Stockings

I have conquered another semester of nursing school. My final was 10 days ago and I've already forgotten everything. (Not really. I hope not.) 

Since then, I've been working my third and last Christmas season at a local bakery where we sell baked goods and make gift baskets with fresh bread and muffins. Very early mornings, long days, and sometimes even going back in the evenings to prepare for the next day. Brutal schedule, but somehow so much less stressful than school.

So I haven't had much time to sew. As always, my Christmas to-do list was long and almost none of it has happened. Oh well. But I did get an idea in my head to make each of my friend's kids a stocking.

I barely had any time, and had so much else I wanted to accomplish, but I just couldn't get it out of my head. So I gladly caved and went digging in my scraps and stash.

I'm so glad I did because this project was so much fun!

I was guided by these two tutorials, but tweaked each stocking a bit to suit my skill and taste. For example, this one has a cuff that encircles the top of the stocking, but I found it difficult to sew on without it bunching up due to cutting or seam allowance inaccuracies. I need lots of room for error!

So for this one, I simply made the cuff on the front only and you can't tell the difference at all.

And I felt like this one didn't need a cuff because of the Christmas tree.

I love how each one is constructed differently in some way.

The pink one has no batting or quilting, and the one with owls has hand-quilting.

When they were finished, I took my boys to the dollar store and we filled them up with goodies for our little friends, who received them with such adorable excitement.

Time definitely well-spent! And now I've narrowed down my handmade Christmas gift list to one quilt - but it is a huge quilt and I'm barely half done. So yeah, I'd better get on that.

The Tube

I'm still alive and well, just preoccupied with school. I figured if I had some free time, it'd be better to sew than to blog about not sewing. I have been trying to sew more for my own house, just little things here and there, so today I decided to make a grocery bag dispenser. I looked at several tutorials, but ended up just winging it.I decided to go with my yellow scraps...

with an orange scrappy strip.

I see some old fabrics in there! I can't believe I still have some of that Katie Jump Rope, that's my favorite.

I even lined it, which took some brain-twisting and recalling the few purses I made a million years ago. My mind just doesn't think well in 3-D.

Here it is with bags in it, just in case y'all couldn't imagine what that would look like. ;) Yeah, I know, it's just a tube with a handle, but hey... I finished something. That's big for me.

This is something I started a couple months ago for my jewel-toned dining room. Not sure if it will be a table-runner or what, but I always love having a hexie project going.

I made this pillow out of my High Street charm pack for my aunt's birthday.

And these blocks are for a secret quilt with a Christmas deadline that I seriously need to be working on, instead of making tubes with handles for myself!

Black & White X Quilt

My little quilting tangent is over and I'm now dutifully back on track with my WIPs. This little X quilt was worth it, though.

It's very hard to photograph, and the fact that my iPhone is my only camera does not help matters.

I hand-quilted in the X-es with black crochet thread, size 10. It was difficult to pull through the quilt layers but I love the chunky hand-quilted look.

I had a bit of a setback when I had the bright idea to use super glue instead of fabric glue to keep one of my too-small seam allowances from slipping out. Yeah... NEVER do that. It became a hard mass and I ended up having to cut the whole corner off and completely re-do it.

As I mentioned before, the bottom right X is a very subtle light blue. Love that little off-beat detail.

I made this quilt for my Etsy shop, which is currently empty so I won't post a link just yet. I had in mind the developmental benefits of a baby staring at black and white graphics. It's a small quilt, but perfect for a wall hanging over a crib, a play mat, or those unexpected little naps in random places. Although, I must admit that I also really love how it looks in my living room!

Linking up to CrazyMomQuilts for Finish It Up Friday. By the way, I LOVE her little connections quilt top!!!

WIP Math: 9-2=11

One of my goals for the summer was to finish as many WIPs as I could. I had a list of nine and I've already completed two. But then I got sidetracked by the idea of this:

Black and white is hard to photograph! You can't really tell but in the photo above, the bottom right X is actually a very light blue, just a tad of subtle color.

 

As you can imagine, this quilt became boring to piece very quickly so I had to stop every once in a while and work on other things. But instead of going back to my list of seven remaining WIPs, I started three new ones. Of course I did.

