Fabric Tuesday

This year my daughter’s teachers will be getting homemade Christmas presents.  I actually sent in a little questionnaire to find out their tastes and  decided to make them each a pillow.  One teacher’s favorite color is yellow and her favorite season is summer, so I stitched up a snowball block with some yellow and and a summery feel (as I type this, I realize that perhaps snowball wasn’t the most aptly named block to choose!).

 

I didn’t use any batting, just placed it atop white muslin and quilted a simple grid pattern with the assistance of painter’s tape.  I made two actually, an extra one for my mom for her birthday in December.  No worries, it will still be a surprise since she doesn’t read my blog.  She doesn’t even have an email address!  I am going to make an envelope style back with the yellow check fabric.

I really, really like how they turned out.  They measure exactly 16.5 x 16.5, so they will be perfectly sized for the couch.

My daughter’s other teacher’s favorite color is moss green, which is not a color I really have on hand that much.  It worked out great that I made a few blocks for the Charmed Prints Quilt Along that came up just short of the 5” needed for the quilt, so I used 4 of the 5 that were duds to make this pillow cover.

I am going to use the DS Quilts print for the back.  The pillow cover is okay, but I really need to work on not cutting off triangle points.

I’m not sure what my major malfunction is, but sometimes the points turn out perfectly, and other times they have disappeared in the seam allowance.  The white sashing didn’t look quite right without a border, so I added a 1.25 inch striped border which finishes it nicely I think.  This pillow measures 17 x 17 so it will be slightly bigger, but once I’ve inserted a cushion they will be roughly identical sizes. 

I recently bought some Alexander Henry starling fabric

  

and some Kate Spain Flurry birds

so if I get a chance, I might make them a quick Christmas pillow cover, too.  Can you tell I love cardinals?  I am a total bird lover…swans, hummingbirds, and cardinals are my favorites.

I also asked the teachers if they prefer Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, and they all said Starbucks????!!!!!  I’m a Dunkin Donuts gal myself.  In fact, before their stores became so prolific, I would order two five pound bags of beans online every 6 weeks.  I had my own coffee grinder and had to have real cream in mine.  I don’t drink coffee any longer.  My first daughter had a heart murmur and I had to cut out all caffeine when she was in utero.  It was tough, but I did it.  She turned out just fine with no heart problems at all, but after that experience, I abstained from all caffeine during my other two pregnancies.  And after I had Veronica last year, I made my husband stop at the grocery store on our way home from the hospital in a huge SNOWSTORM to buy cream for my first cup of post pregnancy coffee.  But it tasted terrible to me, and now I’m a Tazo black tea gal and haven’t touched a coffee in almost two years.  But if I had to choose between a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts gift card, I’d still go with DD because I love me a Bavarian creme donut!

How about you?  Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

I’m linking up my almost-complete pillow covers to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.

Charmed Prints QAL

Do you start with fabric or start with a pattern first?  I definitely start with fabric!  In fact, you might say I have a little too much.  I joined the Japanese Charm Swap here on Gen X Quilters which was a lot of fun.  Then when a charm pack quilt along came up, I thought the pattern was unique and that I’d give it a go.  But then I got stuck.  I didn’t know what fabric to use (I didn’t feel inspired to use the Japanese charms), and I certainly didn’t want to buy any considering what the shelves in my office look like!

The quilt along started quite a while ago, but I only got my game on during the Thanksgiving holiday.  I’ve made all the “special” blocks for the pattern, a few extra in fact, and I did *ahem* place an emergency fabric order on Fabric.com on Wednesday—butterflies and hearts!-- so I have two more pieces coming my way that I am going to use for a few additional special blocks, but for the most part, all the hard work is done. 

It took a while for the inspiration to hit, but I started with two blocks, picking fabric from my stash and fussy cutting the centers before I got on a roll.  I just picked things I thought Esther (my middle daughter) would like, and then she helped pick out fabric she liked, too.  Her older sister Bea has gobs of quilts I’ve made for her, although she feels a little miffed whenever I’m working on something not for her!

