Baby Bonnets from Leftovers

I don't often do craft shows, but my friend Danielle of Live Laugh Sew is having one in her home in a few weeks.  I have been going through what I have on hand and realizing that I REALLY need to sell some things, LOL.

I've also been looking at Pinterest. Sometimes that gets me in trouble, LOL. I usually wind up heading into my sewing room with boatloads of ideas afterward and today was no different.  More on the other ideas later...

The one I focused on today is really very simple and I have been itching to get into my sewing room and start in on them.  In fact they are so simple that I would be willing to put together a tutorial if anyone is interested.

Baby bonnets.  I have so many small pieces of fabric left over from other projects, and bits of lace and rickrack and ribbon galore.  I thought this would be a great way to combine them!  I am really loving making these.  They are so simple and quick to sew up and will hopefully sell at the craft sale (unless someone else wants them before... wink, wink...)

This one is a 3-6 month size.

This one is also a 3-6 month size.  I will need to purchase some ribbon for this one.  I didn't have the right size red and the brown that I had seemed too drab.  

And this one is a 6-12 month size. 

I am hoping to do a few more in both sizes and also a few in 0-3 month size.  I'm also considering doing a few lined with flannel.  It has turned downright cold up here in Minnesota in the last few days.   

All in all it was a pretty fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon!  What about you?  What have you been up to lately? 

Winnie the Pooh in Yellow and Blue....

All finished! I stitched the binding down Monday night. It took about 3 hours. I like this quilt a lot. It is the first and only one for which I have ever followed someone else's pattern. I found the pattern at quick quilts after following a link that Amanda posted back last fall sometime. There are some others there that I hope to try sometime, as well, but I really need to get back to my list of unfinished projects. I hope to get back on track with that in June after we get back from our trip to Illinois.
Now I just have to buckle down and get my sister's finished, at least to the point where I can do the hand stitching in the car if need be. I also need to do my blocks for the block swap. I have the fabric and I began cutting one Sunday afternoon, but that's as far as I got. But, if I did 32 nine patch blocks in one day, I think I can handle the 15 for the block swap! LOL I went to Gruber's to pick out backing fabric and binding fabric for my sister's quilt yesterday afternoon. I have just about half of the machine quilting done. Gotta love that free motion quilting without a pattern. just start swirling and looping around and away you go. I bought some "machingers" gloves, too. They do seem to help to hold on to the fabric. I just don't have a flat surface that is even with the bed of my machine, so the quilt tends to slip off easily. I am hoping to finish the machine quilting this evening, then it's binding and it's done!:)

A time to quilt....

Ok, so maybe it isn't ecclesiastical, but that is my agenda for the day today. My alarm clock kitties woke me up at 6:30 sharp this morning. (Their usual breakfast time during the week) So I figured I might as well get up and get busy while the house is quiet. J will probably sleep until at least 9 or 10. So I threw in the first load of laundry for the day, ate some pop tarts, looked at a new blog, (see the list of blogs on the side, Crafts Direct is a local craft store and they have started a blog with lots of cool stuff. I love that place, every time I go there it is at least an hour to an hour and a half before I can get myself anywhere near the door! LOL), and decided to make a short post before delving into my sister's quilt once again. I am about halfway done with the strip piecing. I am doing sort of a simple "irish chain". Really just a nine patch alternated with a solid white square. I have my doubts that I can accomplish it, but I'd like to have the top done this weekend. That's a tall order, but maybe, just maybe I might get there! I got inspired to make something for my niece, Claire's birthday in October from one of the fabrics. If I can find more of that fabric, I think I might do it. More on that another day. ;) For those of you who don't remember which fabrics I am using for my sister's quilt, here is a reminder.


Ok time for me to venture off into sewing land.......

Saw something that I thought would be fun...

