school daze

My big boy’s first full day of “school” is today. I’m a wreck. According to the lady at daycare, whom I just called for reassurance, he’s doing fine. Still a little shy, but calmly working on his art project for the day.

We did a few hour test run on Friday and I had to watch him cry when I left. The most horrible 5 minutes of my life, thank you very much. But he was happily eating his snack with the other kids when I returned to pick him up. It actually took us 30 minutes to leave. He saw me come in, waved, and turned back to finish his snack. No grand reunion. No running into my arms. No drama whatsoever. Just a little wave, then back to the cookies and crackers.

Thankfully, I will rarely have to handle the drop off. Poor B, he’s got that job. I get to be the rescuer.

Anyway, Liam only needs a few supplies to keep at school: diapers, wipes, sippy cup, extra change of clothes (just in case), and a blanket and pillow for naptime. Gasp! I sent my sweet love monkey to school without a pillow on Friday. The horror. Fortunately Children’s Services was not called in. This time.

Three guesses what I did this weekend.

Using fabric scraps left over from Liam’s quilt and an adorable orange fat quarter from Walmart, I whipped up this 14″ square pillow in about 5 hours. I’m slow, normal people would likely have finished something this simple in 3.

The one piece envelope pillowcase is removable and made similarly to this.

 

Basically, I made a 32″x15″ rectagle quilt then folded it and sewed the side seams. The process was as follows. First layer the quilt sandwich batting, pieced top face up, and quilt back face down. Sew the 15″ seams and turn the quilt right sides out, so that the 15″ edges are finished. Next do your quilting. I did simple straight lines at 1/2″ spacing. I did a single line of straight stretch stitch 1/2″ from the finished edges and regular straight stitch for the rest. I really like the heavy look of the straight stretch, but it seemed like a crazy waste of thread and time (took at least twice as long as the regular).

 

I also took the opportunity to play with the alphabet stitches on my Curvy.

Hope the cuteness of the pillow makes up for my negligence last week. Cheers!

belated project quilting pillow

So, there’s this cool quilt blog contest going on, it’s Project Quilting at Kim’s Crafty Apple. The gist is that every other week a new challenge is posted. You have one week to complete a project and post photos of the finished work. Judges and the general public then vote for their favorite.

I tried to enter for Challenge 1, but it took me three weeks to complete. So, obviously, I missed the deadline. I’m pleased with the finished pillow though and really enjoyed using the challenge constraints to kick-start some creative thinking.

The project requirements were to use 50 3″x5″ rectangles and a maximum of two 1/2-yard cuts of fabric to make the entire quilt.

The rectangles were all cut from stash scraps, two of 24 fabrics and two singles, and the quilt back 1/2-yard was some stash muslin. I bought the white background fabric at Walmart.

The pillow top pattern was inspired by the Joseph’s Coat Quilt Along at Don’t look now! Seriously, how amazing is that quilt? Even I know that I could never tackle a full-sized quilt right now, so I made a single block. Actually, I guess that’s two blocks with two extra connecting pieces,but all of the pieces are directly sewn to one 18″x18″ square of fabric. My rings are also smaller than those in the tutorial, I set my compass to a 4″ radius. When was the last time you used a compass?

Rather than sewing the applique by hand, I machine zigzagged 1/8″ from the edge, to allow for fraying. This technique was chosen out of fear. Fear that the points wouldn’t meet and fear that hand work would “take too long”. The rag edge definitely hides the mismatched points and gives a softer look to the finished top.

The front was quilted with the hand-quilting stitch on my sewing machine. Of course, I didn’t have my manual handy and totally guessed at settings. Used the wrong foot for most and struggled upping and upping the tensions and making a general mess of the back.  When I finally changed to a normal foot and reset the tension, the stitching was great. Finally found the manual, long after completing the pillow top and it turns out that I should have used transparent thread in the needle to make it really look hand quilting. Live and learn.

