A Rainbow of Fabric

Finishing a quilt, even a small one, is a magical thing.



My daughter enjoyed the work in progress as well.



And nothing sets off color better than sunlight!



The little gnome fellow soaked up some sun too.

I think I've had a very productive week. I finished a quilt! Something that at one time would take months or even years....yet in a matter of days I managed to start and finish a 36"x36" quilt for a baby. As much as I hate to admit it, machine piecing and quilting can be a wonderful thing!



I was also able to send a homemade gift to a friend and her newborn son.



And also make a playmat for my own child!

Fabric Goodness

I am extremely excited by these fabrics and the baby quilt they will produce.

Birthday Gifts

Bear's friend E. had her first birthday this past weekend so Mommy did some sewing.


First I finished off a UFO that I'd had stuffed in a cabinet for 5 or 6 years. I had 5 rainbow Drunkards Path blocks ready to go, added 4 squares of super soft furry stuff I picked up at Joann's, sandwiched the top with a layer of flannel and woven cotton backing fabric, tied it, and then bound it with silky blanket binding on two sides. I'm digging the tying method over quilting right now...hand quilting is impossible for me with a toddler around. Machine sewing doesn't always happen either...but I can easily tie a quilt like this in under an hour.


Next I put together a quick dress, shirt, and set of DIY Babylegs. The shirt was made from a tee of my own. I didn't have to hem it because I used the bottom edge of the shirt as is. I did something similar to the Peasant Blouse tutorial over on Blueprints. The dress was just something I came up with on the fly. I will try to put together a tutorial for it soon. I embellished it with some Yo Yo's, but otherwise it was just a very basic rectangle dress. I again used the same Babylegs tutorial from my previous post.


Then I made some cute knitted little people/animals which I altered quite a bit by the time I was finished. By the way, the loopy skirt thing was the same stitch as the one used in this lion washcloth. From left to right - Suki the dog, Bear, E., and Cerra the horse.


And another split-pea filled monster. This time with horns and a cute little smirk.

SO now I need to try my hand at play-food. E. got an awesome up-cycled play-kitchen from her parents and needs some food to go with it. Bear also LOVED it...so hopefully we'll be making her a kitchen of her own in the near future.

Birthday Sewing - Over And Done

My little girl's 1st birthday was on Saturday! Yay! I'm very happy and proud of my sweetie, and also happy and proud of myself that I accomplished everything I set out to in preparation for her party. It's very rare for me to get that much done at one time, so I feel really good about it. The biggest accomplishment by far being the baby quilt I started for Bear when I was around 5 months pregnant. I intended for it to be finished in time for her birth, but as usual, things didn't work out quite as I planned. Better late than never, I suppose. My hope is that she'll get attached to it despite the delay. I've been putting her down for naps/for bed with it everyday since her birthday. It's a bit different than the previous baby quilts I've done in the past. This is the first time I've used Minky in the solid blocks (for those who aren't up on fabric types: Minky is a super soft, furry-feeling polyester fabric with a good amount of stretch) as well as the first quilt I've tied instead of quilting since the dread polyester-double-knit quilt I tied for my grandma about 10 years ago (Which was a nightmareish quilt, by the way. There is a reason we left polyester-double-knit in the 70's!). All in all, I'm pleased with the results. My mother did contribute one block to this quilt.
After completely the quilt I set my mind towards creating the decorations for Bear's cake as well as a fabric party hat. The design for both came from an adorable flower invitation I purchased at Target for the party. I loved that they were feminine without being all fairy-princess-diva which is ridiculously prevolent when shopping for anything for a female child. The hat turned out great, I think. And the cake also looked really nice when it was all put together. I purchased a completely plain cake from my favorite bakery and then added sugar cookies that I had frosted and iced to match the invitations. I also had plain red, turquiouse, green, and yellow party assecories to do with it.


At the last minute I decided to make a small stuffed toy also. Obviously very Yo Gabba inspired! I filled the little fella with dried split-peas so it's got that nice beanbag feel. I would have liked to make something bigger (my goal is to make at least one handmade gift for her birthday each year...and by the way I'm not completely counting her quilt because it wasn't intended to be a birthday gift, I was just really really slow), but all-in-all I'm happy with what I came up with. We also gifted her a nice set of wooden ABC blocks and a ride-on-toy that we purchased.


After the birthday was over, I turned my attention back to diaper making. I'm currently making a medium-long for Bear with the Daribum's pattern. So far I'm liking it. Lots of butt-coverage and the snaps are more towards the back of the diaper which makes changing a run-away baby much easier. As soon as I order some FOE I need to make some covers...I'll most likely also need to order some poly-resin snaps in the near future.

A current snap shot of my works in progress:

A Surprisingly Quick Project

I managed to start AND finish this tote in 2 days.

I've had the pattern for months and Tuesday afternoon my aunt (who actually bought the pattern so that I could make this bag) and I went to Quilting Adventures and she picked out a charm pack of 5" squares in various purple/green/teal/blue batiks. Bon adores purple. As you can imagine she was quite taken with it.

And while I did manage to finish it amazingly fast for me (it's a miracle that it was finished at all with the way I tend to work...)...it damn near killed me to do it! The first day was fun...the second day...not so much. Although it wasn't entirely the bag's doing, but that's another long story.

ANYWAY, I used some of the leftovers to make a little babywearer pouch to attach to my sling/wrap so I won't have to drag a purse with me. I'll post pics of that later, though.


By the way my daughter also enjoyed this tote.