Busy Work

This is what kept me busy during chemo treatments.  So glad to have a hobby I love to keep my mind off things.

Party Dress

A long awaited birthday present for one of my favorite little girlies. It's from one of the best patterns too. Seriously, Ive made 3 or 4 already. Awesome pattern: Leila & Ben Sweet Little Dress.  It is so easy to customize.  I added the belt and sashing.  It's really cute with just coordinating sleeves.  Or make it all one fabric and add a ruffle down the front middle or add a cute flower brooch.  The possibilities are endless!

The best thing about this dress is that because of the stetchy neck and sleeve openings, it can be worn for years!  Once it's too short, just add opaque leggings or wear with regular pants making it a tunic top.  So fun.

Pattern Tip:  The two little average-sized girls that I tried my samples on both fit the same way- top neck opening was a little too large and the dress length a bit short (but I prefer right at the top of the knee cap for little girls.)  So I made the dress sized down one size on the top and added a few inches at the bottom (which if you are a beginning sewer, this was super simple to do. The body of the dress is one long pattern piece, taped together from four sheets from your home printer.  So just just cut out the top and bottom pieces in your preferred sizes then merge the lines together in the middle.)

For more ideas, check out my Pinterest Board For Little Girls - Sewn and Crafted for pictures of a bunch of variations.

Beginnings of the Bike Quilt

When I first saw this bike fabric, I knew I had to make a quilt for my little boy out of it. So I finally got around to ordering some, along with coordinating prints, to put together a quilt for him. When it finally came in the mail I was super excited and showed it to him, hoping he'd share in my excitement (which you know with kids can really be hit or miss) and luckily he did!

In fact, he was so excited, he asked if he could help. I immediately said yes, thinking it'd be fun bonding time to spend together, but knowing that him helping will definitely make the process more difficult and frustrating. But I have plans, which I'll share along the way, of how to make it a fun time and give him the best opportunities to help out. Like cutting...definitely not a good time for him to help.
So our first quilting session together we didnt do any sewing. First, we needed to draw out our blocks to get them just how we like and figure out the measurements for piecing. So below are pictures of drawing our blocks. He loved this part since he really enjoys drawing. He drew quite a few pictures of quilt blocks and fabrics.






First quilt block

Second quilt block

This one is fabric (see the outline of the fabric and then he drew the pattern in.)

And I think this one is a quilt.
I treasure these drawings. Even if he decides he is not interested in helping with the rest of the quilt, this quilt will always bring back the fond memories of his excitement, working next to me on our quilting project.

Have you done any sewing with children lately? I'd love to hear how it went.

Thrown another curve ball

Life never gets easier.

I have had a hoarse voice since last November. I had been going to my Primary Care Physician who kept telling me it was allergies (which Ive never had before.) He told me I might need to see an allergist if all the allergy meds and steroids he was giving me didnt work. Finally he mentioned that I might look into seeing an ENT. So I did. And after me speaking one sentence, the ENT knew it was definitely not allergies. He used a scope in his office and right away found a tumor on my vocal cords. And biopsy results came back showing that it is cancerous.

So I'm on rounds of concurrent chemo and radiation therapies. I have already seen so many blessings throughout this battle. It will be a long road to recovery, but I know without a doubt that we will make it through, stronger than before. If you'd like to follow my battle with larynx cancer closer, click here.

With all my time waiting around in doctors offices and what not, I have dreamt up a few projects with all the new fun fabric lines out. This one will be a new quilt for my biggest little boy, who has yet to receive his own quilt from mom. He asked if he could help, and I of course said yes! Even though that means it will take so much longer and be much more difficult and frustrating. I love that he loves fabric!

Here is a little preview of the stack we are working with.

fabrics top to bottom: all Michael Miller- It's A Boy Thing Bicycles Haze, Wheel Dot Haze, Mini Harlequin Sea, Baby Dumb Dot Sea, Mini Mikes Random Pencil Check Sea, Bicycles Grey, Ta Dot Marine, Wheel Dot Charcoal

drawing our quilt blocks, planning what his "bike" quilt will look like.
More pictures to come of our first quilt planning session together. Cant wait!

My view

This little man likes to be sneaky and squeeze between my sewing desk and the wall. I rarely sew while my kids are awake, hence there is not a ton of sewing going on around here. But the few times that they are playing well together, I might stitch a few sides on a block. But when this view appears, it means back to mom duties. Wouldn't want any cute little fingers to get sewn through!

Office supplies in the sewing room

Hi, my name is Amber and I'm an office supply junkie. I love looking at all the cool organizing products. So when I found a whole row of new Martha Stewart products I just about died. I especially loved the aqua desk top organized, but they were really low on inventory for those...wonder why? But there were also tons of really cute labels, and note pads, and file folders, and binders, and vinyl dry-erase wall decals...and I could go on and on.

I grabbed these and just couldn't put them down. Didn't really have a purpose for them yet, but knew there had to be somewhere I could use them. Then inspiration hit!They were perfect for labeling my stacks of block pieces! I usually use either a fabric marking pen and write directly on the fabric, or post-it notes, but those never stick to fabric. I have no idea know why I never thought of using real labels before. They were just the right fit for the job. Not to mention, they're easy on the eyes! I cant deny that I kept stealing glances at them, wishing I had more pieces to label.

I also ended up bringing home the dry-erase weekly planner and dry-erase flourish edge decal. Both are currently living on my refrigerator and have helped immensely to keep me on track with weekly appointments and daily to-do's. I have the worst memory!

My new favorite thread

Ive been on the hunt for the best the thread since I started quilting and learned just how important good thread is, for your finished product and your machine. I somehow learned of this brand, ordered some to try out, and am now hooked. LOVE IT. Love that its 100% cotton. Love that it has a beautiful satin finish, giving it a little bit of shine. And love the colors.

