Kai's Quilt

This is the same pattern that I used for Taz's blanket - but with girly colors and prints.   I also machine quilted this myself on a long arm quilting machine.  

I also made a little tiny quilt for her doll to match her own quilt.  

And I made another pillow case to match Taz's pillow case and 2 pillow cases for Kai.

Road Trip!!

Now some of you may think that the prospect of a 14 hour car trip with 5 kids would scare any sane person out of their minds.  Which either means that I'm insane, or I know secrets!!!  We had a 14 hour (drive time) road trip planned for this summer.  My hubby was going to be travelling a lot this month, so once the kids were out of school, we packed our bags and headed south.  I love to surprise my kids on the day of the trip with fun goodies to help keep them entertained.  Between those goodies, movies, and my audio books - I was looking forward to a nice peaceful ride.  And believe it or not... I got it!  A few potty stops, a few food stops, but we made good time and there was little fighting or screaming!  YEY!  Really - when you think about it - when the kids are trapped in their seats and I have an audio book (so I can ignore the barbie movie they are watching for the 10th time) I'm one happy camper!  The only thing better is when my hubby is with  me so I can crochet and sew and listen to an audio book while he drives :P

Well to prepare for the trip, I made a few fun goodies for the kids - I started out by making these (click on the image to go to her blog for instructions) The kids LOVED these - they love to color and draw and can spend hours happily entertained with colored pencils and paper. The roughest part was cutting out the dvd holder part - get a couple extra cases if you are going to do it to practice on - you can find the cases pretty cheap and the cutting takes some practice (at least it did for me.)  I also went to Hobby Lobby for some matching fabric for the inside and paper for the outside.

I also made these - i love how they came out and the kids loved having them - i stuffed them with their coloring cases, and books and other goodies and they loved it.  I mostly used left over fabric from the big quilt we made for my sister-in-law and her family for Christmas.  I also used a sheet of plastic canvas to give it stability, and some batting that I used spray adhesive to attach to the plastic canvas.  The pockets were just pieces of fabric folded in half, seamed and stitched in place.  The handles were using the plastic-y canvas type handle stuff (I got it at hobby lobby in the fabric area) and melted the ends with a lighter to seal them.  Then i sewed one end into the seam at the top and added snaps to the other end.  I started writing up an actual pattern for this - and left it back home :)  I will include it with all the dimensions and stuff when i get back.

Old Jean Made New

Ok so I have 5 kids, which means that I have a lot of jeans with holes in the knees.  With the weather warming up, my kids had a need of shorts and less need to holey jeans, so I took this weekend to do some re-furbishing.  I'm SOOO excited about how these turned out!!  All this was done with two pairs of my kids jeans and the leftovers of the Jelly Roll I used to make the table runner for my sister.  I started by making a double fold bias tape out of the fabric, and covered the edges and sewed them on about 1/8 in from the edge. (The butterfly and embroidery on the second pair was already there)  

The purse was done by using the bottom of one of the cut off legs.  I hemmed the bottom and covered it with another strip from the jelly roll.  I folded down the top and frayed the edge a bit - then using yarn, created the handles by threading it back and forth about 5 times - the single crocheting around them.  

For the headbands, I cut a strip of the leftover leg about an inch thick and took another strip from the jelly roll.  I put the wrong sides together and sewed about 1/4 inch from edge down both long sides.  The jelly roll piece was wider than the denim so when i turned it right side out and pressed it there was some of the colored fabric showing on the same side as the denim.  I then measured my kids head and put a strip of 3/4 inch wide elastic into the ends and hemmed them.  Sorry I didn't take pictures during the process, but I didn't think of it..... Anyway - what fun stuff can you do with your worn out clothing - now i just need to find time to do the rest of their holey stuff!  They were so excited about their "new" clothes!

If any of this is unclear, feel free to ask and I will try to do better - maybe when I work on the other pairs this week I can take more pictures for clarification.... :P

Spring Table Runner

I had fun making this table runner. I found a jelly roll that I really liked - I supplemented the roll with some coordinating solids and made a lavender trivet (see this post) to go with it. Now I just need to figure out what to make with the rest of the fabric!


Here's more of a close up - and a better view of the trivet.


And here is the pattern - I really don't know much about writing up quilting and sewing patterns, so if this is lacking - let me know and I will try to do better :) I used patterns from my scrap kit "Spring Tweets" to make the pretty pattern :) Just click on the image and then right click and choose "Save Image As" to grab this free pattern.

Kindle Cover

When I saw this pattern in the 101 Patchwork Projects and Quilts I knew I had to make it for my friend. She is the Kindle Queen! I'm still firmly entrenched in the paper world as far as my reading, but if you or someone you know has gone digital this is a great quick and easy project. It pulls together in a couple hours tops (even if you are are rather slow moving like me)

The one suggestion I would make is to measure the kindle you are planning to cover first and adjust the pattern accordingly - lol - I didn't the first time and found that her kindle was larger than the case i made - so I now have 2 cases - that look just like this one, but one fits her kindle and one fits a smaller one. :) This project can be done (haha - in either size) with just a quarter yard of 2 different fabrics, a button, a hair elastic and some batting and fusible web. I got the fusible web off amazon, the fabric from a small quilt shop and the button from a different quilt shop. The pattern gives you the option to quilt the cover - I was too lazy the second time around, but I did quilt the first attempt. It looks nice - but doesn't really add much.

Picnic Quilt

This quilt is something that we have been working on for a while now. (And by we I mean me and my hubby) It was my hubby's idea - he said he would do everything if I would agree to doing the binding. As you can imagine, that's not quite how it worked out. :) While my husband is perfectly able to handle a sewing machine, he also travels - A LOT - which means that while his intentions were good, I ended up doing all the sewing. He was thankfully sensitive to my massive prego belly and the inability to get up and down from the floor easily, and did all the cutting, and laying out and tying. We finally managed to get it finished.

A quick disclaimer - my husband picked the fabric. They are each cute by them selves, but I don't know that I would have chosen to put them together - but it is a picnic blanket, so I guess funky and sporadic works.

The quilt has 24 squares that are each made up of 9 - 5" squares. They are separated by 2" wide stripes and 2" squares at the corners. The quilt ended up being made so that it was 6 squares by 4 squares, because the backing fabric wasn't as wide as they told my hubby it was at the store. We had planned on making it 5x5. The quilt will have grommets in the corners to put stakes through and hold it down with. We tied it with brown red heart yarn.

Fall Trivets

I have been working on a lot of different projects recently with the holidays coming, but I have been unsure as to whether I should post them now or wait until after the holidays.... I figure since there aren't a whole lot of avid readers of my blog, that as long as I don't mention who the gifts are for, it's not a big deal if I post picture of them here. :) Not that every post from now until Christmas will be gifts I am making, but some will be.

These are a couple of trivets that I just finished up. This is a pattern I got from Interweave. Here is a link to the pattern. The pattern was quick and easy (even for a not-so-advanced sewer) Fabric is just some fat quarters from JoAnn's. This project took no more than a couple hours to complete - and even then - the slowest part was getting the lavender buds into it, they didn't want to go in and I ended up using a crochet hook to shove them in through the funnel. I got the lavender from Lavender Fanatic. It has been making my house smell wonderful! The order came quickly and I would definitely buy from them again.

I do plan on using this pattern again - it was quick, easy and I really like the way it came out.

The one thing I will do more carefully is be more careful of my seams, I discovered that my seams were often larger than the requested 1/4 inch - which threw off the size - I will need to be more careful next time to make sure my seams are the right size so I don't spend as much time picking seams out.... :P