Makes * A quilt for Henry

So while I was away from this blog, my sister and brother-in-law made me a new nephew! And he is CUTE. I just want to cuddle him all day long. For christmas, I decided to make him a quilt but I wanted to kick it up a notch. Lucky me, Rachel over at Stitched in Color was running a penny patch quilt-a-long. Perfect! This totally looks doable and fancier than my usual quilts. I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to give quilting a try. Rachel does a fantastic job of breaking down the process and walking you gently through it all. I don't really have work in progress photos because I whipped this baby up in record time but I'll share the few photos that I did take.




My fabric choices were all based on a super cute woodland animal print. Using the colors found in that print, I selected a bunch of fabrics with smaller patterns. I had to add in a handful of solids when I realized that I didn't have enough different fabrics to make this design work. I would have liked to go easier on all the darker colors but I'm a practical sort of gal and this quilt will have all kinds of things spilled onto it in its lifetime so I figured darker fabrics will hide stains better.

Lots of arranging and rearranging. It's easier for my eyes to catch patterns in photos rather than in real life. I'd arrange, take a photo, then rearrange. It helps me to more evenly space out colors and patterns. I have about twenty of these photos.

This is my "I rolled out of bed and straight to my sewing machine look. This is the step that makes my arms sore. I learned that rolling up the quilt helps with the "Where do I put the $%*^ the parts of the quilt that I'm not sewing??" dilemma. But the quilt does get heavy and even with a walking foot, my hands are super tense as I feed the quilt through the machine.

Finished! I spent Christmas Eve frantically finishing up the hand sewn binding - my fave part of quilting!

I must have ripped miles of stitching because I couldn't get the quilting straight. My mismatched corners didn't help!

Look at the gummy smile! Eemo loves you!

a quilt for little lottie

hello and happy new year! my, i was gone for awhile wasn't i? it's been a busy year. i took on a second part time job and then the holidays hit and the next thing you know, bam! it's 2013. i haven't been too crafty lately but there was a big project that i took me about ten months to complete and i wanted to share it with you.

last winter, i threw my sister a baby shower and one of the activities was to design a quilt square. i pre-cut several cotton squares (and sealed the edges with a fray check) and provided permanent fabric markers for guests to doodle on or write messages to my growing neice.

once they were done, it was time to take the squares home and sew them together, cut the batting and backing, and bind it all together.

 

and that's where it usually goes downhill for me. bindings are my weakness, my achilles heel. but this time i was determined to do it well. so i did a lot of research on youtube and discovered that there are a million ways to bind a quilt. i found this video by HeirloomCreations to be incredibly helpful in learning how to make your own binding, mitered corners and pockets.

i was so proud of my first mitered corner! they're so tidy and satisfying and surprising easy to make. i used a premade binding since i'm lazy but in the future i think i'll make my own.

then came the time for some hand stitching to secure the binding to the backing of the quilt. more youtube research led me to the ladder stitch. this little stitch is amazing. it's so easy (almost therapeutic) and results in a beautifully finished binding! hand stitching the binding is now easily my favorite part of quilt making.

 and here is the finished quilt! it took about eight months longer than i had hoped (sewing a quilt in a steamy hot summer apartment is not my idea of a fun time) but it's done! i'm quite proud of the results and am a lot more confident of my sewing/quilting skills now. i hope little lottie likes it too <3 br="br">

burp cloths

my sister's shower was this past weekend! she and my brother in law were happy so i'm happy. and once i got home, i promptly got sick and was stuck in bed unable to eat anything for a day and a half. oof. i dragged myself to work yesterday and stumbled around until i could go home and crawl back into bed. but on to happier things!

as a part of my sister's shower gift, i made her some cute burp cloths. i had seen a few tutorials around the web and decided that it would be a simple and practical project to tackle. and i figured if my sister has a barfing baby over her shoulder, she should at least have something cute to catch the barf. apparently, burp cloths made from cloth diapers make awesome, super absorbent burp cloths. i used this tutorial by sew she sews. so easy and fast to make! just don't run out of thread like i did...

i found these diapers at target. nice and plush.

the joann fabrics that i went to didn't have the greatest selection of flannels so i went with regular quilting fabric.

tad dah! finished burp cloths!

