Birthday for GranddaughterStitches

GranddaughterStitches had another birthday in May.  How in the world did she get to be twelve years old already!?!?!  I'm not sure if she still wants to wear a shirt with her age on it.  So I made the number on this shirt a little more subtle.

And did I mention that GranddaughterStitches loves chickens???  So I made her a chicken pillowcase.  I found the cute chicken fabric, then threw in a couple other colors to complement it.

After that pillowcase, I decided to make another pillowcase with her name on it.  I found some really pretty batiks in my stash to use.  For all of my machine appliqué projects, I fuse the number or letters to the background fabric, then do machine blanket stitch around the edges.

Then on the back of the pillowcase, I put her age, twelve. 

I think GranddaughterStitches really likes her two pillowcases.

Scrappy Strip-Pieced Star Quilt (Part 2)

Part 1 of this post can be found here. 

After getting the squares all sewn together in (hopefully) the right direction (!), I thought about what I could use for a border.

After auditioning several fabrics, I chose a light green grunge fabric for the borders.  At this point my quilt top measured about 76" square. 

Then, as I searched through my stash for some fabric for the back, I came across this yummy piece of Kaffe Fassett.  It was not quite wide enough for this quilt back.  But it was long enough so I decided to start with the KF fabric, and add to it.

More strip-piecing came to the rescue!!  I knew that I needed to add about 15" on each side of the KF fabric to make it wide enough for the backing.  I found some unbleached muslin that was just the right size for a foundation, so I started some more stripping!

Adding strips to the muslin fabric, and then pressing each strip down.

This is one of the long strips that I sewed to add to the backing fabric.  I made two of these strips, one for each side of the quilt back.

As I'm sewing along on this project of scraps, it's really interesting to "travel along memory lane" as I come to fabrics that I have used in the past for other projects.  Some are real favorites.  Here are a few.

This is some wonderful "bread fabric" that I found and used for aprons at TwoFish Baking Company.

The pretty blue floral here was the main fabric for my President's Quilt.

The green print in the center is some of HarmonyArt's organic cotton.  Along with a favorite 

orange-ish gingko leaf batik.

And here you can see a glimpse of the green fabric that I used to make "potholders" for Christmas gifts last year!

The beautiful green floral in the center is a lovely fabric, a smooth and silky cotton, reminiscent of a Liberty of London fabric.

Below is another pretty pink HarmonyArt fabric, alongside some Winnie The Pooh fabric that I used to make a quilt for GranddaughterStitches quite a few years ago. 

The purple grape fabric is from some table napkins that I made a long time ago, and the green pea fabric is from a baby quilt that I made for BabyStitches just three years ago.

Looking through your fabrics can be a walk down Memory Lane!

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!

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}

Hand Stitching On A Scarf

Way back here I talked about the scarf I started with a piece of shibori dyed silk.  I decided that I finally had enough of the sashiko-style stitching on it, and was ready to finish it.

I used a quilt binding to enclose the ends.  However, I cut the two strips only 1 1/8" wide, because I neither needed nor desired a sturdier binding.  I ironed over 1/4" along the long side, and folded over the short ends.  

Then I sewed the unpressed side of the strip to the end of the scarf. . . 

. . . and ironed it over the cut edges.

Then I simply folded the binding over the raw edge and hand-sewed it down.

All finished! 

I am fortunate enough to have GranddaughterStitches here to model the scarf for me!

 The final dimensions are 21" wide by 64" long, a pretty good size for a scarf.

Pet Beds

In the name of cleaning up in my studio a little bit I sewed some pet beds recently.  That at least got rid of two pairs of jeans lying around in my studio and a few bags of fabric scraps.

 Two of them were made from some wild pink knit fabric.  I recognize it as coming from my The Loft, my LQS (local quilt store).

I got three beds made today.  The plaid one is from MisterStitches old jeans.  They were the warm kind, lined with flannel.  I thought that might make a comfy pet bed.  The bed isn't square because, as you know, pant legs are usually tapered.  But I don't think that will bother the pets!

 The pink fabric was given to me last week by someone who said it is for my pet beds.  I wasn't sure if it was to be the outsides of the beds, or just get put inside, but I chose to make some beds out of it.  There is still over a yard left, and all my fabric scraps are gone now.  I might save some of this pink fabric to make some leggings for GranddaughterStitches when she comes this summer.  In fact, I think I may have made her some leggings out of this very fabric a few years ago.

A Perfect Ten!

Quite a milestone!  GranddaughterStitches has turned ten years old!  So here, of course, is a shirt to commemorate the accomplishment.  

I found a very pretty batik fabric for the two numerals.  As usual, fused on and then blanket stitched on the machine.

Quite the model's pose, don't you think?!?

I told GranddaughterStitches that I could remember my DadStitches making a big deal out of my being a "two-number girl." 

And here is a tag I added onto the back of the shirt.  I have learned throughout the years that these tags are often scratchy and uncomfortable, and therefore tend to get removed from the garment.  So this time I added the label onto the outside of the shirt.

A Skirt For GranddaughterStitches

While GanddaughterStitches was here this summer, I proposed making something for her to wear.  She said she'd like to have a skirt, so we "went shopping" in my stash.  And she chose a fabric which has many different colors in striations, one of my favorite fabrics.

I made a simple gathered skirt, and she loved it.

Then, after she left to go back home, I thought I'd take the fabric leftovers to make something to go with her skirt.  In town I found a shirt with our town's name on it. 

 I didn't have a lot of fabric left over, but I had enough to add a little ruffle to the t-shirt sleeves.  I hemmed the edges with a little decorative stitch.  It's fun to use those stitches once in a while!

Because the fabric is extremely variegated, the two sleeve ruffles ended up being different.

But that's ok.  As DaughterStitches would say, "It is what it is."

And here is GranddaughterStitches with her complete ensemble.

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!