W.I.P Wednesday

I’ve actually made some progress these past few weeks on the baby quilt that I started at the beginning of the month. I’m actually almost done with the top, just need to put the borders on. Then comes putting it all together!

I still have a good month before this little one is due to arrive, so I’m not too worried about not finishing it in time.

I’ve been patiently awaiting my other quilts return from the quilter, but boy, with it getting cooler I’m getting antsy to climb under a quilt and put a binding on!

I’m heading to our quilt shop’s Quilts and Casseroles next Friday night, in hopes that someone there will be able to help me figure out how to do a bias binding.

I got a super cute white on red anchor fabric, that I’m going to use for the binding on the boys’ sailboat quilts, but I have no idea how to cut a bias binding. I’ve watched several videos online and all those folds just leave my brain feeling all folded and tumbled.

But, in the mean time, the fabrics sit ready and waiting.

Linking up with Lee at FreshlyPieced for this week’s WIP Wednesday.

W.I.P Wednesday

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for this weeks W.I.P. Wednesday!

The past few weeks {here and here} I’ve been posting about the Heartland Heritage Block of the Month kit that I got from FatQuarterShop.com, eons ago {seriously I think I got it at least 5 years ago…I know it was before I was pregnant with Ave}. Well, today I am pleased to say that I have finished the top: YAY!!!!

Over the weekend I was working on the borders, sashing and cornerstone blocks. I spent most of Monday then piecing it all together. I was not going to NOT finish it before supper time. Fortunately, the kids were very agreeable and all 4 napped at the same time for 3 hours: WOOHOO!!!!!

Here it is…..

Yay! {It’s actually hanging upside down in the picture, but oh well} Yes, those are mini pinwheel blocks amidst the sashing; each of them finished at 3”, talk about tiny pieces. I woke up on Sunday, wondering why my wrists hurt so much, then I remembered.

I don’t love all the blocks, but it was a good challenge. Some of these blocks I would have looked at before and thought “No way…I can’t do that”, but I did. It was a good step out of my comfort zone in quilting. Plus, I now have some 12.5” sampler patterns that I could always use to make other quilts…there were a good 5 or 6 blocks here that I really liked and would do again…all of them a variation of stars or pinwheels.

This is the first quilt I’ve ever made for myself. I made Matt’s quilt and our Christmas bed quilt, but this is the first one that I will be saying “MINE!” I plan on sending it out to be quilted, but I need to enter negotiations with the lady who has done my quilts in the past. I want this to be very cuddly, warm and soft. I’m thinking a flannel backing {in a dark red or blue}, with a higher loft wool batting, and a quilt pattern that doesn’t have too much to it {I’ve noticed the more quilting the harder a quilt feels}.

Of course with this quilt finished, I now am jumping onto the next 2. I started the boys’ Sail Boat Quilts a long time ago and never got around to finishing them. The blocks are all done, but the putting together was, is, daunting. You see I’m not just making them a simple quilt with their names on it. Oh no. That would be too easy. I decided to make the Nautical Flags that spell out their names as part of the quilt. Yea.

I spent some time last night going over the different flags with Matt {since he did go to school for Marine Transportation and had to know all of these things} and figuring out how to go about this. Then I sat down with my EQ6 program and deciphered out how to do each of the blocks, in honest-to-goodness-stitched-together-quilt-blocks, that will measure 7” square.

Now to just figure out the rest of it. These quilts are so close to being done it’s ridiculous, but it will probably take me another month just to finish them.

What have you been working on? Whatever it is, I’d love to hear about it, whether it’s sewing, crafting, construction or a good book :-)

W.I.P. Wednesday

I actually have something to share, and since I posted the other day about my creative juices, I thought an appropriate follow up would be showing you what I’ve been working on.

It has to have been at least 4 or 5, maybe more, years since I received a couple of BOM projects as Christmas gifts. For those of you not in the quilty-know, a BOM is a Block of the Month quilt kit. Every month you receive a pattern with the necessary fabric to create that block, and then at the end of a year, you have a quilt to show for it.

The first that I received was ‘O Tannebaum’ {a Christmas quilt} from Keepsake Quilting, that I did not realize was paper piecing. That one will be sitting in a drawer until I actually learn paper piecing {I pulled it out and quite frankly it scared the bejeezers out of me}.

The other one that I received was a Mystery BOM from Fat Quarter Shop called ‘Heartland’, which works the same way, but you don’t know what the finished project is going to look like. This is the one that I decided I should work on.

I don’t know what took me so long! I’m loving it! If you follow me on instagram, then you’ve probably seen each one of the blocks as I’ve been finishing them.

The blocks are slightly more intricate than I’m used to, but definitely not beyond my level of non-expertise. They’ve actually been really good…kind of pulling me out of my usual and getting me to try something that I probably wouldn’t have, whether the actual pattern or color placement.

So far I’m halfway through the blocks.

What I’m loving about doing a BOM is that I’m able to work on an entire quilt, but in a way that I feel productive, not overwhelmed {and it doesn’t take over my dining room…where we actually need to eat at least 2 of our meals each day}! I can usually get through a block in an evening, or at least get one of the more intricate ones cut or stitched together. It’s been great!

There’s another Mystery BOM on Fat Quarter Shop right now that I love, but I do not have the funds necessary to purchase the said kit.

I can’t wait to get this one finished though. I think I’ll back it in flannel, so that I have an extra cozy quilt to curl up with on the couch next winter. Depending on how it comes out, I may even send it out to be quilted!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…. {W.I.P Wednesday}

Since we’ve already discussed my sanity before, we won’t even bother going in to that.