Essential thread by Connecting Threads, 100% Egptian Cotton Satin Finish

I mean, look at these gorgeous colors! And at $2.49 for a spool of 1200 yards you cant go wrong. They even go on sale sometimes.

And I might have loved them so much, that I went back and ordered the black/white/grey set too.

Yumminess

After a long hiatus from blogging, Im glad to be back. Life put us through a whirlwind with having baby #2, making some major life changes and surviving the holidays. Im really ready to get back into sharing my passion. And not a better way to jump back in than with this yumminess.

Good Fortune by Kate Spain for Moda

love all these great prints and color. And yes the last 5 are grey prints!



Enjoying the texture of a nice tightly wrapped jelly roll before letting it loose...so hard to finally open it up!

Dallas Quilt Show

I had the opportunity to go to the Dallas Quilt Show, for the very first time, with an old friend and a new friend. I cant believe I have never gone before! It was so much fun looking at fabric, sewing tools, amazing show quilts and everything else quilt related.

Some of my favorite show quilts: (sorry for the cruddy phone pics)

Ive been wanting to make a patriotic quilt to put out around Independence Day so I was really liking these two:

Gorgeous cathedral window quilt. This was made a little differently allowing the windows to literally pop off the quilt giving it a 3D effect.

These next two are all appliqued. I thought this one was a print at first.

So much detail in this one too!


This mini quilt has the tiniest stippling ever! Pretty incredible.

Here's a little size reference. Incredible how it goes all through and around the ribbon flower (which were done before the quilting.)


I went in saying I wasn't going to buy anything, and of course wasn't able to stick to my guns. My favorite fabric find was this cute stack. I loved purple in high school and I guess I got sick of it because I've hated it ever since. But for some reason the combination of the gray, navy, and purple really struck a chord with me and I couldn't let go of this stack. It's Art Gallery Spellbound from Material Girl.


I also had to hunt down a pair of these awesome scissors after hearing so much hype about them the night before at the Dallas Modern Quilters Guild.


I had such a great time. I'm definitely going every year from now on!

Mistakes...

...they happen to us all, but you rarely hear about them in blogland.

I always like to hear the "real" story from the more experienced crafters and how to fix problems. So I figured I'd share mine...

Remember the post that I first showed this?

For Christmas, my Mother-in-law had a special request for a laptop case. So I took measurements and then went to work. Well sure enough, on Christmas morning it didn't fit. This is always my biggest fear (the same reason I don't make clothing.)

I had no idea what I was going to do fix it and not make it look terrible. My initial thought was to add a couple of inches onto one end, which wasn't really an option because it would look totally obvious. So I thought and thought, and finally figured it out...add a couple inches to the middle!

So I basically cut the whole case right down the middle. Cut some red fabric strips and batting to size then stitched the middles back together. I also quilted straight lines down the new middle section (since the original pieces were also quilted and to help hold it all together.)

I actually like the final version best! Love the contrasting red stripe down the middle and cute yellow button!

Fussy Cut Bee block for January

It has taken me a long time to get back into sewing since the holidays. I guess life has gotten the best of me lately...seriously, there is no end to the pile of laundry!

But I was finally able to finish my January block for the Fussy Cut Bee.

Love the fabrics and block design Lucia!





credits~
fabric: Nest by Tula Pink
block tutorial found here

Need help choosing matching fabrics?

Hawthorne Threads has recently become one of my favorite places to shop online for fabrics. Why? Not only do they have almost every modern print you could ask for, but their website boasts some amazing features.

Have a print that you'd like to find some additional fabrics to match with it? No problem. When on the web page of your fabric, just scroll to the bottom and find the color blocks. These are the colors that are present in the fabric. Click whichever block contains the color that you'd like to have in an another fabric, and up pops tons and tons of fabrics containing that color. And not only that color, but you can change the options from the color being a high or low dominance, and even a "very close color" match or "somewhat close." This is such a great tool when trying to build a stack of fabrics to work with for a quilt or anything else!


Don't have a fabric picked out yet but have a color in mind? Just click on the color grid! Choose any color and tons of fabrics containing that color will pop up. It's really fun just to click around on the grid and see what comes up!

So next time you're in a bind trying to match fabrics for just looking for suggestions, try these awesome features over at Hawthorne Threads!

Christmas sewing

December being a crazy month as always, there was not a whole lot of sewing going on. Except for the gifts that I committed to make. I tried to make as many of our Christmas gifts as possible. But with having a 3 yr old and 2 month old, it of course was not as much as I would have liked. But I was able to squeeze out at least a few.

For my mother-in-law, a request for a laptop sleeve.



And for all the little girls in the extended family, Black Apple dolls.



There was actually a couple more dolls, but they were promptly wrapped after being finished. I was lucky to snap a couple shots of these few before they were whisked away also.

Hope everyone enjoys a wonderful new year!

November's Fussy-cut Bee Block

I really enjoyed our November block. Most months we make an improve block, so it was nice to do something different. When I first saw the block design, I really wasnt sure what the finished quilt was supposed to look like. Then I saw a picture of the inspirational quilt...and oh my. I've definitely got a quilt in this pattern in my future.

These blocks are made up of a half-square triangles with the fussy cut appliqued on top, then a border added on just two sides. Then when the blocks are all placed together, the borders turn into sashing and make the blocks look like their placed off-set.

Remember...

...my appliqued onesie tutorial? Well here it is in action on my little man. So much cuter than a plain white onesie don't you think?


now he just needs some matching pants or babylegs...

(and yes, it is still warm enough here to wear just a onesie. Cant wait for that fall weather to finally arrive...if it ever does before winter.)