Catch up from February and March 2015

This year has been a busy one and a rough one. Personal issues, a really bad school year for my kindergartner, family life in general, and lots of extra curricular responsibilities have overwhelmed my ability to write and post anything significant. Perhaps the coming months will be different. I am going to make an effort to make them so.

As I have said in recent posts, Instagram, Facebook and a little bit of Twitter and Flickr have been where my sharing has happened.

So once again the next few posts will be summary posts of the last few months as far as my crafting goes.

Papercrafts:
I have thoroughly enjoyed having access to my rather large rubber stamp collection and have made a handful of cards for various occasions and people. Almost all of them are "cased" cards, meaning I copied a layout or color combo or both to create them.

I also made these for the ladies I visit teach for St. Patrick's Day



Sewing
This first one was a test bag for Schlosser Designs. You can find the pattern for purchase here: Chopsticks Tote (link no longer valid.)

I made this and then filled it with crochet hooks, yarn and instruction books for our Young Women's Camp fundraiser silent auction.

 

 I spent a day playing with my Hex n More ruler from Jaybird Quilts and this beautiful fabric I won a while back. I only got as far as cutting a few blocks worth.

 I also made some more Personal Progress book folders for the incoming 12-year-olds.

I worked on quilting the robot quilt, trying to get it finished up before the baby turned 2.  I quilted the pink and yellow using some of the decorative stitches on my Brother machine.

 

Some crafting catch up

I have done a little crafting lately, both sewing and paper crafting. Now that my home is more livable, I feel okay spending more time on my hobbies.

I have been using Instagram a lot to share project I have been working on. I forget to post things on Flickr these days.

December:

I wanted to make a gift for my fabulous Grandma for Christmas. I thought the Open Wide zipper bag from Noodlehead would be perfect since she travels a lot. She also likes southwest stuff and I had some fabric I bought a while back that was just right.



Then I could not find my toiletry bag when I was packing so I took a moment (ha!) and made one for myself, in a larger size. I love it!

While in Utah, I made a port pillow. My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in November. He was getting chemo and radiation in December and had a port* in his chest. They can be very uncomfortable, especially when wearing a seat belt. My dad apparently frequently removed his seat belt when going to his appointments because of this. I found a couple of tutorials (here and here) for port pillows and made him one (as well as a couple more to donate to the chemo center). He used it while I was there and told me it helped.
These are made with charm squares and finish up about 4 1/2" x 4 1/2".



I also finished the baby quilt that our Young Women had tied for a baby in our ward. I had made the top a while ago. I donated it to the group along with binding. They tied it at church one Sunday during their lesson. Then I brought it to my mom's during Christmas break to trim and bind it.

 



 January:
More cord wraps. Some really big ones for extension cords and some regular ones for regular cords and a couple of short ones for my earbuds and charging cords.


February:
 Valentines!
I have been following a Stampin' Up! gal on YouTube, Wendy Cranford and she made a really cute little candy bar pocket for a valentine. I made one like hers which was not great, and then went my own way a bit with them color-wise.


Blue for my boys.

 
Pink for my girls, some teachers and the gals I Visit Teach.

 And throughout January and February I have been alternating quilting on the robot baby quilt and piecing this Trip Around the World quilt I started at a historical textiles class given by Leah Zieber at Fat Quarters Quilt Shop. I used fabrics from a fat quarter stack I had of Tidbits by Kari Ramsay for Henry Glass.  It was really hard to do the strips. I could not keep them straight, even using my walking foot and marking my machine with a tape guide and pinning the heck out of them and starching the heck out of them.
That said, I still like how it turned out. Very pretty.

 And that is my 3 month summary!
Have a great day!

 * Implantable ports or port-a-cath. A catheter connected to a port is surgically inserted (tunneled) under the skin of the chest, or sometimes the upper arm, by a surgeon or radiologist. You will receive either local anesthesia or be consciously sedated. Unlike the other two types of catheters, a port sits entirely underneath the skin. You may be able to see and/or feel a small bump in your chest or arm, but you won’t see the tip of the catheter outside the body. Before each “access” or needle insertion, the skin over the port may be numbed using a cream. When treatment is given, the skin is cleansed and a special needle is inserted through the skin into the rubber seal. This allows blood to be drawn or treatment to be given into the catheter that is connected to the port. (http://www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/how-cancer-treated/chemotherapy/catheters-and-ports-cancer-treatment)

 

Some projects during May-hem

I have been working on things here and there during "May-hem". The last month of school is always a little crazy.
I have been trying to keep my littlest miss occupied and she has wanted to make a Tooth Fairy pillow for a while. I saw a cute monster pillow on Facebook, posted by Erin Schlosser and it was a free tutorial on her blog. I showed it to my daughter and she loved the "robot" tooth fairy pillow. (We like robots around here; my husband works for a robotics company.) She chose fabrics, then she traced the applique parts and cut them out with some guidance from me. Then she sat on my lap and guided the fabric through the machine with a little more guidance from me. She drew the smile on and then I stitched across it. The most amazing thing to me was that she stuffed the legs. It was a bit hard and even I was frustrated doing it, but she stuck it out and did great! After I stitched the body together, she stuffed it and we put a little fabric heart in (like at Build-A Bear) and I stitched it shut. She LOVES it and sleeps on it instead of her regular pillow.

