2009

I’m a little embarrassed to say that I had completely forgot about some of the things I’d made in 2009 until I was looking through my old pictures!  I guess that’s a sure sign that it was a busy crafting year for me.  Happy New Year to you all and thanks for always stopping by this blog and making my day!  -Allison

Self control…

I have none.

Some new Meadowsweet & the Hope Valley orange basket weave.

Nicey Jane in blues & in some pinks…

And some extra’s I needed. Ha. Maybe this next year I will work on the self control thing. But until then I sure love all of these fabrics and love that I have no plans for any of them except to stare at them. :) Happy New Year and be safe tonight wherever you are!

Christmas Skirt

Merry Christmas!!  ( a few days late)  I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with your families.  We had a great one and I’ve spent a good few days doing absolutely nothing but enjoying being home.   Before Christmas I noticed I was down to 1 skirt that fit, so I made myself another one with a nice stretchy waistband I can wear while I grow wider and wider and wider and wider and wider.   Yay.

The fabric was at Joann’s on sale, the whole skirt cost me under 10 bucks.  The ruffle at the bottom was a last minute addition when I accidentally chopped it off too short.  ( long skirt + no nylons = happy me)  I made the ruffle by sewing with a large stitch length and holding the spool of thread on my machine to increase the tension.  I wore this to church today and I’m happy to say I loved it, and it was still loose enough it didn’t cut off circulation to my legs for 3 hours while sitting in church like last week.  Oh the joys of pregnancy.

Swaddler pattern…for free

Thanks to Sara (I couldn’t find your email Sara!)  for telling me and now everyone else, that you can get the Swaddler pattern for free online at:

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/05/craft_pattern_podcast_snuggler.html

  Now back to Christmas preparations….

Swaddler

I’ve been meaning to try out the straight jacket  swaddler pattern from this book after I checked it out at my local library.  This was an easy pattern, probably not for a beginning sewer but pretty easy overall.  The inside is soft fleece I bought in the black Friday craziness at Joann’s, and the outside is of course a full moon dot by Amy Butler.  

Downtown

We spent the night downtown Seattle last night.  I love downtown at Christmas for the lights and shop windows, the carousel and the decorations.  But not so much for pushing a stroller on busy sidewalks, traffic, a gross breakfast at Mcdonalds, watching my son eat tic tacs he found on the sidewalk, the mother of all tantrums in Nordstroms, the guy peeing in public, and a big fatty parking ticket.  And even after the stress of being downtown with my 2 year old, I still  love being there at Christmas time.  And next year we’ll have two kids….so it will be double the fun. :) 

Sorry I’ve been slow to answer emails, I’ll get back on track sometime this week hopefully.   And if not then the next week for sure.  :)

Christmas Quilt Inspiration

This is my favorite Christmas quilt NOT made by me.  This one my Mom made before I had the quilting bug.   I love the colors and the absence of novelty Christmas fabric.  The pattern is the simple Amish star block.  Eventually I want to copy this quilt and make one for myself! 

Now back to serious business…..not.  (mug from Old Navy & its HUGE…just how I like it)

Little houses, take 2

Can you tell I’m using up my last little pieces of fabric?  I have so many pieces of fabric too big for the scrap box but too small to be in with my normal stash.  This little houses fabric was left over from this quilt.  This one is also in the shop.  I love those little houses!

The backing fabric is from Timeless Treasures.  It makes me want to take the moped that’s sitting in our garage out for a spin….except its freezing and there’s a 90% chance I’d hit a tree. 

Little Cars, take 2

I used up my last piece of this little cars fabric  (left over from this quilt) to make this quilt last week.  Its another quilt using the disappearing 9 patch block with the pieced border.  The back is a Momo print I love.  This one is in the shop. 

Christmas Pillow

Now in the shop. 

I made this one using the same template I made this one with.  It takes forever, but the results are sure cute & very vintage Christmas.

Lotus quilt

This is made from mostly Amy Butler fabrics from her lotus line (thank you Christina!) with some American Jane pez prints thrown in there.  Its my first time using grey in a quilt and I think I’m in love.  Especially with the black, red & blue.  Its perfect & cute for a boy (or girl?).  And backed with the softest light blue minky ever.  This one is definitely staying with me, it will make a perfect little car seat quilt for baby #2.  The pattern is the disappearing nine patch, you can find a tutorial for it on my sidebar somewhere over there ------------>.  This one is small for a newborn, I think it measures 34" x 42".