The back used the tiny scraps leftover from the oval pattern pieces and 1-1/2″x5″ strips. The strips were quilted in the ditch and the scraps were stitched down with random lines of quilting in normal straight stitch.

The seam line between the stripes and scraps was emphasized with a narrow machine stem stitch. I love the look and probably would have appliqued with it had I found it sooner.

The back is in two pieces, so the pillow form is removable. I suspect a white throw pillow will need a few washes… Um, please ignore the nasty, chipped polish.

Finally, the binding is double fold using most of the remaining rectangles, halved into 2-1/2″ squares and sewed into a long strip. I originally meant to round the corners of the pillow, but forgot about that idea until after I had already turned the first corner. No going back at that point. This was my first mitered binding and I even hand sewed the back, which is really surprising.

This is the first crafty thing I’ve finished in a while. Hopefully there will be more FOs appearing on the blog soon…

birthday crown, etc.

So, I made Liam a crown for his big day. Finished it about 15 minutes before the party was supposed to start. It looks cute in the photos and he wore it for a little while, so overall I was pleased. Basically, it’s a simple pieced front and solid back with low loft cotton batting between and a 1″ bit of elastic in the back encased in the lower binding. The fabric is 100% cotton fat quarters from WalMart, $1 each and just too cute. I may need to make a quilt or something with the leftovers. 

Anyway, back to the crown. First, I pieced the front by sewing the pieces together through the batting like this. Next I attached the “1″, sewing a narrow zig-zag with a short stitch length through the fabric and batting, then attached the backing fabric, leaving the bottom open. I trimmed the seam allowance very close and turned the crown right side out, then quilted around each section of the front of the crown. I totally screwed up the elastic casing. Not really sure what I was thinking, but I first attached the elastic to the crown, then sewed the binding to the back of the crown, folded it to front and zig-zagged it with the same narrow zig-zag and a longer stitch length, and finally tried (failed, but tried) to seam the binding around the elastic. Ugly, but it stayed together for the party. 

  

You can only imagine how long and hard I thought about my baby’s first birthday cake. I lamented having already done the very hungry caterpillar, considered something Sesame Street (in honor of their 40th birthday), and finally settled on a rainbow. It was months of agonizing and eye twitching – Seriously, I have a recurring eye twitch now. That’s hot! – mental gymnastics. Here’s the result. 

crappy photo, but we were in the moment

 The six layer cake is made with a double recipe of Cook’s Illustrated’s Basic White Cake. The batter was very, very scarily thin, but the cakes turned out pretty good. I used the same old baking powder that I thought was crappy last May. So, surprise! The cake seemed dense to me. The frosting is a basic buttercream, and lots of it. Like 10 lbs of powdered sugar’s worth. 

Back to the method, each batch of batter was divided into thirds and dyed a different color with gel food coloring.  A bit was poured into a cupcake pan and the rest was then baked in a disposable 8″ diameter pan. So, there were six individually colored cupcakes and cake layers. The cupcakes were trimmed flat and cut in half to make smash cakes for Liam and Grandpa, who turned 70 in November. 

You can see some of the smash cake layers in the photos below. And, yes, Liam did wind up with both cakes. And Grandpa’s slice of cake too, if you’re keeping track. 

  

And finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The jello rainbow. 

and it only took 8 hours to make!

 In the bowl, it wasn’t bad, but turned out, this nasty thing looked like a flaccid, multicolored breast implant. I’ll spare you the gory details and leave you with this tip. Do it this way or this way. 

what a feast of sweets...

