Sewing Day with Sarah Jane and Emma

A couple of weekends back I had a sewing day with Sarah Jane and Emma. I was a little nervous about working on two projects at once, but it went much smoother than anticipated. I was able to keep both the girls busy with something -- be it tracing, cutting, hand sewing or stuffing -- the whole time. Luckily mom Megan was there to help some also. Sarah Jane made an owl and Emma made an octopus. They did a terrific job!

...with hammer & nails

Mike and I are anticipating the arrival of our pullets next weekend. We decided not to get chicks so we don't have to buy all the extra equipment to raise them up right (some parents we'll make). The pullets will be around 20 weeks old so they will practically be full grown hens and ready for a coop. We converted an old rabbit hutch into a coop with a roost and two nest boxes. Then we enclosed the area around the coop with fencing to give the hens some room to run around during the day. It might be a little on the ghetto side, but we did this without much of a plan and it turned out great. As long as it keeps the rats, skunks and racoons out we will be happy. So here it is...

The human entrance...
The nest box and hutch...

The nest boxes...

The coop...

KitchenAid Mixer Cover

We have no more cupboard space so we have to keep our shiny new KitchenAid mixer on the fridge when we're not using it. I decided I want to keep it shiny and the best way to do that is to keep it covered. So I made this quilted cover today -- it took longer than expected, but was a nice little project to get some more quality time in with my new sewing machine (which I am loving).

Oopsie the Octopus

Olivia is turning one on Friday, so I made her this cuddly octopus. It's made out of minky fabric and is super soft. Happy first birthday, Olivia!!

A Place in Your Book

Mike and I are having a post-wedding potluck on Saturday and I wanted to make a little favor for our guests. I found the basic template for this bookmark on one of my favorite craft sites -- www.mmmcrafts.blogspot.com. It took a little manipulating to add the beetles and the words, but we wanted to make it personal. With Mike's help, we put these together tonight. Hope our guests find a place in their books for these!

Luther Quilt Finished

Whoa, this quilt is almost as big as our house! Actually, it's only a full-size quilt, but still larger than anything I've made so far. I don't think I want to make a t-shirt quilt ever again. There was a lot of bunching that was hard to prevent and my machine did not like going through the tacky lettering of some of the shirts. I broke the thread about a million times. It was kind of a pain. That being said, I'm very glad I made this as it will preserve a lot of memories. It's something I'll be able to keep forever.

Here's a view of the backing...

And another go at the faux piped binding...

All folded up and ready to go back inside where it belongs!

L-U

L-U

L-U-T-H

T-H

T-H

T-H-E-R

L-U-T-H-E-R

Luther, Luther, Luther!!

L-U-T-H-E-R, Luther, Luther, Luther!

After 5 years of wearing nothing but Luther t-shirts, I decided it was time to retire them and convert them to a quilt. It took 26 t-shirts to make this quilt, but I still didn't use them all. It was hard cutting a few of my favorites, but I thought this would be a better use for them. Making this brought back a lot of great memories from my college days. It's hard to believe it's been 5 years since I've graduated -- and 9 since I started college. Just crazy how time flies. This will be a neat quilt to commemorate my heydays!

Beetle Boy Quilt for Baby Berberet

We had our work baby shower for Stephanie on Wednesday so I stayed up late Tuesday finishing this quilt. Stephanie and John loved it even though it is so brightly colored. I love the back with all the bugs...

Blocks for O-baby

I made some stuffed blocks out of the leftover angels staircase fabric. These are fun to throw! Hope little O-baby likes them!

Angels Staircase Quilt Finished!

This quilt is my new favorite. I love the colors and it turned out perfect. I tried a few new things with this quilt: 1) Instead of pinning the three layers together to quilt them, I decided to use some sticky spray that holds fabric together with the backing. It was so much better than using safety pins because it kept the fabric from bunching and puckering when I quilted it. I will definitely be using that more often! 2) Instead of off centering the quilt lines in diamond shapes like I've done before, I decided to follow the seam lines, and quilted 1/4" from both sides of the seams. I like how it turned out. 3) I made a "faux piped" binding using this tutorial: http://tlcstitches.blogspot.com/2010/07/faux-piped-binding-tutorial.html It gives the quilt a really nice, polished look. I will definitely be using this technique again.

On to the pictures! Here is the quilt top:

A close-up of the "faux piped" binding:

The backing:

The presentation. All ready to be sent off to Maxi and then to her friends! Hope they all love it!