Bibs & Blankets

I’ve been busy sewing things for baby.  I’ve finished some receiving blanket and some bibs.  The receiving blanket is just a single piece of flannel with a hand sewn binding around it (idea from this book).  Its so sweet….and will be stained with baby poop about .002 seconds after he’s born.  The bibs I made by tracing a small newborn bib I had and adding 1/4", then I just sewed them up and added snaps. 

Last time I had a baby I wasn’t a sewer, so this time around I’m LOVING that I get to sew for my own baby!

Winner

The winner of the fat quarters is #566 who is………….. Karen! I can barely count to 566 let alone 8 51 which is how many of you entered…holy cow! Anyways congrat’s Karen and send me your address!

I bought some new fabric this week (its been over a month since I bought fabric!). The Amy Butler dots are just to re-stash since they started making it again, but I have plans for all of it. The top two are up coming quilt backs and the morning glory print is for eventual pillow covers. I love those little mopeds.

And because I have nothing else to say I just had to tell you how much I love my Kindle. Love it…Love it…Love it. It holds all my books, all my scriptures, and is light enough to pack around in my purse. This was my Christmas present last year and I’m just realizing how much I love it. (and since my parents bought mine and theirs together, I get all the books they buy & visa versa)

Now I just need a cute little case like the one Christina made. And by the way I’ve been meaning to mention that Christina is now offering long arm quilting. She did this quilt for me and did a fabulous job. And she’s fast, which means a lot when all the quilt shops around me have a 3 months waiting list. So if your in need of professional quilting check her out.

Raw Edge Circle Quilt Tutorial

This is a easy quilt but a little more time consuming than some of my others. This finished quilt measured about 42"x 56" give or take a couple inches. Its easy to make this whatever size you want…just cut more or less blocks. I used about 30 different fabrics for mine, but some of them were just one or two squares. Use a big variety, I would recommend no less than 10 different fabrics so laying the blocks out will be easier.

• Cut 48 – 8" squares from your background fabrics.
• Cut 48 – 6.5" squares from your circle fabrics.

• Now using cardstock, trace a bowl or something that is about 6 1/8" or 6 1/4" in diameter. Cut out your circle.

• Now you can place your template on your 6.5" blocks and trace around the wrong side, I used a fabric marker but any light washable marker would work. After you’ve traced your template you can stack four or so squares to cut through at the same time to make it go faster, just make sure you pin them well.

• Cut all 48 circles out this way until you have a nice little stack.

• Now place one of your cut circles on an 8" square. I eyeballed the middle of mine, but you can fold the 8" block in half each way to find the middle if your really ambitious.
• Then pin, and sew 1/4" around the circle.  Leave at least 1/4" because the edges will fray!
• I didn’t use any fusible material before I sewed my circles on and they went on just fine with no creases, just make sure you go semi- slow and pull the creases out as go.

• Now repeat with all your blocks until each 8" block has a circle sewn to it. The matching up of background fabric to circle fabric took me FOREVER!

• Now cut your 8" blocks in half each way. Again you can do 2 or more at a time to make it faster.

• Now the fun part…..not really it takes forever. This part is optional, but as you can see through the first picture, on some of my squares you could see the background fabric showing through the circle fabric. So, I cut all the background bits out from behind the circle. I did it in front of the TV and in no time they were done.

• Once you’ve got all those bad boys done you start arranging your blocks. I did this on my design wall ( piece of flannel pinned to the wall…fancy, I know ) and it took forever because there are so many small blocks. I just went row by row adding colors here and there, mainly concentrating on spacing out my bright reds and big prints so they weren’t all clumped.
• Once you have them arranged how you like you can start sewing them together. I sewed them together as blocks like in the pictures below, and then sewed them together into rows.

• And there you have it, once you get your blocks sewn together it will look like this:

Enjoy!

**And because I know I’ll get asked…the fabrics from this quilt were mostly from American Jane by Moda ( from the Wee Play & Building Blocks line which are discontinued…sorry!), some Katie Jump Rope by Denyse Schmidt, a couple squares by Amy Butler from her Lotus line which just was re-released, and a few other random fabrics.

** Also I've had questions about how the raw edges hold up. I'm not an expert but I have been told by someone who knows what they're doing...that because these raw edges are cut on the bias into the circle shape, they won't fray or unravel. After I washed this quilt I had no threads I had to cut that had unraveled, so I guess its true!

**I didn't figure out the fabric requirements of this because I used so many (about 40 different) fabric prints. But off the top of my head I would say you need about 3-3.5 yards total for the top. Definitely don't rely on that number, but its at least an estimate for ya.