This year, after looking at the prices of Christmas pajamas and those adorable Christmas outfits, I realized {once again} that they are ridiculously overpriced, even if they are seriously cute! If I were to buy matching PJs and coordinated outfits for the kids it was going to cost around, $320, give or take. Yea, not something we have room in our budget for.

I, in a moment of absolute brilliance, decided that I would SEW all of those clothes instead. I got some adorable flannel to make bottoms for ALL of us, which cost me around $30 for NINE YARDS (Joann had it on sale for $2.79/yard). I purchased some beautiful reds and greens to make jumpers for the girls and rompers for the boys.

Then my MasterMind Blogging group, decided to do a little something {more on this VERY soon – I can’t wait to share it with you!}, that I now have another project to complete.
Well, all this to say that I now have 11 things to stitch to completion in the next 3 weeks. Are you laughing yet? I am.

What is it they say, “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity” {I think I cross it quite frequently}.

Yesterday, my mother-in-law, very graciously, agreed to take the kids for the day so that I could work on some of the mountain. I actually had a very productive day, only to realize at the end of it, that everything came out way too big. Oh yea. The dress I made for Ellie, fits Ave, but it’s too short to be a dress on Ave: Yup.

I’ve decided to look at it this way: I made outfits that will work for the next few years. No one will remember what they wore this year. So, I’m ahead of the game. {Yea, I’m not buying it either – Forehead meet palm}.


They are what they are.

I still need to stitch the inseam and hem on the boys; I intentionally cut the legs long, knowing that I might have to adjust for their cloth diapers, but I think I’m just going to hem them up, so that they can still wear these in a few years…I also need to do the buttons. I just need to finish the buttons on the girls, but I think, after seeing how big it was on Ave, I’m going to have to do some gathering at the waist.

I did however give up on my idea of making 3 Christmas stockings this year. It just was not working and I decided that I could live with them having stockings that I had not made. It also really helped that Lands’ End had an awesome sale {30% off + free shipping + save $10 when you bought 3 or more stockings+6% Cash Back via Ebates.com}: It worked out to $18 a stocking. I can’t even make them that cheap.
Now it’s on to quilting projects and Christmas pajamas. Hopefully I don’t manage to mess either of those things up.

So…now…if you would be willing to pray for me and the projects I need to complete I would absolutely appreciate it.

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Are you working on any projects for Christmas? I’d love to hear about them.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

W.I.P. Wednesday

It’s been a while since I’ve linked up with Freshly Pieced and WIP Wednesday, probably because I haven’t really had any thing to show.

I’ve been working on a baby quilt for a friend (whom I hope doesn’t click over here and see her quilt). A while back I saw this cute quilt on pinterest, but I’m a cheapskate and I didn’t really feel like buying a pattern for such a simple quilt. I pulled out my trusty Electric Quilt computer program and started playing around with measurements.

I managed to scrimp together the entire top with fabric I had, except for the border, which resulted in a major splurge of $4.03 for fabric. I’ve been really trying to use up some of the fabric in my stash this year, rather than spending money on more.

Anyways.

Here is my interpretation…

I’m really liking it. I still have to sandwich and hand tie the whole thing, plus binding, but I think I’ll get it done in time. Of course, then I have another baby quilt to start and the kids clothes for Christmas….oy!

Have you been working on any projects? This time of year I’m always “hankering” to start being creative again.

W.I.P Wednesday

The other day I posted asking you to guess what I was working on. It was going to be my WIP post for this week, but I actually managed to finish it before that happened. Presenting Miss A’s dress for this Sunday’s festivities {the babies are being baptized}!

I had a bit of an unfortunate revelation last week. I paid the bills. Which of course made me face the fact that there really wasnt’ much room to buy Ave a dress. I decided it would be more prudent to use some of the fabric that I already had to make her a dress. But I needed a pattern, which can cost a lot of money. So I started googling for “FREE Little Girl Dress Tutorials”.

I found this awesome, AWESOME tutorial {Seriously! Go visit this blog, she has fantastic patterns and tutorials}.

Oh my! I am so proud of this dress! The entire thing is lined, there isn’t an unfinished seam in it! If my grandmother were alive today she might actually have told me I did a good job on it :-)

 

A couple of Christmases ago my mother-in-law bought me a serger, which I promptly thought to myself “What on earth am I going to do with this!?” I’ve changed my tune. Any seam that was visible I was able to finish with the serger. If I were to buy {or sell} this dress it would probably go for around $60 or more, that’s how professional this pattern was and what a difference using a serger makes.

The directions were easy to follow (I am not a clothes-maker) and I was able to figure it all out. I thought it was going to take me the better part of a week to do this, thus my WIP Wednesday post. I did it in 3 afternoons, with a total of about 4-5 hours of work.

Onto an actual WIP!

I’ve been working on this for a while and just got around to doing some more work on it.

This is the boys’ sail boat quilt. I had finished all of the boats a few months ago, but just finished all of the “Thrifty” blocks (left). Now I can start piecing them together. But there is a lot more work to go on this quilt. I’m planning on changing the crib size to twin size, which means adding in some stuff. I’ll be adding a border between rows 1 and 2 and 4 and 5, on which will I’m going to appliqué their names, both in letters and in the call flags for each letter. That alone is going to take a while.

  If you’re interested head over to FRESHLY PIECED and see what others have been up to.