I was watching "Simply Quilts" yesterday and they had a really neat story on. It sounded like a lot of fun. There was a group of 18 quilters on there they called the "rad swappers". What they do is they have a deadline to meet to make 18 identical blocks with a preset block size, block pattern and color palette. Other than that they are free to do as they wish with the blocks. Then when they have the blocks done each person gets one of the other's blocks, so that they have 18 different blocks. Then they have to assemble a quilt top out of all of the blocks. It was really neat to see how many different quilts could be made all from the same 18 blocks. I wish there were pictures to show you, but hgtv.com didn't have any on their site. I wish I knew enough people who like to quilt to try something like that! You'd have to have enough people, and the right number so that you could actually have enough blocks to make up a top. I'm afraid the 3 or 4 people that I know who like to quilt just wouldn't be enough! LOL There'd be like 5 blocks! LOL Sounded like fun, though!

Speaking of quilting, on to the yellow and blue quilt. I got 13 of the 35 nine patch blocks done. Strip piecing is pretty cool. The blocks turn out so much nicer than if I had just tried to patch the 9 patches together. Hopefully I can get the rest done by Saturday so that I can start putting the top together then. Can't wait! That will be fun!

Saw the cutest thing today!

Today was a great day at work! I got to go shopping for Christmas decorations for the bank with an $800.00 budget!!! I about fell over when the girl I was going shopping with told me that! We came in wayyyy under that and will have a really nice tree and decorations in the bank this year. We bought an awesome 9 foot tall tree and decorations in shades of purple, gold and silver. I can't wait to see it all finished. We didn't buy a tree skirt because we couldn't find one that we liked to go with it, so we went to Mill End Textiles to find some fabric to wrap around the bottom of the tree. The girl working there was wearing the cutest jacket. It had all sorts of fabric scraps sewn to it in sort of a hap-hazard patchwork style. It was really cute! It looked like she made the fabric by sewing all sorts of rectangles and squares of different sizes to a solid color base fabric. The edges were left raw so that they could fray with washing. I SOOO want to try this! I think it would be adorable for a kid's garment of some sort.

All the shopping today really got me in the mood for Christmas decorating, so I put up the tree toninght. I will clean the house and do the rest tomorrow! I love my tree and my Christmas decorations. I have lots of red and gold and velvet ribbon and poinsettias. It is a shame no one usually ever sees them but J and I. I will have to post some pictures when I get everything done.

Finished Christmas Dress....

Got the Christmas dress finished!






I listed it at ARF (Angelic Reborns Forums). If I don't sell it by Monday, I'll list it on ebay.

What am I, nuts?!

So, I just bought 3.5 yards of fabric on ebay. I must be crazy, lol. It was cheap though, so it was hard to pass up. Less than 10 bucks including shipping, that is way less than you could buy it for at any fabric store. It will go in my stash for now.
Now back to my dress that Aeris didn' want me to sew! LOL

About that cat...

I spent the day trying to sew today. I say "trying" because that was all it really amounted to. I got a little bit accomplished, but my nutcase cat was making a nutcase out of me! Let me introduce you to Aeris. She is our part Siamese, 19 month old. While I was sewing, or as I said, trying to sew, she decided it would be fun to sit on the ironing board (twice), lay on the dress that I was trying to sew (twice), sit behind my machine and attack the thread while I was sewing (constantly), attack the cord for the iron, jump into the drawer of my organizer, swipe a bag of jingle bells off of the shelf and steal my length of elastic (again, twice). All in about an hour and a half. I finally gave up for now. Is there any wonder I am so far behind on my projects? I love the little bugger to death, but some days she makes me crazy!

A Year of projects...

So I sat down yesterday and made a list of projects that I either have started and not finished, have bought the materials for and never started, or seriously want to do. How many were there? 33. That is just what I could think of off the top of my head. Some of them won't take much to finish, but some will be big projects. I figure if I can get one done an average of every two weeks, I'll have things caught up by early 2008. That is kind of depressing as I am always seeing new things that I want to try! I need to stay out of the craft and fabric stores! LOL. I was lamenting to my husband just the other evening on my lack of time to devote to my projects. I guess I'd better get busy!

Project #1 Yellow embroidered baby hat. Finished 11/17/06
I'll post pictures later as I intend for this to go with a baby dress that I will be making down the line, hopefully in the spring.

Project #2 Christmas baby doll dress, started two years ago, intended for ebay, but never finished. Hopefully finished this weekend. Gotta go dig out the pieces.