When Your Christmas Presents Need Explaining

For Christmas, SonStitches and Daughter-in-lawStitches gave me a few things that were on my wish list.  However, they had no idea what they were!!  So I had some "splaining" to do.

These cute little curley-cues are actually to control thread ends on spools that don't catch the thread.

Voila!

And I actually made some bias tape while they were here to demonstrate these bias tape makers.

Awesome Christmas presents!  Thanks, guys!!

I Really Can Finish A Project!

Wow!  It really is possible!  Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in UFOs.  Lately I have been quite a little bit reluctant to start something new because of all my UFOs.  I was recently reminded of this by way of a fun Disney Cruise we took to Alaska with SonStitches, Dear Daughter-in-LawStitches, BabyStitches, and DaughterStitches, Dear Son-in-LawStitches, and GranddaughterStitches.

Our first port stop was Skagway, a cute little town.  Rushin' Tailor is a quilt shop in Skagway.  I think it was three years ago when we last visited Alaska and I found this shop.  So last week I walked from the ship to the downtown area and browsed around in this very nice quilt shop.  And I found a really nice kit that was a depiction of a whale tale (complete with beads) just before it returns to the water.  Yup, I had bought that kit three years ago and  yes, you guessed it--I haven't completed (or even started) the kit yet.   :-(

 This time I found another cute little kit and it looked kind of fun for hand sewing.  It included everything I needed, including two kinds of thread, a needle, hexie papers, felt, and ten squares of fabric, so that I could have a choice of which seven to use.  They even gave me two straight pins to use! I had to supply a scissors, but that was it!

It didn't take me very long to baste the hexies, hand sew them together, sew them onto the felt, trim the felt, and finish it off with blanket stitch.  And now I have a nice little mug mat, or whatever it wants to be called!

A Beautiful Christmas Stocking

My dear daughter-in-lawStitches has been working on a Christmas stocking for SonStitches.  It has been a TON of work for her.  She's carried this project to our house many, many times to work on in her spare time.

And now it is finished.  She recently brought it to me to help her finish it up.  There were good directions, and a piece of felt to use for the back of the stocking.  We also cut another piece of felt to put behind the stocking front, to protect the back side of the stitches.  As much work as 

Daughter-in-lawStitches has put into this stocking, we wanted to make sure it was protected!

And here it is.  Isn't it beautiful!?!

Here are a couple close-ups.  Look at how many little stitches are sewn to make the intricate design.

Such a labor of love!  And she immediately started on a stocking for BabyStitches!

Sashiko Design for the Quilt Guild Challenge

Several years ago I started a sashiko embroidery piece in a class with Sylvia Pippen.  Like a lot of my sewing, it got put away half-finished to be discovered at a far distant time.

I came across it and decided to finish it, as there wasn't very much more to do on it.  And as I was working on it, I realized that the pretty blue mottled fabric (in the center below) was very similar in color to our guild's challenge fabric for this year (the outer fabric below).

 I decided to frame it with the challenge fabric and finish up the wall hanging.  Dear Daughter-in-law-Stitches was visiting us, and since she has such a good artistic eye, I got her input on my borders.  We agreed that a thin white border and slightly bigger black border would work well inside the blue fabric.  The white brings out the white stitches, and the black helps "tame down" the brightness a bit.

This photo shows the fabric auditioning process.  

So I made the strip sets and sewed them onto the wall hanging to make a mitered border.

Here it's all laid out with the borders sewn on, ready to be mitered.

You can see a little bit of the diagonal line I drew to mark the 45 degree line, and then I added pins to stabilize it while I stitched it.

The front is finished!!  I did very minimal stitching on this, with a solid line 1/4" inside the white border, and some wavy stitching (#4 on the Bernina) in the outer blue border.  I may return to it and use blue thread to make a hand-quilted circle just outside the white embroidered circle.

Here it is all put together.  I debated about blue or black for the binding, but chose black to make a good stopping point for the eyes.  Now it is all ready!  I even have the label and hanging sleeve sewn on!!

A Baby Quilt for the New GranddaughterStitches

I mentioned in a post last August that there is going to be a new GrandBabyStitches.  Now we know that it is a GranddaughterStitches!  So, in addition to the receiving blankets and some other baby accessories, I've been working on a quilt, too.

Daughter-in-lawStitches told me about a website/app called The Bump.  It's a very helpful app if you happen to be expecting a baby.  Each week they send out an email that tells you how big your baby is, how much it weighs, etc.  It tells you other information about the baby, too, like which parts of the baby are growing right now, etc.  And there are lots of links to articles about things like decorating a nursery, buying a baby stroller, what to do for morning sickness, etc.

The really cute thing is that each week when they tell you the size of the baby, they compare it to a fruit or vegetable.  At first it was a tiny apple seed, then grew to a grape, then a lemon.  And later to a head of lettuce, a pumpkin, and a watermelon!  So I went on a hunt to find as many of those foods depicted in fabric as I could.  Here they are all laid out.

I changed the photo into black and white so I could get a better idea of which fabrics read as darks and which read as lights.

I found a pattern in a magazine that I liked.  Then I adapted it to make a smaller quilt.  The magazine included a paper template for the curved piece.  So I just made it a little smaller than that, using the width measurement of the template to tell me how wide my baby quilt would be.

Here is where I was auditioning fabrics for the binding.  I ended up going with a semi-solid, known as "Grunge" in green.  

How to quilt this was my next "decision/opportunity."  I haven't been feeling very good about my free-motion quilting quality lately, but. . .

I sewed 1/4" away from all the curved horizontal seams and the straight vertical seams.  Then I tried free motion quilting some fruit and vegetable shapes, and was ok with the results.

I decided to mix up the quilting, so you can see in the above photo that I quilted strawberries on the pumpkins.    And below I quilted pumpkins on the bananas.

I had found this great "multi-fruit/veg" print at a quilt shop in Ashland, Oregon which I used for the back of the quilt.

I'm quite happy with how it turned out.  This is one quilt that is supposed to look wavy on the bottom!

Receiving Blankets

 I am pleased as punch to be making some receiving blankets.  Because that means there is going to be a new BabyStitches in our family!  SonStitches and DearDaughter-in-lawStitches are pregnant, expecting a little one in December.  I'm so excited!!!

It was a very windy day, so I had GranddaughterStitches's help in photographing these blankets outside.

One is a cute alphabet print, with a light yellow background.

 I hand-sewed the hems down with a funky little stitch that left these marks on the front side.

Another fabric I chose is from the book How Much Do I Love You?

I used a blanket stitch to hem this one.

This one is two-sided.  I followed the instructions at Missouri Star Quilt Company's Youtube site.  Here's the link.

The result is a cute receiving blanket that has a double thickness, and about a 4" contrasting border on the front side.

These cute flannels are from the same fabric line, and I found them at The Loft, my LQS.  One of the fabrics shows lots of different animals, then there are separate fabrics that use just one of those animals.  Here I chose the elephants.