Toddler Messenger Bag

I love 3 year olds!  They are the best! (and sometimes the worst too ;)) 
This week I've been working on making a new tote bag for myself and my 3 year old asked me so sweetly if I could make a bag for him too.  How can I say no?
So I pulled out a handful of novelty print fabric from my stash that I thought he would like.  He of coarse picked the puppies!  He stipulated that the bag have puppies and blue on the outside and mustaches on the inside.  (if you hear how he says mustache - you would die from cuteness overload!)
Just the other day, I say Miggy from This Little Miggy Stayed Home blog post a tutorial on how to make a toddler messenger bag.  I knew this bag would be perfect for the bag my 3 year old wanted me to make him.  The tutorial was pretty easy to follow along with.  I made a few minor adjustments to the pattern - I added a light weight interfacing to the outside fabric to give the bag a little big of body, and I made the strap a little differently.  It was a pretty quick sew too.  It took me most of the morning to make it from pulling the fabric, cutting everything out and sewing it all together.  I probably could have gotten it done sooner if I wasn't chasing two kiddos around! 
End result - Bear had a finished Messenger Bag right before lunch time.

 He wasted no time and stuffed it full of toys and treasures so he could go on adventures with it! ;) 

 And as an added bonus, I was able to made a little open wide zipper pouch from the little bit of puppy fabric I had left over.  

Oh, and everything for the messenger bag and the pouch was from my stash!  Hurray for another  Sew My Stash 2015 project! 
Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday!

Sails Mini Quilt

 

There are some patterns that come along that are just so beautiful and intriguing that they stick in your head and find a spot on the never shrinking wish list of things to make.  Well, the "Sails" paper piecing pattern by Daisy at Ants to Sugar was one of those patterns.  She first made her version back in September and I fell in love with it, yet I never had a good excuse to make myself one.  Well, I finally had an excuse to make one.  My mom's birthday is coming up, and she loves the cardinal place mats I made her for Christmas, but she wanted some more place mats that she could use when it wasn't Christmas or winter.  When she doesn't have all of her winter/Christmas decorations up, she decorates part of her house with lighthouses and nautical stuff.   When I started thinking about what to make her that would match her decor, instantly I thought of Daisy's "Sails" pattern.
I'm still sticking with the Sew My Stash 2015 challenge, so I dug through my stash and pulled out some fabric I like for the pattern, printed out the pattern and got to work.   

As you can see, I changed a bit of my initial fabric pull when I got to the water and boat part of the pattern and I'm glad I decided to make the change. 

I LOVE how this turned out.  Daisy's pattern is well written and although a bit time consuming, it was easy to follow and put the pieces together.  I especially love the way in which the sails are constructed because they have so much movement in them - you can almost see the wind pushing the sails out.
Well, anyways, at this point, as much as I love how this was turning out, it didn't quite look like my mom and I decided to go with something else for her which I think she will love.  Plus, I was crazy in love with this little mini quilt and part of me didn't want to let it go.  I quilted it up when I quilted the other place mats for my mom with a dense diamond grid pattern on it which just added so much great texture to this mini quilt.  

 So, I have this large canning jar that I though any left over/extra binding scraps into.  Since, this was just a mini quilt, I decided to poke around in my binding scrap jar to see if I had something long enough that would go with this mini quilt.  And I just so happened to have exactly enough dark brown binding for this mini.  The brown binding is perfect for this mini since I think it gives it a nice "framed" look.  

 I braved the sub-zero weather the other day to snag a few quick photos of it outside while the sun was actually shining.  It was COLD!  But these pictures are so worth it. 

A Few Small Finishes

 I'm linking up with Amanda over at Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday today.  I have a couple of small finishes to show although they aren't my only finishes from the week but I'll post about my quilty finishes later once I get a chance to properly photograph everything.  

My first finish is a stack of note cards that I put together earlier this week on a day I was without my sewing machine.  My machine had to go into the shop to be serviced and have a minor repair done, so I was desperate to be doing anything crafty with fabric.  I had a pile of little triangles that I had trimmed off my Hazel the Hedgehog quilt I was working on and decided to actually put them to good use (especially since I was desperate - serious fabric addict over here!).  And this the result of a morning spent gluing fabric scraps onto blank cards in between chasing two kiddos around. 