The best news?  I was thinking I’d need to go through and cut a bunch of charms from my stash.  Then I remembered that when I first started reading blogs, I entered a giveaway and WON!!!  It was the first giveaway I’d ever entered, and I was a bit skeptical.  But then a package came in the mail containing two charm packs and a layer cake!  I still have one of the charm packs.  I’ve looked at it enough that the paper band holding it together is missing now, so I’m not sure of the name, but the colors are pretty and, more importantly, even though it’s not totally matchy-matchy with my special blocks, a little white sashing is going to make them look great together!!!!  My special blocks have some lavender in them, so I’ll need to augment the charms with a few purples, but other than that, I’m ready to go on to the next step, making the quilt top, the directions tba on Tuesday.

I’m linking this up to Love Affair With My Brother this week.

Easy Zig-Zag Tablerunner Tutorial

For Thanksgiving this year I made this tablerunner, dubbed Harvest Hills by my mom, from two charm packs.  We needed something kid friendly for serving a Thanksgiving meal directly to the table, so I lined it with Insul-Bright to help protect my table from the heat of the fresh out of the oven pans.  You could easily make this tablerunner from charm (5” square) scraps organized by predominant color.  Once you get your color piles in order, it’s a snap to put together all while customizing the width and length.  Here’s how I did it.

First, figure out how long you want your tablerunner to be.  Four charms will make the length about 40 inches.  Three charms would make it about 30.  Then divvy up your charms into color groups, working your way across the runner.  So my runner starts with teal, works its way to brown, orange, brown and finishes on the other side with purple.  Here’s the one complicated part.  For each 4 charms, you need 4 charms to match them up with.  But you need to match on either side of the row, so you actually 8 charms total for all the inside rows.

 

In this picture I have

• 4 teal with 4 cream
• 4 cream with 4 light orange
• 4 light orange with 4 brown
• 4 brown with 4 orange
• 4 orange with 4 brown
• 4 brown with 4 green
• 4 green with 4 cream
• 4 cream with 4 purple

So here I took my 4 teal charms and picked 4 cream charms to use with them.

Here they are paired up.  I tried to pick a variety of scales and designs between the two colors.

Place the pairs right sides together, then I just stacked the pairs in a pile.  Then I continued on to the next color pair:  cream and light orange.  Do the same thing—pick 4 light orange to go with the 4 cream you still have unpaired.

Put them in pairs right sides facing, then pile them up.

Continue with the next colors, light orange and brown.

\

And keep pairing them up until you get a set of piles that look like this:

So this runner will have 8 rows.

Now, to the sewing.  It can’t get easier than this…sew a 1/4 inch seam around the edge of a charm pair (remember the right sides are facing).  Do each of the 4 pairs in your first pile.  Then cut each pair diagonally twice. 

  

You will end up with a great little pile of this little half square triangle (or maybe more aptly called quarter square triangle?).

Then I pressed my squares with the seams open.

You’ll end up with a nice pile of these.

This is where you can get busy trimming your HSTs into perfect sizes.  I am lazy and did not of that.  I just used a small pair of trimming shears to remove the excess seam allowance and that was that!

Next is the fun part…start laying out all your squares in the pattern you want to follow.  I knew I was binding with orange and cream floral fabric, so I made sure the orange row end pieces were different fabric.  I tried to not repeat a fabric in the same direction or orientation to much.  That sort of thing.

Once you are happy with your layout,

 

you can start piling your squares up to get them ready to sew into rows.

I bundled mine up all left to right and numbered them with small post it notes to keep me organized. 

That’s the gist of how to make the zig-zags.  Once you have your rows all sewn, join your rows together to make the top.  Because I used Insul-Bright in addition to Warm and White batting, I made my binding 2 3/4 inch which worked out perfectly.

