My First Rag Quilt

I know these have been around FOREVER but I've never had much of a flannel stash. The first flannel quilt I ever made was a pieced project and the flannel was so squirrelly I didn't want to attempt another.

However, I have some flannel that I bought for something else and wanted to use it up. So I decided that making a couple rag quilts would be a good way to do that.

I decided on 6 1/2" squares. I'm planning to do 10 blocks x 10 blocks so that's 100 squares just for the top, 200 including the back and 100 more of batting. Yikes! That's a lot of squares and I am planning to do 2 with more or less the same fabrics so double that. The squares will be the same but I'll use different fabrics for the backings.

Thank goodness for my QuiltCut2 Fabric Cutting System!

I cut all of the fabric squares (400) in 3 hours. I used some scraps of batting and then full size pieces which I folded in half and then in half again. I cut 100 of these squares in less than an hour. Then I ran out of batting.

Here are the fabric squares for both quilts.

These are the squares for the first quilt. The Monkey Fabric is going to be the backing.

I decided to do a little quilting in each square before I put it together. I chose a variegated thread that will go with all of the fabrics in the quilt for the top and a bright pink for the back which goes perfectly with the little monkey print.

I quilted a simple X through all of the Monkey squares. That's as far as I've gotten so far. Stay tuned to watch the progress of this project.

Happy Quilting,

Carol

Bunk Bed Project

Life has definitely thrown me some curves over the past few months, some good, some not so good. But things are getting better. We have a new grandson, Gracin Jay, the second of three new grand babies to arrive this year.

You can read about Elsie, the first baby of this year in this Blog Post. The next baby is due any time now. This one is a little girl, Raigyn and we are in charge of taking care of her big sister, Tristyn when she makes her appearance.

We recently moved into our tiny beach house that was a rental for 35 years. We're slowly getting it fixed up. Since we are expecting company both with our daughters and their families as well as others, we decided to opt for maximum sleeping space and got a set of bunk beds. The bottom bunk is where Tristyn is going to sleep when she stays with us.

She is a little bit of a daredevil. She is almost 3 and loves to climb, jump, and is generally very inquisitive. The last thing we need is for her to fall off the top bunk while her mommy is having a baby. So I am going to hide the ladder and wanted to make it interesting so maybe she wouldn't want to explore the top bunk. We don't have a mattress for it yet so it doesn't look like a bed up there either.

I had a lot of tulle leftover from bridal and baby showers so I thought I'd use that to make a canopy of sorts for the bed.

I wanted it to reach the floor along the wall and the front of the bed. I cut 2 sets from both bolts. I know - that's a lot of tulle. It's amazing how much is on a bolt. I have used the darker one for so many things and was surprised that there's still some leftover.

I layered the two fabrics with the lighter one on the bottom. It is a little stiffer and lighter in color so I wanted the darker and thinner fabric on top. I started at the foot of the bed and draped the fabrics along the wall and down the front. I got the length in the front where I wanted it and then adjusted it along the wall. I let it extend a little bit over the foot board of the bed. A couple trips up the step stool and I had it in place. Then I did the head of the bed. That was a lot trickier because it is up against the wall so I couldn't get the step stool there to move the fabric. I ended up using the bunk bed ladder to climb up and toss the tulle over the top. Then I adjusted it in front and worked from the inside of the bed to get it lined up the way I wanted it.

I ended up with 2 different looks. One where the whole bed is covered and Tristyn will find the opening and crawl in. The other has tie backs so it looks more like a canopy bed. 

My husband said it looks like mosquito netting. Asked what is she going to do with it and called it her fort. All I care about is that I hope it will be a fun place she wants to read stories, play with her stuffed "friends" and to sleep in. We'll find out pretty soon.

Carol

Nursery Pillows

Today I'm working on the first of two pillows for my next grandbaby's nursery. I'm making envelope pillow covers so they can be removed easily and washed as needed. Won't this yellow and white chevron fabric make a cute pillow?

