Friday, December 21, 2012

Backyard Baby Rag Quilt

My last major project for Christmas was for my brother and his little baby to come.  I found some fabric that has bugs and snails and things of the sort on them.  They totally remind me of us being kids and hunting for bugs then freezing them in the freezer to kill them.  There was never a shortage of bug jars hanging around our house!  So many good memories doing stuff like that.  So after seeing a few of these quilts that a friend of mine has made I decided to try my hand at them.  I used this guide and this guide.

I started out by cutting out a bunch of 8 inch squares.  I then laid them out and put together my three layers.  The back is blue on the outside and green on the inside so I tried not to mix the blocks up.  Each square of three layers then got an X sewed through them, my only word of advise on this is don't pull the fabric or try to help it along, when I did that I ended up making the fabric pucker up a little.  Then you sew the rows together.  After that you sew those together and then sew around the outside.  I'm a sewer, not a quilter so I felt weird not backstitching the ends so after I finished with the feeder foot I put back on the normal one and backstitched diagonally over the corners.  All that hard work the last thing I wanted was for anything to unravel.  Next is the clipping part, I bought a pair of rag quilt snips and I would greatly recommend you do the same if you want to try this. They are really sharp and don't make you work quite as hard, and your arm will be tired even with those so do yourself a favor and buy the snips (or you could try talking someone else into clipping it).  After it is all clipped you will want to wash it (I washed mine twice to minimize the lint my brother would have to deal with).  One of the guides recommended doing that at the laundromat so you don't get all the thread in your washer, I didn't listen to the guide, the next quilt I make will be washed at a laundromat.  I had to clean out the lint trap on the washer a couple times.

In the end I had a beautiful quilt that my brother loved.  I can't wait to make another one for someone else.  They are pretty easy and give you a huge feeling of accomplishment when you're done.  A win win if you asked me!





Thursday, December 20, 2012

Handprint Christmas Ornaments

This was my little guys first Christmas and I want to make sure to capture all the little moments.  I decided to make the grandparents ornaments.  I bought clear plastic ornaments (I didn't want him accidentally breaking them) and then added glitter using pledge and a guide I found in pinterest.  Oh pinterest you are so handy sometimes.  I then painted Nathan's hand red and managed to get a bunch of adorable little handprints!  He had a blast.  After that I just painted on his name and the year and put the tops back in and packaged them up for the grandparents.  I am thinking we should probably do something to seal the acrylic paint on, but I don't know what I would do that wouldn't possibly mess up what is already there.  I just told everyone to be careful so it doesn't get scratched. 




Monday, December 17, 2012

Rice Shoulder Heater Packs

 My Christmas gifts this year were pretty much all handmade.  I made jam for all the families and then heater packs for everyone, in the end I made 24 of these!  The first few were pretty time consuming, after that I got the hang of things and was able to make that pretty quick.  It still took me a couple weeks to get them all done, but it felt awesome to finally get them accomplished.  Somewhere along the line I bought a heater pack similar to these, I loved it until the fabric started falling apart.  So I took it apart and adapted it to something that I could make, I am so happy to have a sewing machine again so I can do fun projects like this!








Sunday, November 4, 2012

Sporty Baby Shower Invitations

My brother and his wife are expecting a little boy at the end of January.  I made these cards for her shower.  The picture here isn't the final deal it was just placed on there but I don't have a finished picture for some reason and I'm not looking for the card right now to add it in.  The shower had a sports theme, the thing I like about this invitation is it could be used for any sports party.  And changing out the stamps on the little squares on the front with other themes would be incredibly easy to do.  I used my embosser for the back, the George and basic shapes cartridge for the squares and then just my paper cutter for the blue band.  These turned out super cute.  I can't wait for their little one to get here!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Caterpillar Quiet Book Page

The caterpillar body segments snap on and off, they can go in the cocoon pocket when not snapped on.  The snaps are all sewn on with the body color thread so it's a matching game, and color game, and you get to make a rainbow colored caterpillar.  Fun stuff!  My page making energy ended with this page, it also required quite a bit of hand sewing, I love it but it takes lots of time and energy.  I've started a couple more pages but nothing seems to be getting finished.  Better get back to work!

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Football Quiet Book Page


There are so many ideas for quiet books, choosing the pages took a bit of work.  Then making them is another thing and figuring out what I want on what page.  The football was pretty fun to do, I got to hammer eyelets in for the string to go through.  How much more fun can you get?  Dereck's dad is a huge football fan so this page just HAD to be in his book. 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Tennis Quiet Book Page

After doing the hand sewing intensive carrots I decided to go for something a little easier on the hands.  This page didn't require hand sewing but it did require quite a bit of playing around to get the weave-able tennis racket strings right.  In the end I think it turned out pretty sturdy and can be played with over and over again without the strings falling apart.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Carrot Counting Quiet Book Page

I decided to work on my first full page of Dereck's quiet book, it looked simple, just a bunch of carrots in pockets, no problem, right?  Yeah, other then the fact that it is almost entirely sewn by hand and takes FOREVER!  That being said I love the way it turned out!  Each little carrot goes in the pockets.


Saturday, August 11, 2012

Farm Quiet Book Page Finger Puppets


I am starting a quiet book for our friends little boy Dereck, it's a slow process.  To start it off I made some finger puppets which will eventually go in a pretty red barn.  For now they are just cute little puppets!