Angels Staircase Quilt

A friend of mine and Mike's old postdoc, Maxi, asked me to make a quilt for her to give to her grad school friends that are having a baby girl. After a week or so of going back and forth on patterns and fabric, we settled on the Angels Staircase pattern and It's a Hoot fabric by MoMo. It took me a good hour to choose which six fat quarters I was going to use. I had to choose from 40, so this was not an easy task. I am really happy with what I settled on. Here's a picture of all the fat quarters and the ones I decided to use on the quilt:

Once I chose the fabrics I had to cut them into 6" squares and 2" x 6" rectangles. As you can see below, I had the blue fabric as one of the main squares, but after laying a few pieces out, I realized the blue needed to be the accent color. I was lucky that I had enough spare yellow dot fabric to make up the squares and rectangles. I used a little of what was left over from Olivia's monkey and owl, so that was a life saver. Here are the pieces all cut and ready to go:

I spent about 4 hours piecing these staircases together. I had to piece the blue squares with the top rectangle, then the side rectangles to the squares and so on and so forth. I got into a groove, but it still took a significant amount of time to sew these together. I'm glad this is just a crib size quilt -- I can't imagine how much longer it would have taken to make many more of these! Anyway, it was well worth the time. I am loving the staircases. All that is left to do for the top is cut and sew the strips of white fabric that will border and go between the staircases. I need to order the backing and binding fabric, but couldn't do that until I knew which color was going to be the accent color. Hopefully I can find some yardage of the blue fabric as this is an older collection. I'm crossing my fingers.

Here are the staircases:

Beetle Boy Quilt Top

After a couple of weeks I finally learned how to sew hexagons together with a machine using this tutorial: http://www.ladyharvatine.com/2010/03/hexagonia.html

My hexagons are not even close to as perfect and flat as she makes them, but they are pretty decent. And it took a lot less time than sewing them by hand. I still still need to applique the little hexagons on, but the top is almost finished. It's pretty psychedelic, but it's growing on me.

Beetle Boy Quilt

I started in on a new quilt this weekend. This is going to be for one of my coworkers - Stephanie - who is expecting a boy in August. It is turning out to be a little brighter and wilder than planned, but it's not lacking in color or excitement! I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to use the "Beetle Boy" fabric with some corresponding stripes and polka-dots. This is by far the most elaborate quilt I've made in terms of cutting an piecing. I still need to attach the little hexagons with beetles on them by hand sewing (not my favorite thing to do) them to the large hexagons, and then I need to learn how to piece the large hexagons together with the machine. It's a good quilt for learning some new techniques.

Produce Bag Dispenser

I've been craving some sewing time so tonight I sat down at the machine and made a cute little produce bag dispenser. I bought this super cute fabric with a gift certificate from Tasha (thank you!!) and have been trying to decide what to do with it. I thought a produce bag dispenser would be appropriate. I bought two yards of this fabric so I still have a bunch to do some more fun things with it. I am thinking a little summer outfit for Olivia would be super cute! I'll have to keep and eye out for a pattern. Anyway, here is Mike demonstrating how handy this bag dispenser is :)

Printmaking

I am getting really excited about the idea of starting a card/stationary business using the block prints I've been making. I posted the Goliath beetle on my Facebook page and got a strong response from people saying they would buy these kinds of cards. It was encouraging so I started to explore the idea more in my mind while Mike was in Argentina. I found a printmaking class at the local City College that is offered through their adult education program. This particular class is aimed at people ages 55+ but I was still allowed in, so I signed up. I really enjoy making the block prints and so far the cards I've made have turned out great. This is something I could see myself actually getting into so this class will help develop my skills and techniques and teach me about materials to use and things like that. Getting some real information instead of just making it up as I go is going to be neat. Mike is even going to join me in the class. It will be a fun way to spend our Friday nights for 10 weeks starting in April. Anyway, if you can't tell, I'm looking forward to this and it'll be fun to see if anything comes of this new interest. For now I'm still just playing at home and creating new blocks. Pictured above is my latest creation -- a wasp.

Ground Beetle Stamp

The second in my beetle stamp collection -- Carabus meander -- a ground beetle. Mike and I made a list of the beetle families we wanted to use to mark our tables. So now we have a scarab and a ground beetle. Thirteen more to go. Here is our remaining list:

Histeridae Passalidae

Tenebrionidae Buprestidae

Cerambycidae Cucujidae

Curculionidae Coccinellidae

Elateridae Chyrsomelidae

Cleridae Dytiscidae

Lucanidae

The carabid took me about 3 hours. Good thing we are getting a head start!