The finished size of the pillow form is 20" square. I cut the fabric 21" x 46". This way all I have to do is finish off the two ends and sew all the way around and it's done. It's a really fast and easy way to do an envelope back pillow cover.

I turned under both short ends 1/4" and then turned them under another 1/4" so there is no raw edge showing. I topstitched that close to the turned under edge.



I put the fabric wrong side up and found the center of the pillow by matching the two turned under ends. I finger pressed the center for a reference point.

I like to do French Seams for pillows that are going to be washed. Since this is for a baby's nursery I want them to hold up well to washing. By finishing the seams this way, I feel that they hold up better than just a regular seam.

I used the center fold as a reference and brought the finished end on the right side up about 1./4" to the left of the center line.

Next I folded the left side of the pillow toward the center. I overlapped it 1 1/2" over the other end. I pinned that in place at the top and bottom. In the photo the raw edges don't match so you can see the overlap. But as you can see by the next photo I pinned it in place with the edges matching. I also pinned in a couple other places to hold things together.

 

The chevron "stripes" don't line up here but they do line up when the pillow is finished.

I know it's weird to sew with Wrong Sides Together (WST). I am so used to Right Sides Together (RST) that I really have to think about it before I sew. It's just automatic to do RST. But when doing French Seams the first seam is WST. I stitched 1/4" on both sets of raw edges.

Using the opening for the pillow I turned it so that now it is Right Sides Together. I used a Point Turner to make sure that the corners were nice and defined. A friend's husband makes this one. It is a Point Turner on one end and a Finger Pressing Tool on the other end. It is a little long but it is perfect for this job.

I pressed the whole pillow cover really well after I turned it Right Sides Together. Even though I really only have 2 seams to sew I actually stitched all the way around the pillow cover with a 1/2" seam allowance. That will keep it's square shape.

After sewing all the way around the pillow the two actual seams are completely covered. Now there are no raw edges inside the pillow to fray after multiple washings. This technique is also good for sewing tote bags. It makes the seams really strong.

Now it's time to turn it right side out. I used the Point Turner again to make sure that all 4 corners are well defined. Here's the finished product on the glider/rocker in the nursery. 

I think it turned out very cute and so does my daughter.

Happy Sewing,

Carol

Mother's Day Craft

I wanted to do a special Mother's Day craft with my two granddaughters. I saw this project on Pinterest and pinned it to my Grandchildren board. I took the basic idea and then changed it up a little bit.

Inspiration

I drew a basic flower shape onto some cardstock. I folded the paper so I was cutting two pieces at the same time because I wanted each flower to be double sided with the pipe cleaner stuck in between.

I also wanted to put pictures of the girls in the center of each flower. Most of the pictures I chose were taken when I was watching them while their mommies were at work. 

Tristyn, my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter was the first to make her project. Before she got to my house I had already made the flowers and had glued the photos onto them. She chose the pipe cleaner colors because I had a few different shades of green. They were long pipe cleaners and I wanted to use half for each stem. I got away with that for the first one but after that she wanted to use the full length. Once we had the pipe cleaners I glued them between the two layers of the flowers. 

I wanted her to decorate the pot too. I just used an ordinary clay pot from Home Depot. I gave her crayons and she colored the outside and the inside of the pot.

I let her pick the paint colors for the petals. Of course she chose all of the colors that I had. Together we dipped her index finger in the first color. Then we put it on the flower petal. After we did the first one she knew exactly what to do for the rest.  She used one color per flower. She still had colors left so she wanted to put her fingerprints on the outside of the flower pot. I turned it so they would go all the way around the pot. Then she decided to stick her whole hand in the paint and she spread that on the pot.

I put a piece of florist foam in the bottom of the flower pot after the paint dried. I poked holes in it with a scissors so the pipe cleaners would go in easier. Tristyn chose where each flower went. The ones with the really long stems were kind of tricky. I just bunched up the pipe cleaner inside the pot since they were way too long. Then I covered up the foam with some tan shredding so it looked like soil.

