I'm so crafty it scary!

Just a quick post about something I whipped up for my little girl this weekend. I started thinking about making trick or treat bags long before I had kids. I bought the fabric and it has been in my stash for some time now. Either that or I caught it on clearance. 

When Moda came out with "Candy" charms I did an "I want Candy" charm swap. I enclosed a piece of the candy print at the time with each pack I sent out to the people who were my swap partners. It was also about that time that everyone was taking on the scrap vomit quilts and granny squares. There really is so much you can do with a 2.5" square! 

So in conclusion it looks like this fabric has been in my grasp since 2012, and I am pretty sure its not the oldest stash fabric. Some day I will get help for my fabric buying..... You can catch a glimpse of my fabricy shame in the background of the picture. At least now it is well organized by color. 

So the day before the trunk or treat I decide that I want to make a trick or treat bag for Mirabelle. I was up with baby Abigail and surfing around the internet. I found this pattern and decided it was a better option than trying to reinvent the wheel or work out some of my half baked ideas. 

I think it turned out pretty good. I didn't get any actions shots of its use though. Hopefully I will be able to soon. 

What's great about this pattern is that you can make any size you would like. I scaled down the pattern from a 15" square to a 12" square. I also cut my fabric into 2 rectangles (12" x 24") instead of 2 12" squares. Mostly to save me the headache of having to line up one more side. I still stitched the side so there would be a seam to line up things. 

The bag is reversible an it comes together very quickly. I waited until the day of the trunk or treat and was done in less than an hour. It might take you longer to pick fabrics from your stash! I just happened to have one of the fabrics in my collection that she used in her tutorial.

October blocks Nurture circle, do.good.stitches

A quick post of my October blocks while one baby is sleeping and the other is with daddy.

This month we are doing a block with a modified half square triangle. Little nip of the corner and a smidge of grey is added. I don't think I am giving justice to the design so I'll go right to the pictures. 

The colors selected were a light yellow,  burnt orange and a coral. I did the best to find close colors in my stash. The request was for solids or prints that read as a solid. My stash is definitely lacking solids, and also orange fabric. So the chance of me having a solid orange wasn't very good!

This is our last quilt this year. It has a fresh summery feel which is appreciated as the days get shorter and cooler. 

On an unrelated not we went to trunk or treat this Sunday and the babies seemed to enjoy it. And we gave away most of the candy so I won't be eating 6 bags of sugar!

One wild flamingo (Mirabelle-15 months) and one confused monster (Abigail-2.5 Months)

Getting the blocks off in the mail. Almost time for my maternity leave to be over :(

Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween!!!

Nurture circle quilts finally done!!!

I have finally finished the two quilts for the Nurture circle of Do.Good.Stitches.

I have a couple good reasons for why these are so late. In August I had a baby girl named Abigail Grace. She is a cute distraction that has been sucking up most of my free time and sleep. She is 7 weeks old now and starting to sleep a little better. Fingers crossed!!!

My other daughter Mirabelle turned one in July and has learned to walk and is running a muck.

The other thing that has been taking up my time is this crunchy masterpiece that we bought at the end of July. It needs many things and we are in the process of tearing up the inside.

And we are also finishing up a kitchen remodel in the house we are living in. Here is the awesome back splash we put in. God willing we will get this kitchen done soon. We started it back in 2015 when before Mirabelle was born!!!

In March we did this block by Patch the Giraffe called Picnic Pinwheel. I blogged about it here. I am not sure what about this quilt that caused me such trouble. But it seemed like I hit so many snags on this one. First I cut the backing wrong, so I had to piece it. Not a big snag but annoying to have an extra seam. Then I quilted it and bound it and right before I tossed it in the wash I noticed that there was a HUGE pucker. I tried to smooth it out but it was just too big. So in the end I had to unstitch oh so much of the quilt and quilt it again. Let me tell you that unquilting is much more time consuming than quilting. Especially when  you have the helping hands of a toddler. 

For the backing I used cross stitch in teal by Amanda Jean Nyberg of Crazy Mom Quilts.

For the May quilt I put together a scrap square that I called Hollywood Squares. I blogged about it here. This one was less trouble but I was holding onto it so I could mail both quilts together. 

For the backing I used a combination of solid Kona fabric in a dark teal (glacier) and a complimentary fabric that I dug out deep from my stash.

Both of these quilts are on the way to covered in love, the charity that we quilt for. I am linking up to crazy mom quilts Finish it up Friday,

Y do the seams hate me

The Nuture circle of do.good.sitches this month was a supersize castle block. The original post was from Amy from the Badskirt blog for Sew Mama Sew. The link can be found here. It is my first adventure into Y seams. I have avoided many quilt blocks with Y seams. It seems like it was a wise choice on my part. 

I have been working on this block for about a week. It has been a long process to get the one block finished. There was alot of seam ripping and cursing. I had some trouble getting the block to lie flat. In the end it got as good as it was getting with much starch and alot of cursing.

The request for colors in this block are below

Here are the color/design guidelines:

1. Outside corners should be solid, true, white

2. Inner square ring should be a gray / neutral 

3. Fussy cut center octagon if it makes sense with the fabric you're using (see hints and tips below on how to do this)

4. High contrast between diamonds and outer ring of trapezoids. (My sample block is good, but I'd like even higher contrast). 

5. Trapezoids and center octagon should be in the same color family

6. If the outer ring is directional fabric you will need additional fabric - otherwise your trapezoids will alternate directionality.

