Baby Madness

I may have been absent on here for awhile, but I can tell you it is not because I have not been making anything. My sister is having a girl in March and I helped her with the nursery.  And by help I mean lots and lots of sewing and decorating.

My sister pretty much let me take control of the nursery.  She wanted it in pink and grey chevrons.  That was all she said.  I used the pattern from Amy Butler's Little Stitches for Little Ones to make the crib bedding. You cannot see the bedskirt in this photo but it is just big grey and white chevrons. 

We purchased a mobile on clearance and I stripped it of its former being.  I hand stitched elephants out of felt and decorated them with ribbons and buttons.  So far, it has been the hit of the nursery.  It is cute, if I must say so myself.  I didn't get a close up of the mobile with my camera, so the cell phone photo will have to suffice.

The baby shower was on Saturday and it had a "Breakfast at Tiffany's" theme.  The baby's name is Audrey as my sister has had an Audrey Hepburn obsession for a while.  My sister also has a love for anything Tiffany & Co. so it was a perfect fit for her.

Pinterest is a horrible thing when you are planning parties.  You see all these wonderful ideas and feel you have to do them.  Above is the tea party table. 

 

My cousin made these wonderful Tiffany box cakes.  They were perfect.  The Tiffany punch is just Blue Raspberry Hawaiian Punch and lemonade.

We also had a candy buffet that was a huge hit. I found this perfect vase at Target.  I love robin's egg blue so it will be a permanent feature in my house, now.  All in all everything went perfectly.  The baby is already spoiled (first grand-baby for my parents).  I also made her a dress with the tutu bottom and a few ruffled minkee blankets.

I have a lot of quilting projects on the horizon to share on here soon.  Now that the baby preparation is pretty much over I can get back to quilting.

My Weekend Warrior Debut...

I have been given the opportunity to create quick projects that will be featured on the Brewer Blog as part of their Weekend Warrior projects.  Brewer is a distributor of everything sewing; notions, fabric, books, patterns, embroidery supplies, and much more!

My first post was published a few weeks ago.  It may look familiar as it was one of my secret quilter giveaways.  If you would like to make your own, here is the link.  

http://www.brewerinspires.com/home/2012/8/8/weekend-warrior-wednesday-needlecase.html

Have fun with it!  By the way, the fabric is by Timeless Treasures, they also have it in black and white. The other print on the inside is from Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks line, another favorite of mine.  I have yards and yards of the fabric I purchased for half off, can't beat that!

Stay tuned for my next Weekend Warrior project.  It will premiere on the website on Wednesday, check it out at www.brewerinspires.com!

Secret Quilter

At the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild Retreat, we decided to do a Secret Quilter Swap each day of the retreat. Of course, I didn't get photos of all of the items I made because I did them last minute, but I thought I would post the wonderful things I received.

 

I was spoiled by my secret person.  The first day I received the most darling drawstring bag with a sugar skull necklace inside.  The necklace is actually made from a Scrabble tile!

A few of us at the shop I work at have a thing for Sugar Skulls.  They have already tried to steal it, I love it!  The Etsy store, HomeStudio, has some great necklaces, I may have to buy some more.

 

 The second day I received this drawstring bag full of some of my favorite candy. The inside is lined with PUL (polyurethane laminate) so it can be washed.  

The third day i received this mini quilt. I had to steal the photo from Nichola, who made it.  I already have it hanging in my sewing room and I couldn't get back far enough for a good photo. 

 I also received a $5 gift card to Starbucks, which will satisfy my hazelnut iced coffee fix for a couple of days, and two decals; a gnome and a bird.  I am still trying to figure out what to put them on. I don't want to waste them on something not worthy of their cuteness.  All of my gifts were great and I had so much fun with the swap. I cannot wait for the next retreat.

I decided this weekend to re-organize all of my fabric. I went with the cheap method of folding them on comic book boards.  You can view a tutorial here.  Silly me, I bought 100 and figured that would be enough (this is only for the pieces 1 yard and over right? there's not THAT many).  Well I had to go back to the comic book store....TWICE.  That's right I officially have over 200 pieces of fabric one yard and over.  I had no idea it was that bad....I have a problem.  I will have to snap some photos of the makeover, but it is not photo-ready yet...need more shelves...so horrible.

 

LVMQG 2nd Retreat

 

Quite the sunset, if I do say so myself..

Last week I hit the road with my sewing machine, my mom and a truck load of food and sewing supplies to a sewing retreat outside of Seligman, Arizona.  Almost four full days and three nights of pure sewing fun!  This was the second retreat that we have done for the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild and I am lucky to have attended both. 