Here is her finished product.

I did Elsie's next. She is only 2 months old. So I had the pipe cleaners in place and had the pictures on the flowers. Basically all that was left was her fingerprints. I thought I'd try adding footprints or handprints on the pot in addition to the fingerprints on the petals. 

I chose white tempera paint for the fingerprints and footprints. I thought it would be the easiest color to wash out. If you've never done fingerprints with a 2 month old, it's a challenge. I had to really work to only have one finger to dip in the paint. I tried the footprints first for the flower pot. The first attempt, you could see the toes and most of the foot. The second one was pretty much a smeared blob. I tried to hold her hand so that I could get a handprint and it was obvious it wasn't going to be successful so I abandoned that idea. Here she is with her finished project. I think it is a special gift for her mommy's first Mother's Day.

 I didn't really think about putting this on my blog until after the fact. So there aren't as many pictures as I'd like. But they were so cute when they were done, I wanted to share them. Both of my daughters loved their gifts.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there.
Carol

New Beginnings

This has been a year of changes. In late November we made the decision to stop traveling due to some health issues my husband had. A couple days later we learned that our youngest daughter is expecting a baby in August. About 6 weeks later we learned that our middle daughter who has a 2 year old is also expecting a baby this year. We already knew that our oldest was pregnant and due in March. Little Elsie was born on March 6, 2014. I took this picture of her the other day when she was at my house.

About a month ago my husband spent 5 days in the hospital with fluid in his lungs and a pretty severe case of pneumonia. I couldn't help but be extremely grateful that he didn't get sick when we were on the road. It was a very difficult time for our family. That was a lot of stress for two pregnant women, a new mom and me.

I suppose that there was a little part of me that thought that after taking a year off there might be a way to do a few shows now and then.  While Alan was in the hospital some good friends of ours who are restructuring their business too, called me to see if I would be willing to sell the pipe and drape for our booth. With him so sick I knew that our show days were definitely behind us. So I agreed to sell it to them. Goodbye to our blue drapes and the pipe to hang them from.

When Alan got home from the hospital he was very stressed out about a lot of things. The first thing that I had to take care of was selling our travel trailer. I wrote some blog posts about our adventures in it. That was our home away from home for about 6 years. But on April 11th we sold it. I have to admit it was kind of bittersweet to see it drive away.

A week or so after the trailer was sold, we decided that we would sell our truck too. We knew we were going to do it so it wasn't a surprise but again, it was another big step. There were 200,000+ miles on it and almost all of them were miles spent traveling from one show to another. Alan knows how many hours were on the engine; apparently diesel engines keep track of that information. I try not to think about how many hours I rode in that truck but obviously if we drove over 200,000 miles it was a lot of hours.That truck was so reliable and Alan loved driving it. When we ordered it he chose every option that he wanted figuring that he would spend a lot of time behind the wheel. He took excellent care of it and when we traded it in it looked brand new. Alan was an expert about getting every nook and cranny of that truck full as you can see in this blog post. This picture is of our truck packed and ready to leave for a show. It was very sad to drive away from it for the last time.

Now we have a Subaru Outback. It is much smaller but is more conducive to our life off the road. It is a car I can feel comfortable driving grandchildren around in. With three new babies and a 2 1/2 year old that was a big consideration. I have to admit that Subaru wasn't my first choice of car. But I also have to admit that seeing their ad campaign with totally smashed up cars and the phrase "They lived" definitely had an impact. It is a nice car and I'm enjoying driving it.

Things have definitely changed for us. I'm still doing business online. I am looking forward to working on new projects, many of which will probably be baby and toddler related. I hope you'll continue to follow me on this new journey.