Apparently I'm not through with black and white X-es. This one will be a bit different, though, with each block having a different black and white print. 

Then I moved on to my new mini charm (candy) pack of High Street that I recently acquired from my LQS. I've said before that I'm usually several months to several years behind on noticing and/or buying new fabric lines, and this is one of those times. Love this new-to-me line and hope to get some yardage soon!

And for the final product of my distraction from the X quilt, I grabbed a little stack of fabric that was peeking out at me from my cabinet and put this Broken Wheel block together. I thought it was perfect for the center print as it looks just like those little gears.

 So now my WIP list is up to eleven. I never was good at sticking to a plan:/ 

Linking up to Freshly Pieced for her WIP Wednesday.

Petal

Meet Petal.

She is an 8-week-old English Lop, but already as big as our 1-year-old Holland Lop.

 

We have learned so much about rabbits since we got Huckleberry last summer and one of the things that surprised us the most is how socially complex they are. Huckleberry has bonded with us very closely but during the school year I worry that he doesn't get enough interaction with us. So I decided that it'd be worth it to get a friend for him. 

Bonding them is a touchy process that is best to start after she is fixed, so they will have to stay separated for a while. But eventually, I hope they will become best of friends.

And, oh, just look at those ears!!! They hang like luxurious drapes, yet are as soft and delicate as flower petals.

She is so graceful and feminine with her long, slender body and soft coloring.

And so very, very sweet!

Bunny Quilt

I bought this Beautiful Garden Girl fabric by Tea and Sympathy on a whim back in February because I was so longing for spring. And now it's mid-summer, but hey, I'm just glad I got it done before fall. I downloaded a free pattern created just for this line - following patterns is something I never do but I knew I'd need help working with a panel. Plus, I love it! I changed a couple colors around but other than that, I was a good girl.

 Love this hexagon print I used for the back.

Here's a close-up of the panel and my cross-hatch quilting. She's so sweet with her leggings and little bunny! She looks so much like my oldest niece, who also loves bunnies, so this quilt is for her.

And here's my little bunny, who always comes running when I spread my quilts out on the floor. :)

 

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday.

Val's Quilt

My little sister turned 18 today. Just writing that out feels so wrong, I just can't believe it. My parents adopted her from an orphanage in Belarus when she was a year old and she joined our family like she owned us. She is stubborn, loyal, generous, and strong, and I have loved her with my whole heart from day one. 

She chose her favorite colors for her quilt from my Kona color card: caribbean, berry, black, and white. This may actually be too much white for her, and I probably should have added some skulls;) Other than that, it is so "her".

My machine has a small throat and it has often made me shy away from bigger quilts, or at least determined how I would quilt them. But this time I really wanted to echo quilt the stars, yet knew that turning this size quilt that many times would be torture. So I decided to try quilting it in two parts. Below you can see the top half, basted and ready to go. (I baste very sparsely and never use a walking foot - somehow it always works for me.)

 

After I quilted both halves, which turned out to be so very easy, you can see below how I sewed them together on the front of the quilt, then trimmed the batting pieces to just touch each other.

Then I whipped-stitched the pieces together. Not sure this provided more stability, but it made me feel better.

Then I trimmed and folded the two back fabric pieces and blind-stitched them closed.

In the end, you could not tell at all that it was quilted in two parts and then connected.  The extra steps at the end were time-consuming, but it was better than losing my sanity trying to stuff the whole quilt through my machine's throat 956 times.

I'm disappointed that it didn't photograph too well. Maybe it's the stark contrast of the white and dark colors? I was also in a hurry - late for her birthday dinner! - so I didn't have time for a lot of close-ups to show all the fabrics.

Honestly, when I first started making the blocks, I didn't really like them that much - it was the caribbean color that turned me off.  But the more I made, the more I liked how it was was coming together, and now that it's done I absolutely love it. I used this tutorial to make the blocks.

I remember when she was all forehead and big, ice-blue eyes. Now her eyes are green and just look how beautiful she's become. Happy Birthday, Val!