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!
MsFlutterby Crafts
I decided to make a little blog to show things I've been working on. The posts will probably be few and far between, but I wanted somewhere to show off what I've been doing.
Friday, December 21, 2012
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.
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