Happy Quilting and Stitching,

Carol

Another Stitching Turned Applique Project

I've been changing up the Harvest Tea Towels pattern. Since I like to do different things, I decided that instead of stitching the designs on tea towels, I'm going to make it into a small wall hanging. I have one block left to finish stitching before I get to that project.

I recently finished the acorn block. While I was working on it I thought that it would make a nice applique block. 

I played around with this concept in another Blog Post with the Snowman from the Winter Partners Pillows Pattern.

I decided to use a Brown Striped Tea Towel. I found these pretty fall batiks and hand dyes to work with. I like them for fusible applique because they have a high thread count. A tea towel will be washed so I wanted fabrics that aren't likely to fray much.

I traced the REVERSE image of the design onto fusible web. Since the fusible goes on the wrong side of the fabric, if you don't reverse the design when you fuse it onto the background fabric (tea towel in this case) the image will be the mirror image of the drawing. This time I added a little extra to the pieces that will go underneath others, like the basic acorn shape and the stem. When I did the snowman I didn't do this and it made it a little harder to put the pieces in place. I decided not to add the bird. I kind of have a problem with the scale. Either the bird is super tiny or the acorn is HUGE. I roughly cut around the pieces and fused them to the wrong side of my fabrics.

I cut out each individual piece. I used an Applique Pressing Sheet (See previous Blog Post) to make the fusing process much easier.

I put each piece in place on top of the Pressing Sheet using the pattern as my guide. Once I had it exactly how I wanted it I fused the entire design onto the Pressing Sheet. 

Now the whole thing is one piece which makes it so much easier to put onto the towel. I just peeled it off and placed it where I wanted it on the brown tea towel. Then I fused the design onto the towel. 

I put a tear away stabilizer behind the design. You could also use a wash away such as Sticky Fabri-Solvy. Since the towel will be washed the Sticky Fabri-Solvy will dissolve in the washer. You want the stabilier behind so that when you stitch around the design it doesn't pucker.

Most of the time I use a short blanket stitch on  my machine to stitch around the fused pieces. I have also used a satin stitch and a free motion zig zag. In this case all I wanted to do was stitch it in place. I wasn't worried about adding texture to the design so the blanket stitch worked just fine. This is the setting I used.

This was a fast and easy project. It took me about an hour from the time I decided to do it until I was done stitching around the design. It will be a nice addition to my home this fall. It would also make a nice gift.

Happy Quilting,

Carol

Memorial Quilt

Generally speaking. people think of a memorial quilt as one with signatures or photos as the foundation for it. I made this quilt top a couple years ago as a sample for my booth at Quilt Shows.

The quilt is a Courthouse Steps variation of a Log Cabin Block. It is a From Marti Michell pattern called Stepping Stones. As usual my quilt doesn't look like the pattern picture.

I had some quality quilting time blocked out and decided to finally quilt it. The evening before I basted and started quilting it, I learned that my 24 year old nephew had died suddenly. 

I basted the quilt and started quilting it. After I'd done all of the stitch in the ditch quilting and the first set of logs I realized that while it is a little on the small side, it was the perfect quilt for my brother and his family. Here's why. The hand dyed fabric is from a collection called Rainbow Zen. Every time I look at the quilt I feel a sense of calm. Stepping Stones seemed like an appropriate design since it kind of symbolizes the steps to healing from such a tragedy.

Once I came to that conclusion, the ideas for quilting it just flowed. I had planned to do different free motion designs in the logs and those ideas came easily. I did a swirl design to start with. When I knew it was going to be a memorial quilt, leaves seemed appropriate to represent life. There are 12 blocks so I chose 12 words that I thought were important to my brother's family and that represented things that will help them through this difficult time and quilted one in the center of each block. I quilted circles in the outside border to symbolize eternity. Here is a picture of the quilting.

"Courage" is quilted into the center of this block

I definitely wanted a special label. I chose pictures from Facebook and a memorial website set up for my nephew because I knew that they had special meaning for the family. I made a collage of those in Word and then added the title of the quilt, "The Path to Healing," and other information I wanted on the label. I printed it on paper to be sure I had good margins around all four sides then I printed it on Printed Treasures Photo Fabric.

