Disappearing 4-Patch

I have been working on my latest quilt project for a friend of mine.  Her daughter is turning a year old and so I wanted to make her a quilt like I did her sister.  In fact, her sister was the first baby quilt that I had ever done, second quilt ever as well.  Below is that quilt:

 All of my quilts have been unique patterns and this one was no exception.  I was trying to find a way to use a fat quarter bundle with 5 coordinating fabrics and stuff I had on hand.  I have so much fabric, I should try to use some of it before buying more.  It took a long time to come up with a pattern that was interesting and not just straight blocks and which also used all the fabric without requiring loads more.  This sounds easy, but it really wasn't.

Pinterest is really a great visual place to get inspiration for quilts.  I can search block types and see what people have done for colors and fabric choices.  Some are really creative.  I settled on a block called "Disappearing 4-Patch".  It required 12 - 5" blocks of each of the 5 fabrics and 60 - 5" blocks of my solid, gray in this case.  The tutorial I used can be found here on how to make this block pattern.

Lots and lots of cutting.  Thankfully a fat quarter will give you 12 of these and have just a tiny bit left over.  Scrap pile!

Now all these squares need to be friends.  Sew them together.  Can I just say I love the chain piecing technique?  Quilting would be much more tedious if it wasn't for this!

After some cutting and swapping pieces around, you get a finished block that looks something like this:

Then you take a bunch of those and make a pattern and add a couple of borders.  I wanted to bring out the purple in this (one of my favorite colors and this is for a little girl so it's only appropriate) so I found hues that went with the patterns in the fat quarters.  As an aside - purples can be very tricky to match!

A close up view of the work in progress.  I was impressed with myself on how well all my points matched on this quilt.  Being an anal engineer definitely has its perks.

Then we toss in some batting, put a back on it, stitch it together and throw some binding on and ba-da bing, ba-da boom, voila!

I am hoping the little munchkin likes it.  :)  The next one in the hopper is for my daughter, so there's more to come off the sewing presses.  Not sure who else I am going to make these for now that everyone is done having babies.  Ha!  

Rainbow Whirls

In my free time (ha!), what little there is, I enjoy sitting at the sewing machine and creating quilts.  Mostly I am doing baby quilts due to the rash of friends having little ones, but I someday envision a time where I actually make a bigger one for people to use when they are curled up on the sofa or one for our bed.  In the meantime I get a lot of practice on technique and picking fabrics.  My latest finished quilt took a lot time to get together.  Not because it was hard, but just because it was one that didn't have priority to be done for a baby shower. :)

Of course I have an inspiration board on Pinterest for quilts and one of those pins spurred the thought behind this quilt.  When I set out to do this, the person having the baby didn't know if was a boy or a girl.  I was looking for something to do in rainbows.

Thankfully, the Missouri Star Quilt Company put together this fabulous tutorial on making pinwheels.  I have such a hard time with triangles, so this video gave me the boost of confidence in finding a "cheat" to making pinwheels so I just went for it.  I think it is the best way to make them, especially if your whole quilt is pinwheels.  You can basically make whatever size you want and just roll.  As a side note, the lady that does these tutorials is great.  I have watched a good number of them and they are excellent.

I am pretty pleased with how this one turned out.  It's colorful and pops.  Not to mention it was fun to make.  I had a small learning curve to learn that it mattered how I assembled the pinwheels together.  My seam ripper and I bonded just like always.  I swear, one of these days I'll get through a project where I won't need it.

It was shown off to the whole family and everyone ooohed and aaahed over it.  I just hope the little man who ended up with it loves it just as much. :)

Finished Pillow

So I did end up finishing the pillow and this is how it turned out:

A couple of lessons/notes:
I need a really really long needle if I want it to be a fairly firm pillow.
The bigger the needle, the bigger the hole it makes when you push it through, so you need bigger thread.  I used a heavy embroidery floss for this.
This really is a pretty easy pillow to make even if you are fairly new the sewing.  You just need the right tools and go slow while stitching around the circle.

Sprocket Pillows!

Today's project comes from my Sewing! board:
http://www.cluckclucksew.com/2011/03/tutorial-sprocket-pillows.html
These remind me of pillows that used to be at the family camp.  They were full of scraps of random material.  Some shinny, some velvety, and some just plain funky.  I do not have such a diverse scrap fabric collection yet (key word), so I made do with pulling on a color group and working from there.

