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 You can find the pattern for purchase here: Chopsticks Tote (link no longer valid.)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.

 

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Pinwheels on the Playground

I am entering this baby quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy, at http://amyscreativeside.com.
You can find information about the Festival HERE.
I am entering in the Original Designs category. Voting opens next week and if you like my quilt I would love to get your vote!

About the quilt:

A WIP that lasted almost 2 years (first fabrics purchased 8/12/13) is finally complete. It took longer than that if you count the first top made for this baby when we though it was a boy.

 I designed this one myself. I knew I wanted to do pinwheels and it had to have robots because our husbands worked for a robotics company so that was kind of a running joke amongst the wives. It was called the robot quilt through most of it's creation. I re-named it Pinwheels on the Playground.

I found Funbots by Anne Kelle for Robert Kaufman to use for the focus fabric. The pink is Remix Polka Dots Pink also by Anne Kelle. The background is Kona White. The yellow is 2 different polka dot fabrics, one of which, the small dot, I no longer have the selvage for so I can't tell you what it is. The large dot is Fashion Plate by Barbara Jones for Henry Glass. I had to use 2 different yellows, because when I was doing the math, I miscalculated and when I went to get more, it was gone, so I had to substitute.






The backing fabric was very different from what I planned but I really love it. It is from the "Glamping" line by Mary Jane Butters for Moda. (side note: I love her Milk Cow Kitchen line!)



I used my home sewing machine to do the quilting. I did free motion in the white areas with a few hidden messages and used decorative stitches to do the yellow and pink areas and also to attach the binding to the front. I did a bias binding since this is going to be a very used quilt (I hope). (I used Gene Black's Bias Binding Tutorial for cutting the strips.) I always have trouble meeting the ends of my binding so I used  Pam's tutorial and got through it with only 1 seam rip. I have learned not to trim until I fold it back up to see if it is right. :)

I am super pleased with how it came out and both the mom and the little girl LOVED it!

 

Pinwheels on the Playground baby quilt

A WIP that lasted almost 2 years (first fabrics purchased 8/12/13) is finally complete. It took longer than that if you count the first top made for this baby. It is in the wash as I type and I will deliver it this afternoon.

I designed this one myself. I knew I wanted to do pinwheels and it had to have robots because our husbands worked for a robotics company so that was kind of a running joke amongst the wives. It was called the robot quilt through most of it's creation. I recently came up with Pinwheels on the Playground.
I found Funbots by Anne Kelle for Robert Kaufman to use for the focus fabric. The pink is Remix Polka Dots Pink also by Anne Kelle. The background is Kona White. The yellow is 2 different polka dot fabrics, one of which, the small dot, I no longer have the selvage for so I can't tell you what it is. The large dot is Fashion Plate by Barbara Jones for Henry Glass. I had to use 2 different yellows, because when I was doing the math, I miscalculated and when I went to get more, it was gone, so I had to substitute.

The backing fabric was very different from what I planned but I really love it. It is from the "Glamping" line by Mary Jane Butters for Moda. (side note: I love her Milk Cow Kitchen line!)

I used my newish Brother machine to do the quilting. I did free motion in the white areas with a few hidden messages and used decorative stitches to do the yellow and pink areas and also to attach the binding to the front. I did a bias binding since this is going to be a very used quilt (I hope). (I used Gene Black's Bias Binding Tutorial for cutting the strips.) I always have trouble meeting the ends of my binding and I used to use Pam's tutorial but the pictures aren't showing up. I was still able to use her directions though and got through it with only 1 seam rip. I have learned not to trim until I fold it back up to see if it is right. :)

I am super happy to have this done and even more happy to be able to deliver it.


 

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.

Quilting

Sorry, this might be a downer post. It has been one of those days/weeks/months.

I mistyped quilting in the title at first and it was quitting. Which was fitting. (Which rhymes with quitting.) Because lately I have felt like quitting.

I am working on a commission bag. It is not going well. I want to quit. I can't quit since I committed to making it. I have been working on it since the beginning of March. Which seems to me like a long time to work on one bag. Especially when I have made smaller similar bags. It is the zipper pocket that is causing problems. I can't get it right. Also, snap placement has become an issue, as has finding a nice lining fabric. 

Then I have the baby quilt that I meant to give as a gift last year when the baby was born. The baby has now been one for a month. I finally got the backing fabric at at 25% off sale Saturday.

On top of that, our rent is being raised so we are house hunting and that is not going well at all. And our last rent check bounced thanks to the bank putting a hold on my husband's paycheck until tomorrow. And now we have to pay a late fee and  2 bounced check fees.
So yeah. I am ready to quit.

Instead of wallowing today, I pin basted the baby quilt and started quilting it. I tried out the stippling stitch on my birthday present, a Brother CS6000i we found at Target on Clearance.The stippling was way too dense. It looked cool, but took too much thread and time both, so, I will be ripping out stitches already. I moved on to FMQ and it is going well.
Then came the call about the bounced check. Now I am unwinding from talking to the very firm and stickler-for-the-rules leasing agent who would not budge on the late fee even though we have never been late on rent in 3 years except the time they lost our check. Sigh. And they want a cashiers check from our online bank. So we have to overnight it. Sigh some more.

And so I give you a pretty picture of the baby quilt being quilted to hopefully brighten a dreary post.

I'm going to go look for some chocolate.