There are several treated fabrics on the market. I have had good success with this one and I had some sheets leftover from another project I made a couple years ago. This is the label for the quilt.

There was so much more that I wanted to say about the quilt. I wanted them to know why I chose to give it to them. Why I quilted it the way I did and the symbolism I saw in the fabrics, pattern and quilting. I thought about writing it on paper and putting it in a card but I wanted it to be something that stayed with the quilt so they could look at it over and over again. Then I thought of writing it on paper and putting it in a pocket on the back of the quilt. I was afraid that at some point in time the quilt might need to be washed and if the note was in the pocket it might go through the wash and I didn't want them to have to worry about that. Then I thought about printing it on another sheet of photo fabric. What I finally decided to do is to write it on fabric. A handwritten note seemed so much more personal than a typed note. I used a Micron Pigma Pen because it has a fine point and because the ink is permanent. It is usually my choice for quilt labels. I wrote the message on muslin and used a pinking blade in my rotary cutter to finish the edges. That way I didn't have to turn them under.

Here's a picture of the back of the quilt. There's some pink in the quilt so if my brother and nephew aren't too crazy about that side, the back is nice too. The quilting shows up well so it will have the same symbolism, just on a neutral fabric. I chose some of the fabrics from the blocks to bind the quilt. 

And here's a picture of the front all finished.

This truly was a labor of love. Many a tear was shed during the process and even more when I got the comments from my brother and sister-in-law the day it arrived. They love it and are touched by the love and thought that was put into it. They feel the sense of comfort that I intended.

This quilt is serving the same purpose that a more traditional memory quilt full of pictures and signatures does, but only a little bit of that is incorporated in it. I hope that this will inspire others to realize that any quilt can be a memorial or special occasion quilt.

Happy Quilting,

Carol

Snowman - From RedWork to Applique

I love to think outside the box. Most of my quilts are done in color combinations other than what the designer used. I tend to take liberties with a design. One thing I've been contemplating for awhile but haven't had time to experiment with is taking a Redwork design and turning it into an applique design.

The project I chose to experiment with is the snowman from the Bird Brain Designs pattern Winter Partners.

I chose this one because the design is large and seemed like an easy one to adapt to applique. Here is the drawing of the snowman.

Remember if you want to do something like this and you want it to look like the original design you need to REVERSE the image. In other words trace from the wrong side of the drawing, Here's the pattern taped to my studio window (on a rainy Southern CA day) so I can trace on the wrong side.

I traced the images onto fusible web.

I then fused them to the wrong side of my snowman fabrics.

One of my "Must Haves" is an Applique Pressing Sheet. 

Here is the snowman drawing with the pressing sheet over the top of it. I know it is a little hard to see but if you look closely you'll see the snowman design. I use the Lightbox App on my phone but needed my phone to take the picture. So when I'm working with it, the lines will show up better. 

I'm going to fuse the entire design onto the pressing sheet. It will be one solid piece that I will then transfer onto the background fabric. Here's the snowman transformed into fabric.

I chose a dark navy blue as my background. I finger pressed it in both directions to find the center of the fabric.

Then I found the center of the snowman design. I positioned it onto the background matching both centers (the snowman and the background). Then I fused the snowman in place.

He's a little crooked.  Guess I didn't get find the exact center of the snowman. It's such a whimsical design that it just adds a little more whimsy. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it - lol.

I realized after I got everything fused down that I should have traced the eyebrows and smile when I had the fabric on the pressing sheet. I placed the pattern on top of the design and used my Point Turner to trace an indentation onto the fabric. Then I followed that with a Black Micron Pigma Pen.

I squared up the block and now it is time to add the borders. Check back soon to see how I finish it. 

Happy Stitching and Quilting,

Carol