I plan to make this exact same runner from a Holly Jolly pack of charms, although I am using 3 and 6 charms to do it.  I like the idea of serving food directly to the table, so I have already started on it so I’ll have it ready for Christmas!  If you decide to make a zig zag runner using the method outlined here, I’d love to see it!!

I’m linking this up to Tuesday at the Table and Fabric Tuesday on Quilt Story.

Handmade Holiday Swap

I am participating in the Craftaholics Anonymous Handmade Holiday Gift Exchange.  I really love this blog!  I have found lots of inspiration for projects that I have made with my kids including this fall (or any season) burlap wreath and a bright Harvest banner that Bea will sew during the Thanksgiving break when she’s off from school.

We made four of the burlap wreaths—one for our door and three to share with family and friends. 

I am really excited to be participating the in the holiday handmade exchange!  My partner has a daughter, so I made her little girl a Christmas twirly skirt like the one I made in my last post.  It was good practice trying to tailor it specifically to her measurements.

 

I’ll be getting it in the mail soon so her daughter can get lots of wear out of it before Christmas!

Movin’ to the country…

I am officially a farmer’s wife!  Well I’m actually married to a businessman, but I have finally made my first two blocks from the book. 

I stole the color scheme from Kerri’s blog Lovely Little Handmades.  She is the owner of the shop Sew Deerly Loved on Etsy, where I purchased all the beautiful fabric I am be using for this quilt (and where I’ve bought other beautiful fabric before).   I love the red and aqua combo.

I was really afraid of starting this quilt.  I had no idea where to start, and I certainly didn’t understand how to use the templates.  Since I have EQ7 (and kind of know how to use it), I thought I’d buy the CD so I could easily print all the rotary cutting directions.  They may be available online, but this just seemed easiest to me.  So I contacted Laurie, the writer of the book, and she was the nicest person ever!!!!  I had seen a few places that the CD was not compatible with the newer version of EQ7, but that’s not true.  There were easy to follow directions on The Farmer’s Wife blog.  I downloaded all the blocks and got started printing out the rotary cutting directions last night.

I tried to pick easier blocks to start out with.  Some of the blocks I will not be able to make by rotary cutting and machine piecing, but hopefully I will be up to the challenge of trying templates or paper piecing after making the less complicated blocks.  Also, I didn’t need to pin for any of these blocks!!!  I just nested the seams and sewed.  These are the best blocks I have ever made.  They were a little over 6.5 inches so I just trimmed them up when I was done.

This one is #73 Rainbow Flowers:

This one is #2 Autumn Tints:

And another nice thing about Laurie, I also bought the new Pony Club book from her as a birthday present to my mom and she very sweetly inscribed the book.  My mom is not a quilter, but she owned a pony and cart when she was a little girl, so I think she’ll enjoy reading the letters.

Thank you, Laurie!

Twirly skirt

Because I learned to sew as an [older] adult, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to sew from a commercial pattern.  Maybe that’s a poor excuse, but pretty much everything I’ve sewn is self-taught and those Simplicity patterns I’ve bought are anything but simple to me.  I barely have time to go to the grocery store (we often are on “last roll of toilet paper alert) let alone take a sewing class.  The one class I took, I attended the first two sessions and learned how to insert my bobbin and adjust stitch length.  The project we were making was a skirt with a waistband and zipper.  When my instructor helped me sew the zipper, she sewed in a pucker.  I never finished that skirt, but I have learned oodles from all the great blogs I read and even have inserted a few zippers with a little help from some great online tutorials!

I saw this skirt on Kat’s blog recently and knew I had to try it.  I’m so pleased with the results that I know tons of skirts are in the future for my daughters and their friends!  I added rick rack, which I’ve never sewn before, with a zig zag.  After washing and drying, the rick rack looks flat and good as new!  Awesome!!!