Monday, August 6, 2012

Bird Christmas Ornament


I had originally intended to make a bunch of these for gifts to give people at Christmas.  But life happened and I only made this one which is hanging on my own tree.  It wasn't hard to do and I finished it up fairly quick.  I had issues getting the pattern to print out the right size so I think what I ended up with was a bit smaller then they had suggested.  I like it though, maybe not enough to make 20 of them for gifts, but it's cute for one on my tree.  I think I will find something that is a little more me to give away.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Tooth Fairy Bear


I am eventually planning on having an etsy shop and have been playing around with ideas for when I do.  I made this bear thinking it would be neat to do.  Richard questions the legal issues with using a pattern that is available online for free, so now I have to look into things like that.  I honestly hadn't even thought about it.  I am giving one of these to my cousin for his little girl, but other then that plans are on hold for making more. 

The bear was pretty easy to do, just a bunch of hand sewing which takes far longer then I remember.  Either I have gotten slow or I just have a bad memory.  I think it turned out super cute though.  I messed up on the knot at the end on this, but I've done quite a bit more sewing since then and know how to not do what I did to mess it up.  It was my first dabble back into sewing so I think it turned out okay.


Wednesday, June 13, 2012

4-H Camp Picture 2012

Each year my dad goes and leads a group at 4-H camp, and he brings a gift to give to the leader in trainings.  I normally help with ideas or making parts of it.  This year I figured since I have this fun new Cricut to play with that I would offer to help with the picture to go in the frames they made.  Mom came over to help watch the little guy. It turned out pretty fun, I love a good reason to play with paper!

The tree background is from the ZooBalloo cartridge, the tent and fire came from the Best of 2008 cartridge, and the grass (which is hard to see but it's behind the tent and on the left side blending in the trees to the forground) was done with the Create a Critter cartridge.  The writing I did with Nate's ABC's.

Mom and I went shopping together and picked out all the fun papers.  The theme of camp this year was twin timbers so I went for something that looked like a forest but had two trees that stood out.  We picked paper that has the under color different so we could use the distress tool and make the edges pop in the night sky.  We wanted a pretty night scene, I think it worked out.  Dad's color group this year was red, hence the red tent.  We  had to make 3 of these and it really did take all day between doing that and keeping a 2 month old entertained.  I hope the kids enjoy their gift which is a memory from camp.

Mom and dad made the frames, they bought them and spray painted them red and then cut wood rounds to put around the edges. I think they turned out pretty neat.  I hope the kids enjoy them!


Friday, April 27, 2012

Onesie Thank You

The last thank you card I made for baby gifts is this one with a blue onesie, I LOVE the way this one turned out.  I used the Life's A Party Cricut cartridge for the onesie with the duck on it.  I used the Cuttlebug "Thanks" A2 folder using my Sizzix Texture Boutique Embossing Machine for the embossed background.  And then just layered the blue underneath to make it all kinda pop out.  I made about 20 of these ones, there are 5 layers to the onesies so that took awhile.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Congrats! Baby Green/Purple


One of my former coworkers has a daughter that had a baby recently.  I made this card for her to go with her baby shower gift (her nursery colors are purple and green).  I LOVE having a reason to make a card.  I'm going to have to get a bit better about thinking about the any reason kind of cards.  I'm not accustom to sending them, our generation does so much electronically that I have a hard time remembering you can send things out just because. 


For this card I used the card option off the Life's a Party cartridge.  I also used the same cartridge for the congrats that is inside the card.  The Congrats! was a pain to do, it kept wanting to cut extras and stick to the mat and all in all that took so many tries it wasn't even kind of funny.  But I was happy with how it ended up in the end so it was all worth it.  I took one of the onesie cut outs from the front and put it on the back with my stamp.  Cute Cute!


Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Pram Thank You

The second Thank You cards I made to send people for baby gifts is this one with the Prams.  The Pram and the Thanks both came from the ZooBalloo Cricut Cartridge.  This was my first time putting ribbons on cards, I didn't do it quite the way I probably should have, but it worked okay.  I've seen easier ways to do this in the future. The colors are a bit washed out in this picture, but you get the idea.  I'll have to make sure I have better photos in the future I suppose.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Handmade with Love

I got a custom made stamp!  How exciting!  Eventually I will get another one that has my etsy shop info on it, but not until I actually have a shop up and running.  I love this little stamp!

Monday, February 13, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day


I went to the store and picked out a lovely card for Richard, when I got home with it I said to myself; WHY in the world are you buying a card for almost $5 when you have all this card making stuff and are supposed to be tinkering with card making?  I returned the card to the store the next day.

So over the next few days or weeks; I picked out the colors, embossed the card (first thing I've ever embossed), printed out the saying that was in the store bought card (I liked what it said, what can I say), used design studio to put the I Love You together and get the heart the size I wanted, stuck it all together and tada, I have a Valentine's Day card for Richard.  I was cutting it pretty close though, getting it done before he got home from work each day makes things a little more difficult.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Etsy

I opened an etsy shop, I'm not actually going to post anything there for sale for awhile but I opened it.

www.MsFlutterbyCrafts.etsy.com

I look forward to making cards and other various things to sell on there.  With a baby coming it'll probably be fall before I find time to do much to sell, but I figured why not get things set up before I'm to busy to think about it.  Exciting stuff.  Hopefully other people will like the things I make as well.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Turtle Thank You cards

These are my first attempts at card making, I've always wanted to get into making cards.  I'm having a baby shower in about a month and I'm working on making cards so they are ready to send out after the shower and before I get too much busier.  I made about 20 of these and will be making some more as that probably isn't enough.  The next ones will be a bit more blue and baby like.  These ones go along with the theme I'm planning on using for the babies room.  I did cut off the inside corners and round them as well, those little corner rounding tools are quite handy to have.