Birthday Number Shirts For GranddaughterStitches

GranddaughterStitches turned eleven earlier this month!  I made three different shirts for her this year.  

The first one, in pink, has the number near the bottom hem.

The second one has the number on the back, like a sports jersey.

And the third one is a different style of shirt, with some cute ruffled sleeves.

I always have such fun making these shirts!  It's fun to choose different fonts for the numerals, different shirts to use, and different fabrics for the numerals.  And also, it's just such a joy to know that GranddaughterStitches is growing up, gaining more knowledge and skills all the time, and becoming even more wonderful with every year.

{heart, heart, heart}

Quilting the Blues!

I started work on a new quilt top.  This one is all blues--lights, darks, and mediums.  I made a quilt like this in red fabrics way back in 2011.  The quilt top consists of six-inch columns which are pieced with a 60 degree angle seam.  Below you can see how I have the fabrics matched up to sew.  They overlap just a tad bit on each side with a small triangle that sort of doesn't matter when you sew it.

They are all ready to be sewn now.

And I only made one or two mistakes!!  Those mistakes were in cutting the angles incorrectly.  You see, I thought the two pieces below would get sewn into a straight line, 6" wide column.  But nope!  Do the little thought experiment in your head.  Look at those two pieces of fabric placed together, and envision them sewn together.  Okay.  Now think about how they will look when they are sewn together, turned out and pressed.  Do you get it?  It becomes a very nice angled strip.  Not a straight strip at all!

From then on, my mantra was "If they are a crooked line when I'm ready to sew, they will become a straight line column when they are done.  If they look like a straight line to start with, they will get sewn into a crooked line!"

Here is one of the strips all sewn together.  This one consists of three pieces of fabric.  Some strips have two pieces, and some have three.  All of the strips are about 70" long.

One of the seams. . .

. . . and the seam at the other end.

This is a very quick quilt top to piece.  And it is a good way to use up some of my fabric stash.  If one color stack in my closet gets too high, this is a good solution!