7. I'd like to keep the diamonds cool colored, and the trapezoids and octagon warm colored.

I dug out some very funky print for the center. I think it is Robert Kaufmann. It looks like a crazy Hawaiian shirt. It is one of those prints that is really better suited for large blocks. On  the down side we usually make 2 12" blocks and this month we made 1 jumbo block that was almost 21". It ate up alot more fabric that normal. Here is the finished block, I could have kept fussing with it but it wouldn't have ended well.

I hope the quilt turns out awesome but I can't imagine making a whole quilt of these blocks. If I were to make it again it would be one block for a pillow or a baby quilt. I am glad its done!!!!! Crossing this one off the list!

And just for a dash of cute here is a picture of my doodlebug in her 4th of July finest.

March Flimsy Finished

The March block for the Nuture circle of Do.Good.Stitches quilt is called Picnic Pinwheel by Patch the Giraffe. I love her eye for color and quilt designs. This is just one of many of her quilts that I want to make!!! I choose a pallet of teal, magenta, purple and orange. I was going for bright bold colors to create a happy quilt to bring sunshine to the recipient of this charity quilt. The charity that we sew for is called Covered in Love. The original post is here if you wish to go back and take peak.

I finally wrangled up all the blocks and got enough time to sit down and put it together. I took for granted how much easier it was to sew when the baby was in a rock and play and stayed put. Now she is rolling, crawling, trying to pull herself up and flinging whatever she can get her tiny mitts on. Hopefully this will be the only time she is hanging off a pole. She is going to turn 1 year in July and become a big sister in August. I should just close up my sewing room for the next decade. 

Here is the quilt top all sewed together with the blocks from the circle. I love how the top looks all together. It always impressed me when I give the group a color pallet that no one leans towards one or two colors. We always end up with a nice distribution of all the colors. This block looks complex but comes together really quickly, is easy to cut and sew and looks great every way I have seen it. I may have to make one for me! I have a couple teal backing fabrics for this quilt. I never can decide which to buy so I buy more fabric than I need. I blame it on the minimum order requirement for free shipping. But it might be the reason I have a shamefully large stash. 

Will post pictures once it is all finished!

A perfect shade between lucky penny and chocolate ribbon....

Rachel at Stitched in Color recently wrote a post all about brown. I have to say that my stash is greatly lacking in brown. I tend toward white/grey/black tones as far as neutrals go more than browns. I am hoping to make more of an effort to include brown in some projects. 

What a great time of year to embrace brown. As the leaves change color and melt to brown and indoors there are big pots of chili and hot chocolate. 

Rachel is sponsoring a mosaic contest with Fabric Bubb. Her post is here. I love the pictures she picked, especially the picture of the chocolate lab. I have my own brown puppy for inspiration. I found this picture when Turkey was so weeee and small. It seems like just yesterday he was a baby. He had passed out in a cubby where I stashed my fabric. 

And also a picture of my wee baby in a snazzy brown leopard outfit. It makes me sad to think that she will grown up and be big in the blink of an eye just like Turkey.

Here are the mosaics that I designed for the contest. Hopefully they come across as cohesive and read "brown".

This one ended up more mustardy than I expected. I loved the forest print and used it for the basis of this mosaic. It a sunny brown group.

For this mosaic I was inspired by the butterfly print. There is a hint of brown in the print that I highlighted with several dark chocolate prints. Reminds me of valentines day and chocolate covered strawberries or roses/wine and chocolate. 

Take a swing at the contest and enter by 10/18!

The best thing I've ever made.....

This project has been a long time in the making. My husband and I tried to start our family when we got married in 2009. We struggled to get pregnant but were able to in early 2014. That pregnancy ended in miscarriage and I had about given up hope that we would be able to have a child of our own. A few months passed and Thanksgiving day 2014 we found out that we were expecting again. I was hesitant to get excited until after we saw the doctor. The pregnancy progressed smoothly and we were planning for the baby to arrive in early August, Two weeks before I was due I was admitted to the hospital due to complications. Mirabelle made her way into the world on July 23rd. She is by far the cutest thing I have ever made!

Now that she is 8 weeks old and I am getting a little more sleep I have started sewing again. The best part is that if I bring her sleeper into my craft room the sound of my sewing machine soothes her right to sleep. If she isn't sleeping then she "talks" to me while I sew. Since Mirabelle was born I have finally gotten this quilt done for her. I have a few more in the works for her but they are behind a few more urgent projects.

This quilt originally started with inspiration from a quilt I had seen on the cover of Quilt Magazine called Spring Cleaning. You can find the original here. It started as a quilt I was making for our master bedroom and a way to work away at my scrap bin. In the end I changed gears and changed it to a smaller quilt for the baby. And although I used a lot of scraps I still have a mountain left.



I finished the top at the end of April. I had some trouble finding a backing I liked. It was one of the few times I was willing to pay full price for fabric but couldn't find anything I liked. I came across this fabric in Allegan MI. It was an end of the bolt clearance and they barely had enough to back the quilt. I love the storks and babies. I couldn't be happier with the fabric just got lucky and got it for a steal.

I think I auditioned every fabric I owned for the binding. I settled on blue with

white stars. 

I even broke out the manual and figured out how to do more than a straight stitch on my fancy machine to make a tag with her name and birthday. Pictures of the baby on the quilt coming soon. Linking it up to Finish it up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts.