Bunny Parade and Pencil Pouch Mountain

There has been lots of finishes around here in the last few days including a whole pile of bunny softies and pencil pouches.  I'm trying to work on upping my Etsy inventory to I'll be all ready for a craft show in April.

These bunnies turned out so cute!! So many possibilities with these, it was hard not to make more than 20 of them.  And! Making these bunnies put a small dent in my scrap bin too. :)

How cute are these bunny buns??!!

I also got a whole mountain of pencil pouches finished up as well.  I keep telling myself to embrace the mantra of making what I love. And what I love it lots of colors.  There's some really beautiful pouches in this batch but then again I might be biased. ;)

You can find all these bunnies and pencil pouches in my Etsy shop.

The Retro Plaid Quilt or The End of Year Teacher Gift Quilt

 Sometimes I get an idea of something I want to make for a specific person, but then I start to second guess myself and can almost talk myself out of doing it.  Thankfully, I have crafty friends who get the need to make and usually talk me back into it.  That was the case with this quilt.  I had kind of wanted to make a quilt for my oldest son's preschool teacher for an end of year gift because she has been such a fantastic teacher and I have seen so many positive changes in my son since he has been in her class.  But then I started second guessing myself that maybe it would be too much or that she wouldn't like it or yeah...  Thankfully, I was chatting with my friend Sarah Thursday morning, and I brought up the idea for the quilt for Ben's teacher.  She totally jumped at the idea and her excitement gave me the permission I needed in order to go make this quilt all ready! 

 

Before I could talk myself out of making the quilt again, I set right to work making the quilt.  I had spotted this fun Retro Plaid quilt by Suzy Quilts and knew it would be a fun modern quilt to make that would fit my son's teacher's personality really well.  During nap/rest time Thursday afternoon, I printed off the pattern, pulled some long forgotten fabric from my stash and even with kid interruptions, by 5 o'clock I had a completed quilt top!  woot woot!

Friday morning, I ran into JoAnn's to pick up some lovely aqua blue minky for the back of the quilt.  That afternoon I got the quilt basted and started on quilting it and by Saturday night, the quilt was completely finished!  I love when a quilt comes together so quickly. :)

Even though it was a bit gray out today, I made my husband stop by a lake on the way home from church this morning to snap a few pictures of the finished quilt. 

I hope that my son's teacher will like it and will know how appreciated her influence on his life has been.

The Wild & Free Plus Quilt

In the fall of 2014, Maureen Cracknell was releasing her first collecting of fabric called Wild & Free and I just Had. To. Have. It!!

And then it sat and sat and sat on my shelf because it was just so beautiful and while I knew it was destined to be a quilt, I couldn't settle on a quilt pattern for it.  Finally, in January of this year, I decided to just stop over thinking it all ready and go with something simple that would let the fabric truly shine.  I ended up going with a simple plus quilt design which now that the quilt is finished I think was the perfect choice.  As I was cutting up the fabric, I realized that there was enough for a queen sized quilt if I added in some coordinating blue, red and yellow solids! Yay! My bed was in need of a new quilt (well not according to my husband but ehh, too bad ;) ).

I did have to order more of the yellow flower print in the line to use for the binding and I'm glad it did because it tied beautifully with the front and back of the quilt.  My husband was kind is surprised that I went with yellow since I'm not much of a fan of yellow, but this yellow reminds me so much of golden sunshine that I love it.

And yes, I backed the quilt all in a Cotton & Steel Arrows in Navy print. That I had in my stash. That I still have a few yards left over of.  Hey, when you love a fabric print, you might as well buy 10 yards of it just to have around just in case.  He he Please tell me I'm not the only one to do this!

I quilted this one on my new Juki TL2000Qi and oh my goodness! It was a dream to quilt!  I've only made one other queen sized quilt before and I quilted it on my tiny Baby Lock BL9 which was definitely a work out! And almost made me vow never to make a queen quilt again!  But quilting a queen sized quilt on my Juki was amazing! So much room to maneuver the quilt! And gorgeous even straight lines of quilting produced by my Juki!  I seriously can't rave enough about my new sewing backing (which I do quite a bit over on Instagram...).

I finished it up last night, washed it this morning (oh yummy, fresh from the dryer crinklyness!), and the sun, kids and husband were all cooperating so I could get photos of this quilt this afternoon! Which is no small task! A ladder and some tall trees were definitely involved.

And now, it's going to live on my bed where I get to enjoy it every day!

The Crocus Falling Stars Quilt

Lately, I've had an every growing list of things I should be sewing and things I should be making.  And lately, I've been just plain exhausted from keeping up with my two boys.  So, as you can imagine, any motivation to sew has been kind of low. Especially since the growing list of things I "should" sew is feeling a bit creativly stifling. 
So anyways, this past Sunday morning, I was looking at my recent order of zippers and was fascinated by the color combination. 

 Aren't those colors pretty?  Well, after lunch Sunday afternoon, I still couldn't get the colors out of my head and before I new it, I had this little pile of fabric pulled from my stash and paired with a quilt idea I'd scribbled out on some graph paper a little while ago.

 My dear sweet husband was willing to humor me and since the boys were both in pretty chill moods Sunday afternoon, I set to work turning an idea into a quilt.

 I decided to do a spin on a star quilt by using half rectangle triangles and keeping the shapes simple.  I added some interest into the quilt by varying the sizes of the blocks.

 By dinner time, I had this sweet little quilt top all put together.  The boys' bedtime couldn't come soon enough.

 I pulled some soft aqua blue dot minky from my stash for the backing on the quilt and did a quick job of basting this quilt thanks to spray baste!

 It had been a while since I gave a quilt the spiral treatment and it seemed like a nice simple way to accent this quilt. 

 Keeping the spiral quilt lines spaced at 1.5 inches apart, the quilting of this quilt went pretty quickly and before I knew it, it was time to trim up the quilt and get some binding ready for it.

 I happened to have the prefect fabric in my stash for the binding - a nice teal blue with hints of pink and green in it which tied in nicely with the colors of this quilt.

 By bedtime (ok, well more like an hour past bedtime), I had a mostly finished quilt!  It still need a couple of threads buried from the quilting and the label needed to be finished, but still not so bad for an afternoon and evening's worth of work. 

 I finally had a chance this afternoon to get some photos of the finished quilt out in the sunshine.  I love how bright those stars look on the white background.  They almost remind me crocuses peaking up through the snow - hence the name "Crocus Falling Stars".

 Indulge me while I overshare for a second. 

 That binding is just the perfect touch to tie into the colors of the quilt.

That spiral quilting on the back is just so good.

 Last one!  Thanks for humoring me. :) It felt really good to just ignore the "list" and make for the sake of making simply because an idea popped into my head.

You can find this quilt listed in my Etsy shop here.

Quilt Guild Saturday Sew Day

Every so often, the quilt guild I'm a part of holds a Saturday sew day where a bunch of us get together on a Saturday, learn a fun and quick quilt pattern, and sew quilts for our charity quilt project.  Last year, the guild made and donated 130+ quilts.  It's been really fun being a part of this.

This past Saturday was another Saturday sew day and one that I was actually able to attend.  I knew ahead of time what the pattern was going to be and since my tastes in fabric can be quite different from most of the guild members (I'm 20+ years younger than most of the members), I decided to pull out some fabric from my stash to use.  I had a pile of navy and white strips that I had won as part of Hawthorne Threads weekly #htwipit contest on Instagram a while ago that seemed just perfect for this quilt.

It ended up being a very successful are day for me.  What started as a pile of strips at 9 in the morning ended as a completed quilted (top done, quilted and bound!) by 2:30 that afternoon!  I really do love my new Juki TL2000Qi sewing machine - it churns out a quilt faster than anything!

Hopefully this little quilt will bring comfort to someone going through a difficult life experience.  

Rope Bowls on the Mind

Way back in August, I started to see rope bowls popping up in my Instagram feed.  They looked so fun to make and I really wanted to give them a try.

Well, sewing for craft shows and then sewing for Christmas kind of took priority for a while.

Finally, last weekend, I decided to give this whole rope bowl thing a try.  Oh my - are they ever addicting!  So much fun, they use up the itty bitty string scraps of fabric, the possibilities are endless as to size and how they look.

 I'm definitely not done making them and as I want a few more for myself, they make fantastically fun gifts and I'll be stocking some in my Etsy shop and for an upcoming craft show in April.

Oh and before you ask, I used this great tutorial by Tia Curtis to get me started.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.  

Some New Bunnies in the Works

Just checking in for WIP Wednesday (linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced).
I don't always have good work in progress stuff to share, but today I actually do!  Yesterday morning, I was finishing up a few things to send to my sister for her baby shower this weekend and I just had to make a cute little lovie to add to the box.  I decided to try my hand at drafting a bunny pattern pulling together several sources of inspiration.  This is the first one I made:

With a jingle noise maker inside, softly stuffed, soft velvety minky on the backside, and the sweetest faux fur pom pom trail, this bunny turned out really really cute!  Squeal worthy really. ;)
Since it turned out so cute, I decided to tweak my pattern a bit (always striving for cuteness perfection) and make up some of these for my Etsy shop.  I managed to make another prototype yesterday evening which turned out even better:

My husband was right - the face makes it even cuter!  My youngest saw him sitting on my ironing board this morning and has thoroughly claimed him as his own.

I think I need to make one more pattern tweak and then it'll be mass production time.  Stay tuned for more of these to show up around here.