Warm Hands

I was standing outside in the carpool line one of the few very cold mornings this year and my hands were really cold! I immediately came home and made these little rice filled hand warmers.

So cute and awesome and I couldn’t wait to use them!

The next morning I put the hand warmers into the microwave and promptly burned them. But, if you want to make some for yourself cut four 2 3/4″ squares from 100% cotton fabric. Fill them with rice – not too full so you can stitch them together, and pop them into the microwave. Ten seconds is all you need. Trust me. I learned the hard way. And if you want to be really cautious, warm them in 5 second increments.

Happy hand warming!

I’ve Got it Covered

My best friend’s daughter goes to a private school here in town. In the first grade the children are presented with a prayer book. Now, my Marnie is pretty fabulous and can do a lot of things. Sewing is not one of them. She called me and asked if I’d make the cover. She sent all the information and here’s what happened.

Marnies’s daughter is a girly girl that loves purple and BFF loves hearts so I incorporated those onto the back. Two of the hearts have photos of the twins.  The candle pattern was sent in the info packet as were the Hebrew letters. Other than trying to put the letters on backwards putting the cover together was fun.

I added handles to the sides of the cover so the book could be carried easily. I also added ribbons to use as markers in the prayer book.

The inside has a fun Kaffe Fasset fabric. I appliqued a dedication from her parents inside the front cover and a small note from me on the back cover.

The best part of making this was seeing the HUGE smile on a sweet girl’s face when she saw her cover.

Oh, and Marnie liked it, too.

Seven Quilts for Seven Souls

Last April I was commissioned to make seven quilts. Yes, you read that correctly, seven quilts.  I won’t bore you with all the details of submitting designs and the outrageous quantity of Woven Fusible I used but I will say that I did enjoy the work.

Mrs. M had specific ideas about what she wanted. Turns out that is terribly helpful. She knew what she liked and there wasn’t any wishy-washy-ness. Once we settled on the pattern I got to work.

The top of each quilt is made almost entirely from her father’s clothing. The jet black Kona used for the borders, binding and backing is the only non-clothing material used in these quilt tops.

This is a photo of one of the smaller quilts. The quilt I made for Mrs. M’s mom was larger, close to  60×80, and many of the squares had the logos from his golf shirts – think country club.  There were also a few fun shirt logos tossed in for fun, like Stoli Vodka!  I  included the logo from his favorite brand of ties, Countess Mara, too. Sadly, I didn’t think to snap a photo of the big quilt. sigh.

The large “M” in the center of the quilt was made from Dad’s favorite jacket, also made by Countess Mara. I machine appliqued it to the black square in the center. The black block was cut from tuxedo pants (or a jacket, depending on the quilt) and the surrounding triangles were made from dress shirts (tuxedo shirt for Mrs. M’s mom and dress shirts for the others).

I was well into the quilt making process when Mrs. M asked me to include tie logos in all the quilts. Unfortunately I had cut around the logos and thrown out the itty bitty pieces that were left. I called Countess Mara, explained my project and they were kind enough to send me some tie labels. I stitched one down on each quilt top.

Each of the granddaughters had a special patch sewn onto her quilt.

And the back of each quilt had special sayings, individually bordered and scattered across the back

The fabric used around the labels was cut from a purple and white striped shirt. I stitched the pieces together so each label has a cool design element. Mrs. M’s Dad went to Northwestern University and purple and white are the colors. Let it also be noted that the quilts were each named “Go Cats!” for the aforementioned university.

The quilts were Christmas presents.

I received an email from Mrs. M on Christmas Eve. She looked all over the City to find big, pretty, white boxes to wrap the quilts. She found them and tied a pretty purple bow on each package. The email had a photo of the quilts, boxed and ready to go. It simply said “Beautiful Boxes for Beautiful Quilts” and made me smile.

Lil’ Slugger

I recently finished this quilt. I made it using my All Squared Up pattern but I started with smaller squares since this is a baby quilt.

The gal I made it for had me cut up her bridesmaid’s dress to put in the quilt. It’s for her nephew. Is that a great idea or what? I think a few bridesmaid’s dresses in my closet are calling me to do the same. I mean, they’re just gathering dust.

Several of the fabrics on the front, and subsequently the back, are coordinating pieces from baby’s bedding set.  We threw in some other fabrics for color and variety, too.

I think the quilt is adorable and I’d certainly cuddle up with it on a cold day!

Dressing Up

I needed to take a break from the seven commission quilts I’m making (more on that later) and decided to make a skirt. The pattern is from my from my friend Mary’s book, Little Girls, Big Style. This book is a must have for anyone that wants to make a boutique wardrobe for little girls. It’s amazing beyond words. I’m possibly a bit biased, but really, it’s just awesome.

Anyhow, one of my favorite little girl turns 4 at the end of the month. She’s beautiful, and fun, and a free spirit. We adore her! I love to sew for her and was feeling particularly motivated today.  Little Mister helped me pick out the fabric. The spiders on the purple fabric glow in the dark. How cool is that? So cool.

We gave the skirt to her a little early (today) and what a big hit! She loves it! Yes, I left the bottom edge unfinished with just a serge…it works for her, I swear!

Sugar and Spice

Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.

It’s so true and I’m thrilled that this quit is going to one of the sweetest little girls ever.

I finished the quilt for Ava and I love it! So does she, and more importantly, her mom.

I finished quilting and binding the quilt several weeks ago. Every time I’d grab it to take to my friend I remembered that the owl and birds had no eyes and the butterflies had no antennae. I drew those on with a Pigma pen.

