Japanese Imports Swap

I was wandering around blogland last week and came upon the Japanese Import Fabric Swap on Gen X Quilters blog and decided to sign up for the swap and become a new follower to boot!  There were 28 spots and I’m thrilled to have one.  Each person will get 2 charms from each member, for a total of 56.  Here is the fabric I will be sending in.

It’s a Daiwabo print called Paper Dolls on red.   I used it here in a snowball block that is in my UFO pile.  I’ve used it for several small projects and think it will fit in nicely with the other fabrics I’ve seen posted on the Flickr site.  I have ordered it twice from Sew Deerly Loved on Etsy.  Kerri, the owner, has a great blog called Lovely Little Handmades and recently has put some photos of her beautiful Farmer’s Wife blocks on there.  In fact, I found them so inspiring, I ordered some fabric from her store to make copycats (this was before I adopted my Deploy That Fabric motto).   Sadly, I have ordered fabric once before for the Farmer’s Wife quilt, but I have NOT MADE ONE BLOCK YET…I have no idea where to start since I am confused by the whole template/rotary cutting instructions, but that is another blog post entirely.

Anyway, back to the Japanese Import Swap…I am thinking of making an I Spy quilt with the charms.  I found this pattern in a book I have.  It calls for 3.5” centers for the stars, so with the bigger size, I won’t need quite as many stars.  Plus I can probably put on a border or two to make up the size.

Since I am still trying to make good on my new motto to deploy that fabric, I think I will use Kona ash for the background and a dark aqua for the star points—fabrics I already have in my stash!

And, lucky me, I just received a wonderfully full and amazingly free package in the mail…I won a contest on Contemporary Cloth's blog for this:

The prize was 24 fat quarters of Valori Wells’s newest line called The Nest.  I love it!!!!  The colors are so pretty and my favorite pieces are the little birds.  Thank you, Contemporary Cloth!!!

Easy No Sew Eagle Costume Tutorial

I saw a cute no sew owl costume in Country Living magazine this month and asked Bea about it.  She thought it was cool, but she’d rather be a bald eagle.  So here’s how I made her costume.  It took about an hour and cost about $15:

• brown hoodie at Target $8.99
• mask at Michaels $1.99
• 5 white pieces of felt $1.00
• 10 dark brown pieces of felt $2.00
• 3 light brown pieces of felt $.60
• orange scrap of felt
• hot glue gun and glue sticks

NOTE:  DO NOT HOT GLUE ANYTHING ONTO AN ARTICLE OF CLOTHING BEING WORN BY YOUR CHILD.

1.  Cut out a triangle for the beak and hot glue over the bridge of the nose.

2.  Start cutting various size triangles as feathers.  The owl tutorial called for more rounded feathers which I used when I made Esther’s chicken costume.  The rounder feathers were more arduous to cut, plus they wasted a lot of felt.  These triangle feathers look good and don’t waste any fabric.  I found it was easiest to layer the pieces of felt, cut out a long strip, and then diagonally cut lines to make triangles.  You will need about 20 very small triangles about 1-2” long to fill in feathers on the mask and then cut the rest of the felt into 2.5-4” long feathers for the head.

3.  Glue the small feathers in a symmetrical arrangement on the mask, making sure to avoid the two areas where the elastic is tied onto the mask.  And—voila!—a very convincing bird face!

4. Take the bigger white triangles and glue them in rows starting at the base of the hood.  Keep adding rows until you cover the hood.  You can also cut a few small triangles to fill in close to the edge of the hood.

5.  Cut out large triangles from the dark and light brown felt.  Glue remaining triangles to the front and tops of the arms to make wings.

 

6.  Beginning at the bottom of the jacket, glue the feathers in rows.  I did the front first, just to make sure I’d have enough feathers to fill the back.  I almost didn’t feather the back of the jacket, but since I had enough felt, I went ahead and did it.  Afterwards, I was glad I did.  Fill all the space up and ending just under the tips of the white head feathers.