 I can see some possible future quilt designs on these cards.  And now I have some scrap happy cards to pull from!  (oh and Thank you Amanda for the inspiration!)
Oh, as a note - I used an Elmer's glue stick to stick the fabric scraps onto the card stock since I didn't have my sewing machine when I was making these.  I seems to hold the fabric on securely enough without wrinkling the paper. 
And for my other non-quilty finish this week - I put together this set of four monogrammed open wide zippered pouches.  I used my go-to pattern for zippered pouches by Anna over at Noodlehead blog.  I added an inch in each direction to the smallest size and appliqued the letters onto the front of each bag before I sewed them all together. 

A cute set of pouches for four cute little sisters. 

Wandering Geese

This morning I braved the -12 degree weather outside and the knee deep snow to snap a few pictures of my latest finish of two wandering flying geese place mats.  I made them for my mom's upcoming birthday in two weeks.  Hopefully she will like them - her and my tastes vary quite a bit.  However, she loves it when I send her something handmade and she does like blue, so the odds of her liking them are pretty good. 
I've been a long time admirer of the flying geese quilt design.  It's such a traditional yet modern design that has endless possibilities.  Well, I had never actually made any flying geese.  They were one of those things that always seemed to be on my want to do / want to learn list, yet I just never got around to making any flying geese.  The other day, while scrolling through Pinterest, I stumbled upon a paper pieced flying geese pattern that I really really really liked.  Also, I realized my mom's birthday was quickly approaching and decided to give this pattern a try. 

It took a little while to decide on colors for the geese and the background especially since I am really trying to stick with the Sew My Stash 2015 and really look through my stash to find something that will work for a project instead of just going out and buying new fabric for every new project.  This challenge might seem a little restrictive, but actually, I've been enjoying it because it has allowed me to really take a good look at what I have, what fabrics I tend to actually use (thus get a better idea of what fabrics to buy in the future), and it has forced me to use fabrics that otherwise I would just hoard because I love them so much.  After combing through my stash for a while, I finally found fabrics that would not only work for this project, but I loved how they played together.  These place mats ended up being made 100% percent from fabrics, batting, and thread I had in my stash!

For the flying geese, I settled on a selection of six aqua and white prints and went with a Carolyn Friedlander print from her Botanics line for the background (this is one of those much hoarded prints but it felt so good to use it and see it in action).  I really love how the flying geese just pop on the charcoal gray background. 

I new that since these would be used as place mats by my mom, I wanted to do a really dense quilting on them.  I had recently see a few people on Instagram do a dense diamond grid straight line quilting pattern and I decided to go with that.  The lines are about a 1/4 inch apart so even those these place mats measure at 16"x20" finished, the quilting ate through a lot of thread.  I was so glad that I had found two spools left over from my Fair Isle quilt that matched the background perfectly - hurray!  I do love though how the dense quilting gives these such great texture without taking away from the boldness of the flying geese. The blue bird print I used for the backing on the place mats is left over from some sewing projects I did last spring.  I knew my mom would like it because I had made her an zipper poach out of it which she uses every day in her purse.

 I so love how these turned out - especially the happy accident of these two owl peaking out of the flying geese. 

Happy Birthday Mom!  I hope you know how much I love you because these place mats are gorgeous and would look great on my table too! :)

Buzz Buzz - February

Super proud of myself - its only the second week in February and I've all ready gotten my #thebeehivequilts bee block for February done, extras put together, everything packaged up, mailed out, and received by Queen Bee Megan (you can find her over at Sew Stitching Cute).  

 I am so so glad that I signed up for this quilting bee if for no other reason than for the fact that I have been assigned to the sweetest, coolest, most generous group of quilters ever! It has been so much fun all ready getting to know these ladies.  Plus, Queen Bee Megan has been such a fabulously chill and fun queen bee.  She let us have pretty free reign on the colors we picked for her bee block.  She really likes green and bold prints so I had fun digging through my stash to find some often overlooked fabric to put together this block for her.  To thank her for being such a great Queen Bee, I wanted to put together a few extras for her including a small hexi pincushion for her (which she loved!):

 And a few other goodies (she likes frogs to those frog post its were a must when I saw them while grocery shopping last week): 

 I can't wait to see what the rest of the year holds for my swarm mates! :)

Pile of Softness

A week ago, I had this pile of deliciously soft minky and flannel fabric sitting on my cutting counter staring at me - begging me to be turned into a pile of deliciously soft baby blankets.  Well, actually this pile of softness has been sitting in a heap in my craft closet since I went a little crazy during Joann's Black Friday and Christmas sales....But anyways, it was time to finally give this pile of plush cuteness some attention. 