Anyone who has been in our house or knows anything about us will not be surprised at my pick of the color blue for this pillow.  To be fair, I needed 12 pie slices for the top and I didn't think I could pull together the eclectic look the author in the tutorial was able to do (need to learn that skill).  I also have more random blue fabric than any other color.

First step first, print the template from her tutorial page.  Mine printed right on the first try.

 I cut out the pie slices which wasn't too hard.  I made 2 each of 6 different fabrics.  Just folding the fabric over itself meant only 1 cut to get two pieces.  This I like. My assortment looked pretty good to me.

I will say I am glad she put the instructions to sew them in pairs and then sew the pairs together and then sew the halves together.  This helps keep all your pieces even and allows you to have a fairly good circle at the end.  Way to go!

So my pretty pinwheel of color looks like this:

When cutting out the bottom circle, it's important to make it match the top as close as possible.  I went a little bigger on mine and had trouble lining it up with the center ring in the last steps.  I ended up just fudging it at the end, but had I thought about it earlier, I would have taken the time to pin it down and make a closer copy.

I was able to reuse some of the crib skirt material I used in my son's room for the side of this project.  Getting the length of that just right was a little tricky, but not too bad. When you go to sew the top to the side band, pinning is really your friend.  I dislike pinning, so you know if I am telling you you need to, then you really probably need to.  I am guessing I used close to 30 pins to make sure it would sew correctly.  You are basically sewing a straight piece to a curve and that's not exactly an easy thing to just have happen.  You'll need to be as obsessive about pinning for the bottom as well.  If you did it right you get something like this:

And because I happen to have a random bag of Poly-Fill laying around (who doesn't right?), I went ahead and started to fill the pillow.  The bad news?  I only had enough to fill the pillow about half way.  The good news?  I finally found a use for that silly bag of Poly-Fill I have had forever.

I'll post finished products when I get to the store to buy more Poly-Fill.  I was thinking I was doing pretty darn good on not spending any money on these projects just yet.  There are a lot I can just do with the mini craft store I seem to have in my house, but there are also a number of them that need just 1 or 2 random things that I don't seem to have.  My shopping list is becoming a hodge podge of random supplies.  All in the name of a Pinterest Challenge. :)

Heating Pads

I may be a hoarder of fabric. It's possible that I have bought fabric from the remnants bin at Jo-Ann's with no real clear goal in mind other than - "this will be handy to have some day".  I get really excited with those some days come around.  About 3 years ago I bought some flannel material I thought would be good for burp cloths. Let's just say that never happened.  And because of that, I have fabric laying around to do my next Pinterest Project.

From my Sewing Corner board I present this gem:
http://www.thegreenwife.com/2010/04/02/heating-pad-tutorial/
I love heating pads.  They do wonders for aches and pains and are great for winter nights with the bed is cold.  I have one that I made a long time ago that is now getting to the point where it's seen better days.  I might have burned the rice once and it's an old towel that's getting kind of beat up.

I liked this tutorial because it showed a sectioned heating pad thus making sure the rice was evenly distributed.  Mine is basically just in a long tube and it can be a pain to get the right amount of stuff where I want it.  Also, this one added some essential oil to make them smell nice.  Something I wasn't aware of when I made mine years ago.  SO!  I set aside a chunk of rice yesterday with some lavender oil to marinate for this project.

I liked the timeline on this project for being about an hour.  I don't have a fancy serger (although Santa could bring me one and I would be happy to have it), so I made so with my regular sewing machine.  Most of the places she used hers for are all inside seams anyway.  Flannel doesn't unravel like most cotton, so not a big deal.  I also didn't buy "high quality flannel".  Did you read the part where I got this out of the remnants bin?  Pound puppy material more like it.

I love how thorough these tutorials are with each step shown so you know exactly what you should be doing.  As I read through what she had detailed I made mental notes to skip stages.  Pinning has never been my strong suit and for something as simple as this, I didn't bother.  The exception was holding back the rice to get a stitch down.  That was sort of necessary.  I figure I saved myself some time by not having to serge all the edges and then serge them together.  I did pin at the 3" intervals because I do not own a proper fabric marking pencil.

So how did all of this turn out?  I would say fairly good.  Some of the sections aren't as straight as they should be, but whatever.  It still works the same.  Perhaps I should invest in a pencil.  It took me about 50 minutes to do.  This does not include the overnight marinade with lavender oil on the rice.  Now I just need to put it to good use which I am sure won't take long!

