Random Roundup #22

I’ve been working on some quick little projects so I have a lot of little things to share.

Midibag:

I was preparing for a minor surgery and had quite a bit of nervous energy so I made a Midibag the day before which worked great for holding my clothes, phone, and wallet. I also got a few compliments from the nursing staff.I combined 3 mini charm packs – one Modern Background Ink and two Just a Speck by Jen Kingwell. The bag turned out so cute and was the perfect size! You iron the squares to the supplied interfacing and then fold and sew it together. The pattern contains interfacing for 2 bags. I need to decide on mini charms for the second bag. It’s a great little bag for art and craft fairs or the beach.

With the remaining squares, I was able to make this cute little pouch which is now with my sister-in-law. It worked beautifully for transporting a selection of Peppa Pig figures to my nephew.

Microwave Bowl Holders:

My brother’s family requested some of these bowl holders last year when they were here and I finally got around to making them as a housewarming gift. I use a great tutorial from Happy Hour Stitches.

Fabric Swap Box:

My guild is setting up a fabric birthday box swap and I needed a box to use to turn in my bought or ‘curated from stash’ fabric. The accessory box from The Container Store can hold 15 to 18 fat quarters depending on how you fold them. So I created a fabric name label to fit that box. I used my favorite fabrics for this one.The letters are from the Just My Type – lowercase pattern by Kristy of Quiet Play. I used headbands as the straps and sewed them into the binding and it worked beautifully.

Summer Sampler 2019:

I have been wanting to join in on the Summer Sampler that is hosted by Lee at Freshly Pieced, Katie at SwimBikeQuilt, and Faith of FreshLemonsQuilts but I was always preoccupied. This year the theme is Piecing Bootcamp and I love learning new techniques or improving my current techniques.There are two different finishing options but I just adore this curved layout. I’m planning on rainbowing this thing up and chose to use the Ombré Confetti Dots that I’ve been hoarding. I’m combining that with Tula Pink Fairy Dust and a grey Essex linen and it’s going to be epic!This Sampler Series starts tomorrow (May 20) with a block being released once a week. Here’s the link to sign up through Katie’s blog – Summer Sampler.

Stash Enhancement:

Alison Glass Holiday arrived and I cannot wait to get started on the quilt I designed last year. These fabrics will just pop!

I also received Alison Glass Sunprints Light. No plan for those but I just had to have them to fill in my low volumes.Lots more to share but I will pause here to take a breath and get some more sewing done!

Until next time- happy sewing!

Lori’s Epic Cat Quilt

I’m working on a quilt for my cats to use instead of the super awesome quilts that I have already made. The patterns I decided upon are all designed by Kristy Lea of Quiet Play and I made them all geometric in nature. You may remember that I started with two blocks that were the same colors as my cats.Then I decided to continue on in that vein but with smaller cats. I found a seated cat in an issue of Make Modern Magazine and then bought a pattern that was just the face with whiskers. The combo of all those cats would be perfect for the new plan. Now, this was not the original plan. The original plan was to find all kinds of different cat blocks or use cat themed fabric to make the quilt top but sometimes you need to follow your gut and change up your plan. This one worked out so good once I decided to rainbowtize those kitties. Check out all the finished blocks!I was trying to figure out how to connect them and didn’t just want to put them together in a grid format. I then decided to connect them all with some geese and that was the decision that was needed to change up that grid format a little bit.Once those geese were done and the math was attempted then I was able to get this top complete. I adore it!The back will be made up of all those cat fabrics that I mentioned earlier. Scrappy and happy will be the way to go for that. I cannot wait to get this one finished up and loved by Jasper and Gryffin.I’ve got some cat themed text fabric that will work well on that scrappy back to bring it all together. I’ve got some other deadlines before I can even start that backing but I am definitely looking forward to it.

Happy Sewing!

Guild Christmas Swap

The guild Christmas Party and Dirty Santa Swap is our most anticipated meeting of the year and for really good reason! We have some amazing makers in our group. You don’t have to make something to participate but the made items are the most stolen presents in the group.

I made a ‘Maker’ mini quilt from the pattern by Kristy Lea of Quiet Play (subscribe to her newsletter to get the pattern for free.)I took color inspiration from the Pins fabric and used that for the letters and the borders which includes my coveted teal Mirror Dots. I’m down to less than a fat quarter now.This mini was quilted using a 1″ cross-hatch straight line design. I used a ruler and my Hera marker to try to get clean, crisp lines. Our new guild president ended up with it and she loves it so I’m super pleased with that.I was happy to pick a gift from a fabulous maker. I was lucky enough to get her make at last year’s party and was hoping I’d end up with this one, too. Our rule is that the item is locked after two steals or with the third owner. Of course it got stolen from me and then I had a sweet gnome pillow which was also stolen from me. I was then able to get my original gift back and was, happily, the third owner!