7.  And that’s it!  My daughter is going to wear brown fleece pants with her costume. 

Deploy that fabric…

Is a new book I’ve seen making the rounds on the blog circuit. (By the way, I looked it up on Amazon and it is about upcycling/recyling military uniforms in different projects…)  I didn’t know anything about the book when I adopted its title as my new motto…and thus started shopping in my stash instead of ordering new fabric online!  I decided to deploy that fabric I have folded neatly on the shelf, stacked on a table, and then randomly piled up along the walls of my office.  No more buying!  I’m deploying that fabric and getting it out there doing the job it was intended to do…being a quilt, a skirt, a pillowcase.  I was on a roll this weekend! 

Esther helped me pick out some Halloween fabric at Joanns a few weeks ago.  I saw on another blog some cute Halloween pillowcases and knew my girls needed them this holiday.

Last year, I made them all trick or treat bags, even Veronica, who was just a bun in the oven at the time.

 

With their initials on the back (thank goodness we didn’t switch names at the last minute!). 

So this year each daughter got her own pillowcase.

Even though Ronnie is too young for pillows yet, I think she likes hers!

 

I got a lot of other sewing done this weekend, too, and will share more pics when I get the chance.

Halloween preview

Can you tell what Bea is going to be for Halloween?

I just finished up hers and Esther’s costumes and can’t wait to share a photo!

We also found something interesting growing in a wheelbarrow filled with rainwater.  After a divorce, the house next door has been vacant for months.  I was looking around for the source of a major mosquito outbreak and found an abandoned wheelbarrow filled with water and tons of mosquito larvae.  As I was pouring it out, lookee what we found:

So the wheelbarrow has been in our driveway for about 3 weeks.  Almost all the tadpoles have finally moved out.  There are only 2 left.

You can see the water level has seriously decreased, but luckily for those last few tadpoles rain is expected tomorrow.

Swaps Goodies

Today I got my fall swap package in the mail.  I sent my partner, Kim, this fall table runner, some Halloween candy, and a wristlet key fob I made.

 

The leaf fabric has a linen look I really like.

Today the mail lady Donna drove up our road and delivered these goodies Esther is modeling in the photo…a cute pumpkin bag, a tabletopper, a Halloween mug rug and new mug, and candy.  You can’t see the chocolate pretzels because Esther has already eaten them all! 

Thank you, Kim!  Everything is lovely!

I also mailed out my block for my Block Swap Adventure partner Linda yesterday.  I never took a photo of the complete block, but here is the sneak peek.  She asked for bright colors.

I really wish I had taken a photo of the whole block.  It is by far the best one I’ve made for BSA and I think it turned out really nicely.  My points were all in the right place and not cut off for once!

Here are the three blocks I’ve received so far along with two I made myself. 

I plan to make a quilt for my brother-in-law in civil war repro type fabric once I amass enough blocks.

Southern Maryland Charm

On Saturday, Veronica and I headed to Summerseat Farm for the annual quilt auction.  I had never been before.  My interest in quilting has really blossomed in the past two years, so I thought I would check it out.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any really good photos of the goings on.  There were Amish people everywhere, and although nothing was posted about taking photos and no one said anything to me, I didn’t want to offend any of the Amish since I know they shy from having their photo taken.

There was one huge tent that housed all the quilts for the preview.  I would estimate there were about 60 quilts up for auction. 

All the quilts were hanging folded over and there were gloves you could don if you wanted to touch or move the quilt.  Lots of people were wearing the blue gloves.

I had read in the paper that this year the auction was open to all quiltmakers, not just Amish as in the past.  It was obvious most of the quilts were made by the Amish as they were hand quilted, hand appliqued, and traditionally designed.  I saw a few that were long-arm quilted.  None of them tickled my fancy, though, and Veronica wanted to be on the move, so I’m sorry to say we didn’t stay to hear any of the actual auction. 