Goliath Beetle Stamp

Last weekend I worked on a second stamp. This time I used a Speedball Linoleum Block. These blocks allow for more control when carving and don't crumble like the rubber blocks did. I was able to create more detail with this block and even though it took about 2 hours to make, the end result is very nice. I think using these blocks, the prints will turn out really nicely for table identifiers. I also have a new business idea! Since these blocks are going to be long lasting, I might as well do something else with them...like make cards. Here is my first attempt. I used Artoz cards from the local craft store and oil based ink. I would eventually buy nicer paper and probably use something other than oil based ink (it takes forever to dry), but I think there is a whole world of bug lovers who would eat these up. Here's my first set of 5 cards. What do you think?!

Homemade Beetle Stamps

Mike and I had the great idea of assigning tables at the wedding by beetle family, so each table will have its own beetle. I was brainstorming ideas for representing the beetles at the tables. I thought we could just find a cool picture of a beetle from each family and put it in a standup photo holder, but that isn't very creative or interesting. So I did a little googling and learned a little about stamp making. I thought it would be really neat to create a stamp for each family and then use that stamp on the table identifier and on the name place cards. I got pretty excited about the idea so I went to the craft store and bought a Speedball Block Printing Kit like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Speedball-Super-Value-Printing-Starter/dp/B000SKT0US

and a Speedycut Block like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Speedball-Speedycut-Block-4x5-5/dp/B0017DC0CK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1298437298&sr=8-2

Mike and I jumped in creating our stamps after dinner. I chose to do a weevil because it is relatively simple. Mike decided on a stag beetle, significantly more difficult! So we drew our stamp idea on a piece of paper and then transfered it to the Speedycut Block. I carved around the weevil and Mike carved out his stag beetle so we could get an idea of the difference. I was not exactly patient with this so I jumped in a little aggressively and while the final product was ok, it could have been better if I took a little more time (I just wanted to see the final product!). Mike, the essence of patience, took his sweet time and turned out a lovely stag beetle stamp!

In the end we decided not to use the rubber stamps for the final stamps because it is too weak and easy to cut through. We'll probably move over to the lino blocks as they are much more stiff. It was a learning experience and a fun activity to do together. With a little more patience we could come up with some really neat stamps and cool table identifiers.

Here are the stamps on paper:

Katie's Weevil

Mike's Stag Beetle (where all the single males will sit)

Scraps!

I am beginning to build up quite a collection of scrap fabrics from my many projects. It's kind of fun looking through them and remembering what I made with each one. I thought one way to preserve some of these memories would be to make a quilt out of all of them. The quilt I want to make is inspired by this book cover. I actually bought this book just for this cover quilt.

Mine will end up looking a little different than this, but it was the directions for the dresden plates that I needed. I really like dresden plates, they have an antique feel to them. I got the idea for a dresden plate quilt from my mom who has been working on one using wedges my great grandma cut out. With that, I figured I would go ahead and cut some wedges for the plates from my scrap fabric. Here's a little preview. I will continue to cut these from fabric I use as I go and someday I'll have enough wedges to complete the quilt. It may be many years from now, but this will be a fun project over time!

Three Little Monkeys

Here they are -- the three little Molly Monkeys -- Jordan, Kady and Alex.

Rainy Weekend = More Molly Monkeys

With rain expected all weekend I figured it would be a good time for some sewing. I have LOTS of corduroy left from Olivia's Christmas Molly Monkey and Owl so I decided I would make more Molly Monkeys. I am making them for Michelle and Shawn's girls -- Jordan, Kady and new arrival Alex. I went to Craft Essentials to pick up some fabric, but they were closed being New Year's Day, so instead I dedicated much of Saturday to cutting out all the corduroy pieces and sewing on the faces for all three monkeys. This took a long time, but was a good way to spend the day while Mike was out in the garage installing the engine in his car. At 10 am this morning, I headed back over to Craft Essentials and picked up some fabric for the monkey clothes. I found these really cute stawberries and cherries that I thought would make fun skirts. I picked up matching polka dots for the shirts and white with a little swirly design for the socks.

I was planning on mixing and matching all these fabrics -- a red polka dot shirt with a stawberry skirt, a pink polka dot shirt with a cherry skirt -- but the third one was up in the air. I brought Mike in from the garage to get his opinion and he thought it would be best to make all the monkeys the same and have different skirts instead of having two red or two pink shirts and only one of the other. So I went with it and all the monkeys have a red shirt and will have patchwork skirts of the other fabrics (the girls will be able to tell whose monkey is whose by their embroidered names on the bum). Once this decision was made it was smooth sailing. I made three identical monkeys and found my new sewing tools very handy! The Mini Clover Iron proved to be great for ironing seams down after piecing as you can see here:

And the pinking sheers were awesome for trimming seam allowances:

At the end of the day, there were three Molly Monkeys waiting to be sewn together and stuffed. But that will have to wait for another day. Here's a preview of the three identical monkeys -- this one happens to be Kady's.