Well, I may or may not have gotten sidetracked by a few other projects (which I'll go into in another blog post) including this pile of pacifier clips/leashes for my Etsy shop. 

Anyways, I managed to regain enough focus between Friday and Monday to actually get that pile of softness turned into baby blankets.  

 There are so many beautiful baby blankets in that pile!  I'm refraining from claiming any of these for my boys since I all ready have several of these type of blankets that I use daily for them.  But really aren't these the cutest? 

I love how they all turned out!  Yesterday morning, I had a chance to properly photograph all these baby blankets plus the pile of pacifier clips/leashes.  Of coarse my boys wanted to "help":

 And make sure that I get a good photo of Superman:

 And be ridiculously cute yet uncooperative baby blanket models: 

 During their nap time yesterday afternoon, I listed everything in my Etsy shop. The baby blanket section and the pacifier clip/leash section were both looking a little spars after Christmas, so it was good to get some new stock into my shop. 

Not necessarily the most glamorous sewing, but it pays for this crazy obsessive hobby of mine.  Plus, I get a weird thrill out of figuring out quicker ways to mass assemble a product while still maintaining my high standard of quality in the things I sew and sell.  Ehhh - gotta get my kicks and giggles somehow, right? ;)

The Fair Isle Quilt

Last Monday, after a marathon of quilting over the weekend, I sewed on the bright red binding to my Fair Isle Quilt thus finishing up this beautiful quilt just in time to take to the local quilters guild which I've just started to attend.  It felt so good to finally have this quilt off my WIP list and on my coach where it can be thoroughly loved and snuggled with. 

I had started this quilt back in November as part of a quilt-a-long put together by Lee over at Freshly Pieced.  Christmas sewing put a pause on this quilt for a while until a couple of weeks ago when I was determined to finish this quilt up while it was still winter and I could enjoy it!
Since I'm challenging myself to stick with my #SewMyStash2015 challenge, I decided to dig into my overstuffed and overflowing bucket of batting scraps and Frankenstein together the scraps to make the batting for this quilt.  I didn't necessarily need to do this since I still have half a roll of batting left, but I figured that since this quilt was going to be for myself and it was going to live on my coach and I wanted it to be double batted, that it would be a good chance to use up some of my batting scraps. 

 And I was right!  I ended up with two layers of Frankenstein batting and a batting scrap bucket that is now only 1/4 full!  Yay for using up scraps even if they are only batting scraps! 

It took most of a day to get the batting sewn together and the quilt top ironed out and ready for basting.  My littlest dude wanted to come check out my progress more than once. 

 Miraculously, I managed to scurry around, move most of my living room furniture around and get this quilt basted during afternoon nap time that same day!  I think it took longer for me to move everything out and then back into my living room than it did to baste this quilt.  Gotta love spray basting! 

It took a couple of days to get this quilt quilted.  I really wanted to do a free motion quilting swirly pattern on it, but since I don't have the FMQ skills yet and my machine doesn't have enough throat space to FMQ a quilt this size, I decided to do some fairly dense "organic" straight line quilting on it.  I originally wanted to do a grid of lines going in both directions, but once I started to put in the vertical lines on top of the horizontal lines, I was just not loving it.  Of coarse, I decided that I didn't love it after I had sewn about a quarter of the vertical lines....Needless to say, I spent several hours picking out the vertical lines.  Lesson learned, know when to stop.

I love how the dense horizontal lines on the double batted quilt really add a beautiful texture to this quilt.  
Finally today, I managed to snag a couple of pictures of this beautiful quilt.  

My husband was able to come home early from work (to make up for having to go in on Sunday), so he so sweetly agreed to stop at a park on the way over to his brother's for dinner this evening and even agreed hold this super heavy quilt up while I snapped a few pictures.  The sun was shining and the snow on the ground really made this gorgeous winter quilt sing!  

 

 Oh and this makes quilt number 49 for me!!!  I've got 5 or so other quilts I'm currently working on in rotation, so I'm not sure who is going to end up being number 50!