Busy little bee...

What have I been doing the past couple of days?  Not working on my quilt that's what!  I did however complete some uncompleted projects.

The first of which is a Hanging Toy Sack for my son.  These are all fabrics I used in his nursery bedding (which I will post pictures of when I get back home!).  This has been in the making since like November and I had gotten most of it done but it needed some hand sewing to finish.  Since starting this one I made another one for my nephew and that one got done MUCH quicker.  Since I couldn't find a tutorial on this I just kinda winged it and now I think I've got it down, so I will be creating a picture tutorial to go along with it.  But that's another one of those things that has to happen when I get home.

My second project I finished was Megan's Apron and Oven Mitt.  Both of these are completely functionless except for pretend for a smallish child.  I will be remaking these :D  I do like how they came out though and I'm super happy something needing hand stitching got finished in an almost reasonable amount of time.

Next is not something I needed to finished but just something I needed to do before we leave.  My SIL got the great idea to do stepping stones for Mother's Day for my MIL.  This was another one of those projects that was supposed to get done a while ago (like Dec/Jan).  I really like how his came out!  Now I just have to do mine!







And these are what I'm working on for the next couple of days.  My MIL asked me to liven up her director's chairs with a fresh coat of paint.  This is the perfect way to get new life out of your old patio chairs or to clean up some inexpensive chairs you've picked up from a yard sale!  I really like the brown she picked out and we have these beautiful rustic red panels to replace the old ones with.

Before

After

A lesson learned in bandages

So Monday when we had the CT scan it went well, for the most part.  We got there a little bit before we were told to be there (which was an hour before his appointment) and sat..... and sat..... AND SAT some more.  Apparently the people with an appointment before my son's got there late pushing us back, oh about an hour and half!  It was ridiculous!  I ended up sitting in that hospital for 5 hours.  They boy did good though and we should be talking to the doctor at the end of the month.  Needless to say I got nothing done that day

And I got nothing done the next day too.

Although the boy had a play date with his girlfriend.  We went to a baby gym, it was fun. (They had a blast!)

The quilt I'm making was inspired by this quilt by Alissa Carlton.  I didn't have a pattern or anything to go by so I used EQ 7 to help me plan out what I'm going to do.  I decided on a 4 inch square for my picture with 1 inch strips around it for the frame.  This results in a 6x6 inch square and I'm doing 6x8 squares for the quilt.  It should give me final dimensions of 36x48 inches.  I'm working off of this Tinkerbell print that I picked up from JoAnn Fabrics.


Here are the rest of the fabrics I'm using in this quilt.  My absolute favorite is the pink and purple floral on the white background, it is incredibly soft too!

Today I finally decided I needed to start knockin this cutting out.  So this morning I got all my 4 inch squares cut.  Then I figured out all the math for my strips so I could keep waste to a minimum.  I decided on cutting 12 1.5x44 inch strips and then chopping it down from there.  That then changed to 24 1.5x22 inch strips because it was more manageable on my rotary mat.  I got all my long strips cut from my white fabric and I'm now working on breaking that down to my workable pieces.  Here is a tip: keep your fingers OUT OF THE WAY of the rotary blade.  I'm working on my 3rd or 4th strip when OUCH! omgijustcutmyfingeroff.  Ok, ok, not THAT bad, but still pretty bad.  I had sliced a good portion of my thumbnail off which is now only hanging by a thin piece of skin.  It didn't bleed too much which was pretty nice and I was relieved to see I didn't get any blood on my white fabric!!  Here's another trip: make sure you put your band-aids on right the first time, it will always hurt more if you have to readjust them.

I really hope tomorrow isn't going to hurt as much today.

What's next....

Today I went down to my quilt shop (Quilting Adventures yay!) and my local Joann's and got my fabrics for my next project!  I'm going to be doing a quilt for one of my friend's little girl.  She's turning 1 just a few days before my little bubba turns 1.  I don't think I'm going to get to start on it tomorrow.  It really depends on how stressful everything ends up being.  The boy has 2 doctor's appointments tomorrow back to back and is on diet restrictions.  He has to go under for a CT scan. :(  Let's hope everything goes well and we don't get home too cranky!

Macaroni Cornbread

Yes you read right, macaroni cornbread!  My brother-in-law and I decided to experiment in the kitchen a bit today.  The end product was eh, ok.  It needs a bit of tweaking before its amazing but it sure does have the potential!