I quilted with a simple straight line through the center of each strip. Larger strips had several quilting lines. I quilted around the trees, leaves, animals and flowers, too. The leaves have veins and the butterflies have little circles on their bodies. I’m not sure if you can see that in this picture, though, and now the quilt isn’t here for me to snap a photo of that. drat.

I sketched the tree, leaves, butterflies and owl on newsprint before transferring them to Steam-a-Seam lite and applying them to the background. Once the parts were ironed onto the background I stitched around them, then again when they were quilted. I suspect that this quilt will be heavily used and a little extra stability seemed like a good idea.

The entire quilt was pieced entirely from strips and scraps and fabric that I had in my stash. I have a lot of fabric and I’m trying to use up some of it. I did have to buy the beautiful striped batik for the binding but think it compliments the fabric nicely. What do you think?

I Love Making Quilts

I love making quilts.

I recently made a t-shirt quilt as a surprise from a mother to her son. Her son is eleven and the family moved rather unexpectedly. Rory has played a lot of youth baseball and Donna kept his jerseys through the years.

I added a few details from the shirts on the quilts

and received this note.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just got home and TORE open the box.  Patty it is magnificent!!!  It is the most awe inspiring t-shirt quilt i have ever ever EVER seen.  It is so much more than I ever hoped for I can’t thank you enough.  Rory is overjoyed – he loves it.

THANK YOU!

I am keeping your card because I have to come up with more projects for your gifted hands.  Thank you, Patty.

Best. Thank you. Ever.

Makin’ Headway

Little Mister is with my parents for the week. He calls it Camp Mimi and Papa. I call it a much needed reprieve, though truth be told I miss him terribly and am ready for him to come home. I have one more day to be productive. I made certain the house was mostly clean and organized on Sunday so I could ignore it this week to sew. It’s been quite nice.

I’m making headway on this quilt that I blogged about in November. I’m almost finished with the quilting and am extremely happy with how it looks.

A close up view

I pressed all the seams open and initially was stitching “in the ditch”, except there wasn’t much of a ditch. After a few passes I took out those stitches and started sewing straight lines through the middle of each piece.

I always love an opportunity to practice my free motion quilting. After all, practice makes perfect. I outlined the leaves and stitched in the veins. The tree has a planned, stipple-like wave quilting and all the flowers outline the outside edge.

The quilt really looks great!  It’s well quilted but the quilting doesn’t take away from the overall design. I can’t wait to show you the finished product. I’m hopeful that I’ll finish the quilting tomorrow and get it bound by this weekend.

You’re Safe with Kaffe

I was browsing quilters blogs and websites one recent evening and kept seeing a pattern that I have loved for ages. It’s kind of  haunted me. I showed it to husband and he actually liked it! Surprising for me since husband openly admits he doesn’t care for a lot of my quilts. He likes very streamline, linear, simple, quilts. Occasionally I make one he likes but not often. Luckily I’m quilting for me! Buuuttttt, if I can make a quilt that we both like and may even (gasp) get used then even better!

I went to my favorite shop to pick up a copy. You are probably familiar with it. Kim McLean’s Lollipop trees. It’s really a fabulous pattern.

Of course, if I buy a new pattern then I was going to have to pick up a few more Kaffe Fassett fabrics. Oh, drat! I picked up a few to supplement my collection but think I need more. Actually, I know I need more but am going to try to get them as needed. My sewing room is small and husband has a third of it, well, he’s supposed to have a third of it. I may have, ahem, taken it back over recently. But that’s temporary.

The squares are much larger than I thought. 18″ square when finished. That’s one large block! It took me something like five hours to get the first one traced on templates, cut and partially basted. Yikes!

I did change a few things. Initially I had a brown stem but didn’t really like it so I decided to go with green. I cut out the center three times before settling on the current iteration – one was too dark and the yellow didn’t make the grade – and I had to buy a few more pink/red fabrics so I could make the bubbles/circles/lollipops at the end of the leaves.  I put a few down and they were too light but I think I’m happy with this version.

Sweet Pea Quilt

My cousin and his wife had Sweet Pea 22 hours before Q Man was born. 22 hours! How crazy is that?! I mean, really?

Of course I had to make a quilt.

This quilt was so fun and easy to make. I fussy cut the center squares from a variety of fun fabrics then bordered each with a solid reading batik. I love it! I did some great quilting in the center of the squares, too. It was so much fun to do the free motion quilting in the center of each block.

Sadly, I’ve had the quilt pieced and quilted for ages but just hadn’t bound it. Partially because I was being lazy and didn’t want to make the binding and partially because I wasn’t sold on any particular fabric for the binding. Originally I planned to use the black and white flower print that I’d used for the inner border. Then I decided I didn’t like it.

I’m trying to finish up projects now that I’ve found balance in my life and make time to sew. Since this partially finished quilt was in my sewing room for a year (gasp!) I decided I needed to just get it finished.  I was digging through my binding scraps (yes, I keep all the little parts of binding if I have some remaining so I can use it on other projects or piece several bindings together for quilts, or…. you get the idea). Anyhow, I ran across this stripe that, ironically, I used as the binding for a baby quilt for another cousins kid born a few months before Q Man. Perfect! I just love striped bindings.

Sweet Pea’s Mamas favorite color is purple so I put this funky purple-ish Kaffe on the back for her. Okay, I had enough fabric in my stash, too. But it soooo screams of her Mama.

I’m super pleased and hope that Sweet Pea will treasure this for years!