Quilt fort

January is finishing up and so am I. This fun project came as a special request from my brother for my nephew. I had a lot of fun playing with fabrics on this one.... so much character, literal and figurative.

The challenge was “hey can you make like a hanging thing I can put around my desk so the little guy has a hidden room down there?” Like a quilt fort? Yes, yes I can. Basically I made a short, wide quilt that is long enough to wrap around the dimensions of the desk he had in mind and a couple inches shy of the height from desktop to floor. I sent some sticky Velcro tape along with it so he could customize where the anchors were based on the obstacles/potential anchor spots on the desk architecture. 

Serendipitously, I had a couple of Star Wars prints sitting in the cabinet: one colorful print that I just looove and one black and white Mandalorian print that Mom recently found. Hurrah for the remnants bin at Joann’s! I pulled a bunch of fabrics from my scrap pile that I thought coordinated well with the retro rainbow and hemmed and hawed until I had a good combination. Of course leftover Minions had to make it in there, and I even got to use an orphan block from a really cool quilt I made a long time ago for a wedding present (that red and yellow patchwork). 

For the pattern I decided I really wanted to pull something from one of the many quilting books and magazines I have on my shelves. Not that I’ll stick with this intent, but I’m hoping to work out of my hard copy books and patterns more this year both for sewing as well as knitting. We’ll see how it goes. The pattern I chose was out of Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters. I modified it a bit to serve the dimensions I needed and the fabric on hand, and I changed up a couple of the squares to be solids as opposed to square-in-a-square, but the inspiration was definitely from the book. I added (what else?) linen to the top and bottom to make up the height I needed as well as to serve as a bit of a visual frame and a fun yellow polka dot print to the ends to make it long enough. 

I thought for a hot second about making a second pieced panel for the back and then thought better of it. I have FINALLY used up all but a small rectangle or two of this green swirly print. It started out life as a duvet cover from Ikea and has been extremely useful in many projects since it was retired to my fabric stash. Don’t get rid of your old duvets, people. You obviously loved the print/design/colors when you bought it and there’s so much fabric there! As long as they are still in decent, non pilled, non gross state of course. 

Quilting and binding went along uneventfully, especially since I got those little clips to hold on the binding as I sew (which you can see in the picture above). I swear I don’t hate binding as much as my face suggests. For the quilting I echoed one of the prints in the quilt, a navy with waves of dots, and did the preprogrammed wave pattern from my machine. The front got orange to pop on that retro Star Wars print and the back got yellow. Look at the Darth Vader and Storm Trooper heads. Isn’t that awesome? I know. 

I’m really happy that my brother thought to ask me to make this. It’s always fun to make for other people but it was especially fun to make something that was actually requested!

First thing of 2021 and it’s blingy!

Well that was silly fun. My first project of 2021 is a bit of a curveball given what my usual crafts are. I made a beaded browband! For the horse, yes. He doesn’t know how loved he is. I’m not sure his excitement is going to be anywhere near mine when this arrives on his bridle. 

LB was always going to show me how to do this, but she didn’t get the chance. I did think I sensed some celestial laughter from her as I cursed through a few passes of needle through leather, so it was a fun way to remember her despite the fact that YouTube had to teach me. The empty channel browband wasn’t that expensive, like 20 bucks, and the beads were some from my stash and some from a half off sale at Joann’s. I chose a smattering of purples (of course), a light peach, and a golden yellow that matches Bandit’s spots. It’s an unusual color combination that will look lovely on him.

It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I feared. I’m curious to see how sturdy it is. I did use some heavy duty thread to attach the stranded beads (on wire) in the channel, but maybe it needs more? Time will tell! I was going to wait until after the winter muddy weather to take this to the barn but I think it’s going to get installed tomorrow because I just can’t help myself. So fun. 

Crafty bits wraps up 2020

This week Mom and I have been spending lots of good time in the crafty room. She’s been finishing up a bunch of cross stitching that’s been hanging around for a while and I’ve been sitting at the sewing machine trying out some quick small projects.

This first one was seriously easy. I’ve got a cute little lumbar pillow on my fabulous chair in there and it was crying out for a holiday dress. I had this jelly roll of festive fabric that made the cutting for this oh so easy. In the end, if I wanted to leave this for after the holidays the prints are really more farmhouse than holiday even with those trees in the back of the red truck. I just roughly measured the cover that was already on the pillow to get the sizes needed and did the same simple envelope back on it. The quilting was so simple, just straight lines either side of the seams. It turned out very nicely. 

For my next project I broke into the rather large stash of zippers I ordered myself and picked out some fun coordinating prints. I’ve been craving some zippered bag construction, hence the zipper stock up. I used some batting scraps from previous quilts and did just simple straight lines to quilt the fabric together. I’m enjoying the combination of this large scale flower with the ric-rac stripe. 