It has a little pocket for her tooth and a quarter from the Tooth Fairy.

 I have also been working on quilting the robot quilt. It is going well. The white is done and I am moving on to the yellow. I plan on leaving the pink un-quilted.

 



I have made some good progress on the laptop bag. I got the pouch mostly figured out other than I either cut the fabric too big or did the math wrong. It was HUGE. But that is an easy fix I think so I have one more test sleeve and a test bag just for sizing purposes and then I can get going on the real deal.





 I just had one teacher gift this year since my other 2 kids in school have multiple teachers which, I don't really do. I got my son's teacher an Amazon gift card and made a card and holder for it.

A couple of projects

My son came home after school on Monday with the request that we get his teacher a birthday gift. Her birthday was that day so he was feeling urgency to get it done.

He wanted initially to go purchase something and I didn't really feel like wandering around the store looking for an appropriate gift. So since I knew she liked tea, (as in really really likes tea and makes it during class all the time) I thought I could whip together a mug rug and send that. I let my son pick out some charms to use. Then he left for scouts and I sewed it up. I didn't bind it, just quilted one side to the batting, sewed the 2 sides right sides together and turned them right side out. I quilted the other side in a couple of places to secure it. It is a little cockeyed because while I sewed the seams straight, I had cut the fabric crooked. :) Oh well.

 We ended up at the store anyway, to supplement the mug rug with some tea and a stirring spoon and my son bought her a chocolate bar with his allowance.
He picked a card from my stash and wrote her a note and I packaged it up in a cello bag with a topper that matched the card.
He was very pleased with it, although he nearly left without it the next morning, which would have been slightly annoying after the rush rush rush to get it done.
And she seemed to like it.


I have also been itching to get a case made for my tablet. It is hard to find cases for the Nexus 7, which is what I have. I perused tutorials for a few days and decided to just create my own using bits and parts of other people's tutes. It fit the tablet perfectly, just needs a couple of tweaks to make it just right. is I meant to make a long strap to close it that wold also hold it open and upright. But I totally forgot and just attached Velcro to the overlap. There is not enough Velcro and the overlap needs to be about an  inch bigger so it won't pop up. Also, there's pocket where I inserted cardboard to make it stiff for standing up and also for holding it like a book. Well that pocket is just about 1/8 inch too big and too close to the other pocket. It gets folded up when it is closed. You can kind of see where it gets pinched in the photo. Also, 2 of the elastics need to be a smidge shorter. They cover the power button and if it is turned the other way, it covers part of the screen that I need to be able to touch.

That said, for a project with no real pattern, the fact that I got that close to what I intended amazes me. I'm not so hot with math. :)

Mother's Day Cards

Mother's Day is right around the corner and I wanted to make the cards for my moms this year. I think we have purchased cute or funny cards the last couple of years.

I had all the supplies except stamps and ink out already, since my son had to do a family history project board. He used a bunch of my scrapbook supplies to decorate it.

Seeing all those lovely colors and embellishments gave me the itch to get stamping so I pulled some stamp sets out last night and got busy.
 I often forget how fun stamping is! Here are the 2 cards I made.

 I might just do some more today.
Have a good one!

 

Another hobby

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with my BFF and she asked me if I had any hand made cards in my stash that I could send her. I did not, as I had, a couple of months ago, donated them to a card drive at church for veterans and nursing home residents. The conversation moved on to other things but the cards lingered in the back of my mind until yesterday when I just had to make some. It was a task that was going to be more than just sitting down and stamping merrily away. 95% of my stamping gear is packed in boxes that are stacked about 8 high and 2 deep in our garage. So I spent about 20 minutes moving boxes around trying to find enough supplies to make a bunch of cards. I had some success, although I had to use my scraps since I could not find the box with the whole sheets of paper. This restricted my color combos since I could only use colors that had a piece large enough to make a whole card. But I was still able to get some good mixes.

I also let Littlest Miss stamp with me. She loved it and even though the table now has some ink stains, it was worth it.



Also, late last night my oldest asked me if I could make a cover for her required school planner. They have to have it on their person at all times. It acts as a hall pass among other things. She was tired of having it in a binder adding to her already heavy backpack (they don't have lockers here). I made her one with some yardage I was hoarding but unfortunately it ended up about 1/2 inch too small. So frustrating! So now I need to find something that will fit in it. :)






I have not worked on my Quilt Along blocks at all this last week and I don't know if I will make the Wednesday deadline. We shall see. Maybe I can work on them today during naptime.