Nosey Parker in the Neighborhood

I am participating in Kat’s linky party over at Mumma's Time To Create.  I became friends with her a few months ago and we’ve even swapped some great fabric.  I love her Christmas tree tablerunner tutorial, and I just recently used her twirly skirt tutorial with great success (you’ll see photos soon).

1.  About my home…

 

cousins playing in our driveway

I live in Maryland, which is awesome!  We live right down the street from the Patuxent River Naval Air Station.  Our home is about an hour away from Washington, DC; about 2 hours from Baltimore; and about an hour away from Annapolis.  There are also mountains in Western Maryland to visit and Ocean City for beaches.  I have lived lots of places when I was in the Navy, but I love it here the most.

being so close to the Navy base, interesting things fly overhead

2.  The houses…

There are all types of homesteads…apartments, townhomes, duplexes, and I happen to have grown up on a horse farm.  There are tons of farms here and Amish!  Southern Maryland happens to be a former tobacco growing area.  There is a beautiful little area called Port Tobacco on the Potomac River.  In fact, the county fair pageant winner is named “Queen Nicotina.”  I am not joking.  Also, I was first runner-up in high school…

at the pool in our neighborhood

My daughter tells everyone that we live in the “blue plastic house.”  We live in a really nice neighborhood in St. Mary’s County.  There are tons of parks, soccer fields, recreation areas, duck ponds, playgrounds, pools, walking trails, and even a neighborhood elementary school.  Most typical homes are 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths.  Our particular neighborhood is a little different because there are many custom homes.  Our house is a little unique because it has two master bedroom suites, which is nice for me.  The extra master suite happens to be my office/sewing room.  I was a high school and college English teacher after getting out of the Navy, so I have tons of teaching materials and books.  The master suite might be a little too snug anymore!  Our home is also getting a brand new roof thanks to Hurricane Irene.

Ack!  Tree on the house!

Speaking of the weather…one of the things I miss about California (the state—funnily enough I live in California, MD) is the temperate weather.  We have all four seasons and because we are on the coast, hurricanes, too.  And a few years ago, a tornado ripped through nearby LaPlata (where I went to high school) and there were actually some fatalities.  Some winters we get a lot of snow, which I loved as a teacher—snow day!—but some winters we don’t.  I don’t particularly like cold weather, but we have a fireplace and I love hanging out with the family when we have a fire.  Our Siamese cat, Mickey, has his basket near the hearth, so he even joins us!

You must own snow boots and flip flops to be comfortable year round here!

3.  Favorite Places…

If you live here, you better like seafood!  We live right between two rivers, the Potomac and the Patuxent and then of course by the Chesapeake Bay.  For Thanksgiving, in addition to turkey we always have stuffed ham and fried oysters!  It’s a tradition.

enjoying the beach in Ocean City, MD

We love to go to the beach…Ocean City or just nearby.  Pretty much all the parks here are waterfront on the Patuxent River or Chesapeake Bay, so we like Greenwell State Park and Point Lookout…the southern tip of St. Mary’s that, well, looks out to the Chesapeake!  Because the first landing happened here in St. Mary’s, there are tons of historic places to visit such as St. Clements Island and historic St. Mary’s City. 

wild ponies at the beach in Assateague, MD (near Ocean City)

Another favorite destination is the National Aquarium in Baltimore and any of the Smithsonian museums in DC.  But we have our own little gem right across the bridge on Solomon’s Island.  The Calvert Marine Museum has a lighthouse, a children’s discovery room, and Bubbles and Squeak the river otters!

Visiting Pop-Pop, who lives [on the water of course] at Lake Anna in VA

looking for sea glass at Point Lookout State Park on a stormy day

4.  How do people get around?

By car!  There isn’t really any public transportation in St. Mary’s except for a very rudimentary bus service.  There does happen to be bus transit to Washington, DC, but that’s about it.  Of course in the city there is the metro.  I drive a minivan!

Well, that’s it!  Looking forward to reading everyone’s links!