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!