Twiglet's Nursery

The making of Twiglet's nursery has been a bit of a journey.  We already had the room picked that we would convert when the time came, so that part was already determined.  The hard part was waiting until we found out what we were having and THEN getting together a game plan.  I think it's very easy to just do what everyone else is doing, order a room in a bag, and call it a day.  Unfortunately this is not how I work.  For one, it costs too much to do it that way and for another, it lacks personality and creativity (for me).

In keeping with the "theme" of the rest of our house, we decided to kind of do a coastal/sea theme.  I didn't want 100% under the sea because I didn't like that, but I did want sea turtles and whales to be a part of the room.  We settled on painting the room a shade of blue that's in a lot of the rest of the house and adding some stripes.  That was the starting point I had and then things kind of came together one piece at a time.  We knew what we were going to use for the dresser (my old craft dresser which was a kids dresser that was being put to the dumpster by a stupid rich lady years ago, so I stole it and have been using it ever since).  We just needed to repaint it and find some knobs for it.  I had never bothered putting knobs on the entire time I was using it, but I thought it might be nice to get some now.  :)  Etsy turned out to be extremely useful for that project.  There was also a kitchen cart I had from IKEA that it nice and open and would be perfect for a changing station, so that was also taken care of.  My parents had decided they want to buy the crib, so that was a huge purchase off our minds.  Rob's parents purchased the glider and so all the major pieces of furniture were covered.  My sister surprised me with hand drawn pictures of sea creatures to hang on the walls.  Absolutely love them!  The letters were paper mache` ones from the craft store we painted to match the room.  The starfish idea came later in the process.  And all of the fabric was purchased from fabric.com (using coupon codes of course).  For roughly $250 we trans formed the room into a cute baby boy's nursery. 

So here's what we started with:

And this was the progress that was made along the way:

Gallon of Behr paint - $34

Accent paint - Had dark blue, $17 for quart of the green (Behr)

Re-purposed dresser getting a new coat of paint

Art work from my sister - free, Frames - $8 each with coupons from Michaels

Bed skirt fabric -

Michael Miller Going Coastal Collection Sand Dollar Blue

 $16 (2 yards, have fabric leftover from this to use for quilts later)

Michael Miller Going Coastal Collection Sand Dollar Blue

Curtain Lining and fabric - Premier Prints Coral White/Chartreuse $57 with enough left over for an accent pillow case (yet to be made)

And here is the finished product:

Starfish - $3 each with coupons from Michaels, picture hanger backs were hot glued onto the back to hang them in the wall.

Book Sling fabric - Turtles Green/Blue ($12 for 1.5 yards, way more than was needed, saving extra for quilting project), Curtain hardware - $4.50 (used coupon), dowel rods - $3

Paper Mache` letters - $2 each

Knobs from Etsy $22

Lamps - free from Rob's parents, new lamp shade ($10) and socket ($4)

Mortimer!!

Now all we have left to do is add Twiglet and we will be complete!

My New Project

When we moved into our new bigger home, we didn't have the furniture to fill the spaces we had just acquired.  We figured this was ok and would sort itself out eventually.  In the meantime, we used camp chairs in the main level living room so I could watch "Say Yes to The Dress" while Rob kills zombies and plays in trenches.  This was ok for a little while, but the camp chairs are only so comfortable and not any kind of style we would like to portray, so "finding new seating" moved up the list a bit. 

We had a disastrous attempt at finding something we both liked in IKEA.  I didn't want to spend a lot of money because there's a 98% likelihood that my cats will take their claws to it sometime in the future.  IKEA seemed like the logical place to go looking.  Craigslist was another option, but you either have to be looking daily OR be lucky.  Today I was lucky.

The advertisement didn't try to do a hard sell on the chairs, but offered up "Pink Wingback Chairs $10".  I thought hey, how bad could it be?  I couldn't tell from the pictures if it was bad lighting or dirt, but overall they looked ok.  Since our living room is more for social gatherings and me sitting to watch the occasional show, they need not be huge comfty sofas.  We have those downstairs.  I actually had a vision of the living room having two wingback chairs and a loveseat with a coffee table.  So when I saw this post I figured, why not ask if they were still available?  For $10, it was worth asking.

Sometime around noon today, I got a reply that yes they were and were all mine for $10.  WOHOO!  So we managed to get over there and pick them up tonight.

As if I need another project to add to the "To Do" list, but these seemed like too good of a deal to pass up.  The grand plan (as if I really have one) is to make slip covers and put a new cushion in the seat.  Have I ever done this before?  No, of course not, but would I let a little thing like that stop me?  I have a sewing machine and I can measure pretty darn good, so I think this will be like working out a puzzle.  I am going to put that craft room to good use!