Look at this awesome triangle Christmas Tree wall hanging!I found a great place for it right away. I’ve been contemplating a new triangle quilt and this may be just the inspiration that I need to get started on one.

Right now I am working on a mug rug for my mother. She requested a cocker spaniel silhouette with a Christmas theme and this is what I have so far.I need to figure out how I want to quilt it and get it done for Christmas.

Are all your Christmas sewing projects done? This is my last one for the season.

Happy Sewing!

Hello Old Friend

I pulled an old Work-in-Progress off my quilt rack.  It was hanging right behind my ironing board and I could see it everyday.  I’m glad it was there and I loved looking at it and kept thinking that I needed to keep working on the quilt top and finish it off.  That time came this week. It is the Wavelength quilt pattern by Lee Heinrich of Freshly Pieced.  I started it sometime last year and had gotten 3 rows around done.  I’m doing this in teals and aquamarines with some greens mixed in.  It’s going to be fabulous when it’s done.

I opened the box where I was keeping the fabric pull and the (already copied) paper-pieced patterns and found the most gorgeous collection of teal goodness! The box is in the order that I will piece the rows with the next row on top.  There will be about 4 patterns per row ending with the white/aquamarine pieces.  There are some great fabrics in here that I forgot I even had.  It’s just like I bought new fabric this week but without the cash leaving my wallet.  

Here’s where I was at this morning. The next row is where the mid-value teals will begin. Gryffin was helping me keep it secure on the floor.  It’s what cats do best. I was able to get some of the teals attached and I’m really happy with where this is going.  It is currently residing on the floor in my sewing room ready to be pieced together. 

In other news – I got some hexie piecing completed on my way home from my brother’s wedding.   I have a plan to use these in the Text Me Mini Quilt Swap but it’s not working out like I planned.  I think I will stew on it for a little bit and revisit in a week or two.  I may end up re-working it.

Speaking of the wedding – it was fantastic and I’m very happy to have such a sweet and wonderful lady added to our family. 

 

Random Roundup #4

Random Project #1:
I received some awesome crafty toys in the mail this week!

This 25 pack of webbing and key fob hardware was found at an Etsy shop called Everything Ribbons. I wanted to try and make these key rings and I felt this was a great way to get started. I grabbed some fabric (#shopyourownstash) and made one for a friend. The shop owner also included some instructions for use with ribbon.

My friend loved it!! She calls her little one Squirrel so this fabric was just perfect. Definitely more of these in my future. They will be perfect for small work gifts and swaps and extra family gifts. They can be completely personalized and that is what makes these key fobs so great.

Random Project #2:
I found some Frozen paper piecing patterns at Fandom in Stitches that are free for personal use. I downloaded Sven, Anna, Elsa, and Olaf. You can’t have a Frozen themed anything without Olaf! So I started on him first.

As the piecing got smaller I realized that I was having trouble seeing the lines under my 1/4″ sewing foot. Look how tiny some of these are.

I pulled out a clear foot that I knew was in the machine storage area and started to use that to see if it would help. It helped more than I ever thought it would. It has a indent on the foot directly in front of the needle. This allowed me to make sure that I had my needle sewing in exactly the right place and I could follow the line on the pattern better than with the other foot I was using.

I believe it has helped keep my sewing lines quite a bit straighter which makes the piecing even more precise. I believe I have found a new foot to use for foundation paper-piecing!

Olaf is now 1/2 done and he’s just so cute!

The question remains about whether this is fated for my Disney Quilt Swap partner or for a sweet 5 year old that I just adore.

Inspiration, Design, and Paper Piecing

I’m blaming my new project on a design idea in my head, a fabric-looking trip to Hobby Lobby, and my Electric Quilt software program. So, I had this idea for a baby quilt – Pittsburgh Steeler’s inspired but not using Steeler’s fabric. Something a little more subtle than that. I had this Chevron baby quilt in mind and that Hobby Lobby trip resulted on the perfect color palette.

I opened my Electric Quilt software program and started designing what I had in mind. I needed to incorporate the red and blue but only in small bits. Therefore, I added another small chevron line on a few portions of the quilt top.

Here is where I state that my cutting precision leaves a lot to be desired and I was able to print foundation paper piecing templates. At this point, let’s go back a few hours to my visit to Quiet Play via the Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday post. Katie was a guest blogger for Lee that day. She made a statement in her post that anything can be paper-pieced. So, with my lack of precision cutting and Electric Quilt rotary instructions showing some weird angle, like 43 degrees or something like that, I decided to go with Paper-piecing. So far, so good. I like how it’s turning out.