This pattern was a bit different than others I’ve done because it was done in one long piece and the inner side seams were closed using a French seaming technique. It was a little bit fiddly but turned out looking really nice. Mom’s knitting loom and yarn fit in this one perfectly. I’d like to do more bag projects in 2021, so this was a great warm up. 

hip cabin blanket for Dave

This was kind of a fun and simple blanket to make. I found several similar types, mostly with sherpa fleece backs, on Pinterest and I was struck by the simplicity of having just one piece of fabric lined with fleece rather than piecing something together. It’s a good way to find a home for some of these gorgeous large scale prints we all covet from time to time. 

 

What got me started on this was finding the fleece in the remnants bin at Joann’s. It was pretty cute, too cute to pass up one might say, and just about the right size to make something lap-sized. The tree fabric was something I’d seen in the fall and liked but put back because I literally had no inkling of plans for using it. But when it’s 60% off and it matches a fleece remnant you don’t need but must have? You must buy. I think maybe this would look more impressive with a larger scale print but it’s still a nice woodsy hipster cabin blanket. 

All I had to do was trim selvages before stacking the two together and folding up the edges of the fleece to pin. I pinned and sewed the two short edges first and then went back and did the same for the longer edges. All the sewing needed was a topstitch type of seam on the inner folded edge of the fleece on all four edges and voila! 

It turned out looking good and Dave has claimed it for his pajama room (aka loft) time already. My general thoughts? It’s a little strange to my hands having one side be fluffy fleece and the other a relatively thin cotton. If I were to do this again I would think a linen or linen-like fabric would be a good option or something heavy like a tweed. Another option is to not fold the fleece over the way I did and instead try to have the quilting cotton go all the way to the edge? At any rate, worth a try again with some modification. It was fun and the blanket looks great. 

eve eve ornaments

We got up to more ornament making mischief, this time with a no-sew quilted ornament mom found on Pinterest. I just love the way these look.

Mom went festive red and green with hers and I dug through my scrap squares to find some coordinating prints. This one is for Da Bears. 

And here is one of the Christmas color balls. The pattern has each round have the same color all the way around, but we experimented a little bit with alternating prints on the middle round to add a bit more interest. 

This was the first one I did, and the colors kind of remind me of the aquarium in Monterey. Boy we miss going there! 

It takes a styrofoam ball, 200 pins (plus some for the ribbon), and a little bit of ribbon to go with a stack of fabric squares to make these. They are quite addictive to make, and you can definitely make them while watching football and not mess up. We finished our final touches today, Christmas Eve eve and they’re ready to go on the tree. 

omg it’s under the tree

Approximately one million nine hundred and seventy two stitches later, it’s done! Last time I left this, it was August and I had plenty of time until we put the trees up. Ha! The stack of hexies definitely hung around in my “to do” basket until at least early December. 

The issue I was having was this: I was feeling much too lazy to hand stitch them all together, but I didn’t think that zigzagging along all the seams would look very good, even if I used gray thread. Soooo. They sat. And sat. And sat some more. I think the fact that we actually had the trees up and last year’s (perfectly fine) tree skirt was under the little tree upstairs was what got me going. So the next many evenings and afternoons were spent whip stitching these all together. I finished one afternoon when Mom and I were in the studio and she snapped this picture.

As I went along, I had to refer to a photo of the whole thing put together because I decided to go with the completely mixed up version, and that’s much harder to remember what goes where. I used hand quilting thread and a quilting between to stitch and used a simple whip stitch, just as if I were doing English paper piecing. The cream thread is visible on the back, but not on the front and that’s where it matters most. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. To be honest, when I finished it (under the wire) I thought it looked too small and was pretty bummed. But it’s a perfect fit under our little tree that we put on the blanket chest. And it’s kitten approved! It took him a few days to want to sit on it though, I think all the prints kind of blew his mind. 

Holiday quilt

Of course one of the first places Mom and I capered off to when she got here was the fabric store. Despite being the middle of fall, there was already lots of holiday fabric out on the shelves. They had a super good deal on the flannel prints, so I couldn’t resist grabbing a yard or two (or three...). 

 

I’ve been admiring some blankets I’ve seen that are buffalo plaid using related prints. This blanket is an homage to those I’ve seen. The front worked up very quickly, as you’d imagine. It took me some time to want to sit down and sort out a back for it. I do like what I came up with though! I used up the rest of the flannel prints, a few more pieced square panels I had left over, and then raided the cabinet for some red and neutral fabrics to finish off the size I needed. I especially like that bit of corduroy in the corner. 

It’s a holiday blanket, but I wanted to keep it red with neutrals rather than including the green. The plain squares are the linen blend I just love using in all my work, and I used some red and black jelly roll strips from a holiday roll I picked up at some point this season to bind. It never dawned on me just how EASY using jelly rolls as binding is. Save that little nugget of wisdom for later! The quilting was simple grids outlining the seams. Every time I sit down to quilt now I feel like I should be practicing more free motion, but honestly that is going to have to wait a while until I’m willing to use it on a bigger piece like this. 

The front only took a yard of the black/red camping print, a yard of the linen, and two yards of that adorable woodland creatures print. The flannel was quite easy to work with. I wonder why we don’t think of using it for quilting more often? There are so many cute prints. (I may find out when this is washed....) So, next time there’s a silly good sale on flannel prints at the fabric store I have a great excuse to pick up a yard or so of some irresistible ones.