worked on Christmas projects until about 8 when I went back out to JoAnns. Some how with my lack of sleep that morning I miscalcualted how much flannel I needed for the two projects and I purchased twice as much. Oh well, my stash could aways use more flannel. Saturday morning we again got up early to head out to get a deal on a new tv for my craft room. My old one had started to squeal at me which drove Jason crazy so he decided that it was time to replace it.

As soon as I have time to take pictures I have another project finished. Hopefully I'll be able to add several more to the finished list in the next week before things start getting really busy.

Snow!?!

This week I have been adding to my to make list as you can see -->

I have also finished a few things including my ornament exchange (to be posted later) and a baby quilt.

Here is the completed pile of quilt barf.

I quilted heats onto this quilt. It was the first time I have quilted anything other than striaght lines. My heats are pointed in places and are not that great but look okay considering I had no idea what I was doing.

Since it's almost dark when I get home I haven't been able to get a good overall picutre.

I used the Awesome Lap quilt patern from Moda Bakeshop and changed the colors to pinks, wines and browns to match the afghan I posted about here. I don't love this quitl as much as the other two that I have finsihed and I think it's because it doesn't have any borders so it doesn't seem complete. It reminds me of a picture that hasn't been matted before it was framed.

As per request from Texas, here is a picutre taken yesterday. We saw our first snow of the season about noon. It came just the way I prefer it, in huge flakes without a lot of wind and the temperature just above freezing.  Jason doens't like snow regardless of how it falls.

More Babies

I finally found a night that I was home early enough to take pictures of the afghan I finished. I found the yarn for this at Hobby Lobby on clearance. It turned out to be one of the softer afghans that I've completed. I ran out of the pink and had to use white for the border but I really like how it turned out. After playing with several different ribbon colors Jason and I decided that we liked the wine ribbon that was left over from our wedding. I decided to give this one to the neice due in December since we aren't certain if it will be a niece/nephew in March. I've also had another "family" baby to add to the crafting list due in April.

I also finished a few more pages in the 2009 scrapbook and almost done with the year. I have two Christmas' and New Years Eve left to do an then I need to print pictures and finish the wedding in October. For this layout I used my new Chomas Gel Pen holder to write the title.

I've started on a quilt to match the afghan above using this pattern. I love mixing and matching patterns so I usually go purchase my fabrics at the local quilt shop, Joanns or Hobby Lobby and cut down rather than purchasing precut fabrics as most of Moda's recipies call for.

Here is the initial stack.

This was a piece that I found that I thought would be great for a quilt especially as the child grows older.

This is the pile of trash otherwise know as "quilt vomit" At this point the pile is still growing.

I've currently have finished squaring up my blocks and I am ready to sew the strips together.

This past weekend I also taught myself to knit and have started a scarf for my niece for Christmas using this Ravelry pattern. Check back in for progress pictures of my quilt and my attempt at knitting.

From Grandma

This quilt was made entirely from my grandmother's stash. I made if for my cousin's new baby and it will be mailed to China soon.  It's so much better than my last one and was easy to assemble. I almost don't want to mail it but I can't keep everything that I make or I'd run out of room to store things. It's approximately 42x50 and I started it on Saturday afternoon.

Quilting has become a new release for me. There is something so soothing about the hum of the sewing machine. It's the new challenge that I've needed lately. I'm sure there will be more larger quilts to come.

The Bag

I finished the bag to go with the blankets I finished sevearl weeks ago. I ran out of the pick so I used the green for the borders on the bag. I found this pattern thanks to a fellow nestie and then adapted it to match my quilt. I also added pockets to the sides of the bag.

The complete set unless I make a couple of blocks out of the leftover yarn.

DONE!

This is one of the many flowers that my new hibiscus is producing this week.

I got to end a very busy Saturday this week celebrating my neice's first birthday! She really enjoyed the frosting on her cake. She actually licked her high chair after they took the cake from her.

The last couple of weeks I have been working on several projects. I completed my first afghan and my first quilt. Both will be gifts for new babies.  I've started on a blue version of the afghan and will probably attempt another quilt in the next month so that I am prepared for whatever my sister-in-laws have.

I started the quilt on Monday and completed it in a little over a week. It is about 30"x35" and the afghan is closer to 36" square. I need a little more practise before I produce perfect quilts but it turned out really good considering that it was my first and I haven't sewn anything since high school.

I'm now working on a "boy" afghan as well as several scarves requested by my nieces and nephew. Keep checking back in for more projects.