This is my "room".  I slept on the couch nearby and this was my sewing area.  I brought along my Baby BERNINA this trip and I have grown to love her!  I wish she had needle stop down, but she is not as embellished as her big sister and I accept that. I worked on more Swoon blocks, which seem to consume much more time than I think they should and some pillowcases for ConKerr Cancer. I will get some Swoon block photos when they are complete.  They do not match yet but I have faith that the final will bring it all together!

Fourteen in all!  This photo was taken late at night so I apologize for the darkness. The house was dark all the time actually, my only complaint.  Well, it was a tad warm also.

We found this guy on a walk around the property one night.  I wanted to hold him but I let him be.  I love all of the colors in the rock!  It was such a pretty place I wish we could have stayed longer.  Everyone had a great time and I cannot wait to attend another one.  We also participated in a Secret Quilter Swap.  I will post photos of what I received and what I made in another post.  Yet again, I forgot to take photos of everything I made. I will snap them at the next guild meeting.

For much better photos of the retreat, check out the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild Blog!

Good Intentions...

Recently, the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild had an Orange Challenge Swap.  I really wanted to create a lap sized quilt from my strips (I received the strips on the right of the photo), but, as usual other deadlines got in the way and I ran out of time to create the quilt I wanted.

It didn't help that the blocks I chose to work on were taking me about two hours a piece. Not a good idea for a quick turnaround.  So after two days of my mini vacation, sewing and sewing, I gave in....only 9 blocks out of the planned 25 were completed.  Oh well, I still love it. Even if it is small....

Okay, so really small.  All in all it is 36 by 36.  I will show the completed quilt after the reveal this Thursday.  The pattern is from the great tutorial by Film in the Fridge, Converging Corners.  It is a great tutorial and a great blog.  You should check it out.  I wouldn't mind making a larger quilt with this tutorial one day, but not when I have to do it in a week! 

I finished quilting it yesterday and bound it today, it is what it is.  

I have a LOT of strips left that I didn't touch.  They will be going in my knitted rug with my scrappy strips.  I will have to even out the orange for sure.

I cannot wait for the reveal this week to see what everyone has come up with.  I have a seen a few and they are all spectacular! 

CuteBots Baby Quilt

 As soon as I found out that my cousin was having a baby boy, I knew the quilt had to be made with Timeless Treasures CuteBots fabric by Rashida Coleman Hale.  I went back and forth on creating my own pattern for the design but ended up using the Ordered Chaos quilt by Carolina Patchworks.  This is such a great pattern to feature a print and it pieces very quickly (after the cutting!).

The last time I used this quilt pattern I appliquéd a large design on it and loved how it turned out.  I feel that every baby quilt has to incorporate the name so I picked one of the cutest CuteBots and added the name underneath.

I quilted the quilt on my home machine with a block type meander.  I divided it up into quadrants to make the quilt easier to manage.  I love the modern feel of the quilting and to me it matched the robot theme, so it worked perfectly.

Every time I make a baby quilt I worry about the durability of the binding.  Let's face it baby quilts will get dirty often, which leads to lots of washing!  I decided to do a decorative stitch on the binding to stitch it out down.

I wanted to use the variegated thread in the quilting but didn't want to distract from the robots, so I was able to use in the binding.  I wish I could say this was my idea but I saw this done at a quilt at BERNINA University last year and loved the look of it.  It is also a nice way to machine stitch binding without have to worry about the straight stitch catching the seem on both sides.

You can tell that this is a special quilt because I used my Katie Jump Rope fabric on the back.  You cannot buy that anymore!!  To set this stitch up you choose a nice decorative stitch that will cover the binding nicely.

I used stitch #758 on my 830.  This was the same as the sample I had seen.  It works great because it doesn't have a lot of stitching in straight lines.  I think it turned out great and will hopefully last quite a bit longer than my hand stitching; not to mention, much, much quicker!

The baby shower is this weekend.  I hope she likes it.  I want to create a few smaller quilts for him before he is born but this is all I will get done for the shower.  Until next time!

Wonderland

A family friend of mine is getting married next month.  Their entire wedding is an Alice in Wonderland theme.  I saw this fabric and found it suited the cause perfectly.

I am trying to do some improvisational pieceing and it is making me nuts.  I can't decide what I want where and I spend more time staring at the blocks than doing much of anything else.  I started with the panel and added a small stripe of black and white to frame them off.  From there, I am just winging it.

 

So, while I spend time staring at my design wall, auditioning fabric after fabric, I started embroidering some fabric to use for a quilt that I cannot wait to make! 

But until I can play with this, I gotta finish Alice.