As we were leaving, I snapped a photo of this sign on the road nearby.

 

For real!  There are so many gems like this where I live.  I love it in Southern Maryland.  I counted five Amish buggies on my way to Leonardtown where we headed after the auction.  We went to the LQS where everything was 25% off.  It was a great morning!!!

Mom on duty

Well, this past week was a bust.  Pretty much everyone has been sick at least once, if not twice, in the past two weeks including myself and my husband.  Bea even had to miss her school fieldtrip to the pumpkin patch.  Amazingly, I did manage to get these pillow covers made for Halloween.

Esther LOVES to decorate for Halloween, so on Thursday while Veronica took her nap, we made these out of a Moda Haunted Mansion charm pack I bought last year.  Here she is looking quite unwell while modeling the new covers.  We had several takes of this photo and this was the best shot…

 

These were easy to make.  I didn’t even quilt the fronts.  Since the edges of the charms are already pinked, I wasn’t too worried about unfinished seams.  Plus, the window for Halloween decor is kind of short, so I don’t see them getting washed too often. After sewing together the charms in a 3 x 3 square, I added orange or purple frames to make the front 16 x 16 and then sewed a contrasting envelope style back.  Super fast and easy!

 

I have some pieces cut out for a Halloween quilt, but realistically I won’t get it done until next Halloween:)  I was thinking of trying to swap some of my Halloween fabric leftovers.    Does anyone know a reputable site for swapping fabric? 

Fall Tablerunners

 

I’ve made quite a few tablerunners lately either as gifts or for swaps.  I bought a charm pack last year and have managed to make 4 tablerunners out of it.  I can’t remember the name of the line, but it’s a Moda fabric by Sandy Gervais.

It’s backed by a brown polka dot and bound by a fantastic modern dot fabric and machine attached.  I am loving the zig zag stitch!

I made another identical runner and backed it with a great large scale fabric that I might like even better than the actual top and bound with my favorite zig zag fabric.

And here’s a view of the back—it could be reversible.

The backing was a great find at Joanns.  I only paid $1.80 a yard for it during one of their 1/2 off red tag fabric sales.  I love it!

   

I’m working on another tablerunner with the latest fall line by Sandy Gervais (of course!) called Finale.

I can’t wait to get this one done.  Hopefully in time for Halloween!

Greek Cross Update

It took me a while to get the blocks finished for Esther’s birthday quilt, but I finally have them all squared up and ready to sew into the quilt top.  Originally I planned to do 4 x 5 blocks, but I have a bit more than 20 blocks…27, so I think I’ll do 4 x 6 instead and put the remaining blocks on the back.

Here are a few close ups of my favorite blocks.  Esther picked the tiny pink hearts on white fabric (the middle block in the top row) because she wanted plenty of hearts in the quilt.

Fox in the henhouse:

Deer and toadstools:

Toadstools on pink:

Foxes:

Hedgehogs and hearts:

Aren’t those hedgehogs cute?

In the doghouse…

I guess my husband thought he was in trouble at home.  He brought these lovelies home on Friday, complete with a funny card.   Can you believe they actually make this card?

Truth is, my husband wasn’t in the doghouse.  We’ve just be plagued by colds and lack of sleep, so I’ve been a bit crabby.  We got out all our Halloween decorations today which improved everyone’s moods.  Esther was thrilled to hang bats and spiders on our front porch.  We don’t happen to have a mantle above our fireplace, so our piano is where I put a lot of our holiday stuff.

See those pumpkins in the bowl?  My mom and dad had a reunion yesterday and used a ton of mini pumpkins for decorations.  Trouble was, my mom wrote all over them with permanent marker.  So the girls and I spray painted a few with metallic paint we had in the garage and put glitter on a few of them. 

The fabric in the tablerunner is Pumpkins Gone Wild.  It is definitely my favorite fall fabric line of all time.   I have made several tablerunners either for swaps or gifts recently.