I'm putting up pictures today of some plush toys I recently made for my son.  Both of these plush toys came from the book Wee Wonderfuls.  This first little guy is named Wes the Baby Giraffe.  When I first saw him in the book I thought "OMG soooo cuuuute! I totally have to make him!" I NEVER WANT TO MAKE HIM EVER AGAIN.  I don't know, maybe I'm lacking in skill but he was a pain in the behind to do.  I can't even say in the end it was worth it because I don't really like how he came out.  I pretty much stuck with the directions from the book but I used buttons for the eyes instead of felt and left off the nose.  One thing I do like about him is the fabric.  I picked out a print from Lizzy House's Castle Peeps from my local quilt shop called Quilting Adventures.

Koji on the other hand is a win all around!!

Koji is an all around win.  He's amazingly cute and he wasn't too difficult to make either.  Koji was made mostly by the book, they suggested felt for the eyes but I thought using buttons made him look a little less zombieish.  I really  like how he ended up.  Once again my favorite part of him is the fabrics!  I used a green plaid flannel for the body and a cute scrap of fabric I found in my sister-in-laws stash

The seam ripper is my best friend

I ended up getting absolutely NOTHING done yesterday.  The boy was still not feeling well. :(  Buuuuut I got the color book done today! Yay!

So today was all about piecing the cover together and adding finishing touches.  This was more of pain than I expected it to be.  I need tips and tricks on how to cut and sew evenly.  The seam ripper was close by through out my sewing today.  I must have redone some of these at least a dozen times.  I guess I could have left them the way they were but then my cover would have come out all wonky.

On the front and the back I stitched in the ditch again and on the inside I tried out some free motion.  At first I wasn't really happy with how it turned out but it's growing on me.

Since everything came out so thick there was no way I was going to be able to sew it all together with the machine.  I used 6 stranded embroidery thread to help it stand up to the munchkin.  I really don't like how it ended up so there is a great possibility I'll be redoing this tomorrow!

Overall I really liked how it came out.  Yeah, it's not perfect but I don't think anything I make will ever be.  As long as I enjoyed the process then that is quite all right with me!  Let me know what you guys think!

More like Edward's Color Novel!

OH! also, what's the best way (in your opinion) to quilt a log cabin block?

I wish I could go back to sleep....

....but I can't.  As many of you with children know already, a feverish baby makes for an restless night.  My 10 month old son, who was battling a fever yesterday, decided he was going to wake up at 10:30 p.m. and stayed up till oooh about 1:15 IN THE MORNING.  He was back up around 8:30ish today :( I wish we could both go back to sleep, I know he needs it.  Now he's napping and I'm up for the day BAH!

ANYWAY.........

My strips for the cover and the inside of the cover

The current project I'm working on is from a lovely little magazine called 101 Patchwork Projects and Quilts.  If you haven't had the chance to flip through this you need to.  It has a lot of cute ideas that would be great for yourself or great as a gift!  Right now I'm putting together Baby's Favorite Color Book.

This project is great for clearing out your scrap stash.  My sister-in-law let me go through her scraps stash (since most of mine is not with me) to gather all my colors which was pretty fricken awesome cause I wanted 16 different patterns for each of the 8 pages.

The aqua (or light blue) page is my fav!

The directions call for 2 pieces of batting in each page, so I decided to quilt the pages.  I just simply stitched in the ditch because I knew it would be way too easy for my son to pull and fluff the batting when he plays with it.  However, when I turned it I felt like my pages came out REALLY thick (they must have used super thin batting).  So I suggest using just 1 layer in the pages and if you do want to quilt it I would do it by hand unless you're a pro at straight seems (which I am not).

I decided not to put the tabs on, mostly because I forgot about them until after everything was sewn and turned.  Now all I have left to do is piece the cover together and "bind" my book.  I had lots of extra strips left over from cutting the front so I'm going to repeat the log cabin design on the back.  I really can't wait to finish this and get some finished pics up here!

Hello!

I know what you're thinking, "Oh no, not another craft blog!"  Well in fact it is another craft blog!  This will be my first blog EVER, so if you have some tips and tricks to share with me it would be greatly appreciated.  I hope that you guys will enjoy reading about my endeavors into all things crafting.  I currently enjoy crocheting, counted cross-stitch, and general craftyness.  I'm starting to get into quilting, embroidering, and finding my way around a sewing machine.  I really look forward to sharing pictures of my past projects and taking on new ones.  OH! BTW! please bear with me as I stumble across blogging  (^.^)