spoonflower

pst! have you heard of spoonflower? it's a place where you can design your own fabrics and purchase fabrics designed by thousands of people everywhere! there are a lot of talented people out there and countless designs to choose from. if you're looking for a very specific theme, look no further. they seriously have everything!

for black friday, they had a buy one get one free offer for fat quarters and i had to exert some major self control to avoid buying more fabric than i could afford. now i just have to decide what project is worthy of such cute fabric.

fabric flower garlands

made using a tutorial by dolci odille via once wed

here comes the bride

i saw this "here comes the bride" banner on martha stewart's website and knew i had to include it in our wedding. and i had the perfect banner bearers in mind for the job!

supplies:

linen fabric

iron on transfer paper

disappearing ink marker

wooden dowel

sewing machine (optional. this can all be done by hand too!)

iron

printer

it was a challenge finding iron on transfers with good ratings. i grabbed these at A.C. Moore with a 40% coupon. i used my home inkjet printer and the print quality was excellent.

definitely do a test run to get a feel for how much heat, pressure and time you need to get a good transfer.

not too shabby! they say to cut as close to the edge as possible but i liked leaving a small border. it helped when ironing on those darn serifs later on.

the instructions said not to use an ironing board but a hard surface like a table or countertop. a pillowcase will protect your table.

i drew lines using a disappearing ink marker to help me to keep everything nice and straight.

looking good so far!

i ran into some trouble with the serifs. if i ever use this font again on an iron on transfer, i'll focus extra hard on the serifs and use the point of my iron to apply some really intense pressure. peel slowly! don't get impatient like i did.

photos stop here since the sun set and i ran out of good photo light :)

from there, just sew a few straight seams to finish the edges. fold over and sew the top of the banner to create an opening for the wooden dowel. slip in the dowel and hand it off to a couple of cute kids! 

photo by our friend marco at magic touch photography

the banner in action! the banner bearers are my cousin's ridiculously adorable and awesome kids. they were total pros! it was such a fun way to include kids our wedding.

first time making a quilt

mrs p and i have been friends since the first grade and we went to grade school, jr.high, high school, AND college together so it's pretty crazy to think that soon she'll have a little baby girl! as a baby shower gift, i wanted to get her something unique and special that hopefully, they'll treasure for a long time. so i decided to try my hand at patchwork quilting. i'm a pretty terrible sewer so i'm still debating whether this was an awesome or terrible idea. please forgive me for the awful photos. i took them as i worked at all hours of the day and the sun hasn't shone in boston since the beginning of time.

basic supplies. i invested in a rotary cutter and quilting ruler for this project... best purchase ever.

neat little squares waiting to be sewn. 

everyone says that you MUST iron as you work and i found that it really does make everything clean and tidy.

ready to be made into a solid piece

finished! it turned out smaller than i had anticipated... i swear the more i worked on it, the smaller it became. then i just ran out of fabric and time so all i could do was scratch my head and ponder why sewing doesn't follow normal laws of space and matter. and i didn't take any photos of how i did the edging because i had such a hard time with it. i kept having to pin, repin, sew, rip seams, and resew the layers to the bias tape. i definitely went into crazy mode for a couple of days. but it's on there and hopefully it will stay put.

congratulations mrs p! i can't wait to meet baby girl k and seriously, don't look too closely at the stitching. i hope you and baby girl k enjoy it :)

diy flower round up

weddings are expensive. all those wedding blogs where people have beautiful, fashionable weddings for $5,000 boggle my mind. i just don't see how it's done unless you're lucky enough to have a professional cake baker aunt, your best friend is a florist, and your parents own a lovely ranch, and you only have 50 guests. argh! since i want our wedding to have a soft, handmade feel to it and we want to at least to try stay within our budget, we've decided on foregoing the traditional floral centerpiece. instead, our centerpieces will feature handmade flowers. i've rounded up a few of my favorite ideas and they definitely don't need to be limited to just weddings :)

fabric flowers via 100 layer cake + photos by jen rau

diy fabric flower boutonnieres by laurie cinotto via once wed

diy tissue paper garden centerpiece by anna bond via once wed

fabric + ribbon centerpiece by shauna younge via nonpareil + photos by emily steffen

crepe-paper flowers via martha stewart weddings

paper flower bouquet via project wedding