mama’s new baby

Singer Curvy 8780

Mummy got a new sewing machine for her birthday. It is amazing. I love it. It’s the Singer Curvy 8780 and it has 225 stitches (including a block alphabet) and the Costco set came with every foot you can imagine. Seriously, I’m giddy with presser feet. The only one that didn’t come in the box is the circular stitch foot that I must have, if only for the sake of a complete set and my own greed. Currently, Curvy lives on our dining room table, though she’ll be relocated to the craft room after Halloween. Here’s my review of the machine on patternreview.com.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I made a quilt for Regan’s birthday. Like Liam’s Circles and Stripes, it’s another pattern free, wonky quilt that measures about 30″ x 40″. The quilt front is composed of four wonky log cabin blocks made from two adorable fat quarter packs I found at Wal-Mart and the back is half fat quarters with two strips of stash fabric. I used the built in serpentine stitch in rows spaced 1.5-inches apart (sort of, my straight lines aren’t really straight). The fabric is 100% cotton (pre-washed) and it’s sandwiched with low-loft cotton batting. I didn’t pre-wash the batting, only the fabric, so once the finished quilt was washed it got extra crinkly. I hand embroidered “Regan” in split stitch in the lower right corner using pearl cotton.

   

There were some scraps left over from Regan’s quilt so I put together a single wonky log cabin block to make a mini-quilt for Penny, Regan’s lovey. This marks my first attempt at free-motion quilting. Not great, but not as terrible as I feared either.

   

The photos could definitely be better, but with so many “helpers” you do what you can.

i’ll help you mommy

no, let me.

is this better?

circles and stripes

I made Liam a totally freehand baby quilt. Just tore strips of fabric and sewed them together and trimmed it to a rectangle. Not an even rectangle, but close enough. The quilt uses low loft cotton batting with quilting along the seams and some “primitive” hand quilting/embroidery with pearl cotton. The circles are machine appliquéd and the label is hand embroidered using 6 strands of floss and attached by hand with a blanket stitch. Nothing is even, the circle machine stitching is wobbly, and the entire quilt is wider at one end, but the boy likes playing with it and the cats take turns sleeping on it. Call it a win.

         

taking a stab at embroidery

Heh. Get it? Taking a “stab.” You know, like the needle “stabbing” the fabric. Ahhh. I slay me.

Quilts, Baby! by Linda Kopp

Borrowed this fantabulous book from the library. It’s Quilts, Baby! by Linda Kopp and I love it. The Woodland Creatures crib bumper totally hooked me, but we’re not using a bumper on Liam’s crib. So, like Dickie Dunn I tried to “capture the spirit of the thing” in throw pillow form. One side of the pillow features a bird and racoon and the other has an owl, a butterfly (outline of the fabric pattern), and some yo-yo flowers. I’m about to start a second pillow, which will likely feature a pond and hill. Stay tuned.

The fabric is Absolutely Cotton, which was 40% off at Hancock’s Fabrics last weekend and the embroidery is DMC Pearl Cotton 5. It’s machine pieced, the trees are “appliquilted” by machine, and the embroidery is by hand - my version of a split stitch through all three layers. The yo-yos were made with Clover’s Extra Small Yo-Yo Maker. The whole project probably took 6-8 hours and should have been a bit quicker but I took some shortcuts. Why do I attempt to shortcut tried and true methods? Stupidity, pride, a genetic disorder? Suffice it to say that you should follow the instructions for the freezer paper technique or some other approved method to prep your applique pieces. Hand rolling it while you sew just doesn’t work and using a giant iron and your fingertips to turn the edge leads to burns. 

         

Country Quilt Stocking

Remember. It’s a “primitive” style country quilt stocking. The snowman and candy cane are from “301 Country Christmas Quilt Blocks” by Mary Jo Hiney. The book is fabulous and has a ridiculous number of fantastic Christmas patterns (santas, angels, stars, Christmas trees, cats with halos, you name it). The stocking pattern is Butterick 5783. There’s a review at patternreview.com.

So, emphasis on primative, I machine pieced a main motif surrounded by scraps of solid fabric and hand quilted (obviously) around the central image and used small bells to tie quilt at the scrap joins. The fabric is cotton as is the batting. The finished stocking is cuter than I expected.
It’s for my niece. I hope she likes it!