Thursday, July 19, 2012

Blocks and A Preview

In between all the baby showering, cleaning, working and napping, I've actually managed to fit in some sewing.  June was my last month participating in do.Good Stitches, and even though I thought my blocks were going to be way late, I actually managed to get them out on time..go me!

June 2

June 1

For this month, Amanda of My Sewcial Hour picked one of my fav color schemes-yellows, blues, greens, whites and grays, so I had lots of scraps to work with.  The block we made is the Improv Chevron using this tutorial by Six White Horses.  If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you probably know that I'm not at all an improv kinda gal.  I enjoy the look of it when other people make improv stuff, but my mind just doesn't work that way and I tend to struggle with it, so these were no cake walk for me. I do really like how they turned out, though, and I can't wait to see the whole quilt together, I think it will have such a cool look. 

Also at the end of June I finished up my tutorial for Rebecca's Christmas in July-I made some fun paper-pieced Christmas coasters, be sure to check it out in case you missed it!


I've had to resist taking on any other projects after these were done so that I could focus on my nursery stuff (I didn't even get to make my second bag for the Purse-Palooza! rats...though I did get my fabric, so mark my words, as soon as my nursery is finished, it's on!)  My feet have been getting obnoxiously swollen if I sit at my sewing machine for more than 30 mins-1 hour lately, especially after I've worked all day, so I'm having to do all this in pieces which is really annoying...Happily, it's coming together a lot faster (and easier...) than I expected and I'm just about finished.  I plan to share it all soon, but for now I leave you with this sneak peak:



Tuesday, July 17, 2012

My Mom's First Quilt and Other Crafty Baby Love

So the last few weeks have been crazy busy, mostly filled with getting ready for baby...less than 4 weeks to go! (but who's counting....?)  2 weeks ago my best friends threw me a baby shower--can I just say I have some amazing friends and family!?  My besties did such a fabulous job with the shower, we had a ton of fun and they were so sweet to take care of every detail.  I love them so much and feel very blessed to have them in my life!  I also feel blessed that so many ladies came to join me to celebrate our little girl...we got lots and lots of great gifts, including a ton of hand made items! I knew I had some crafty ladies in my life, but my goodness I had no idea just how crafty they all are...I can't even begin to show everything handmade I received, but I'll share a few of the highlights:

First off, my mom just started getting in to sewing a few months ago, and she's already finished her first quilt!! (Yes, that's right, she beat me to it, lol).  I went home to visit my parents a few weeks ago, and my mom and I discovered this AMAZING fabric store down their way.  This place had ridiculous amounts of fabrics, I've never seen anything like it...anyway, we had a blast picking out fabrics for this quilt, browsing and brainstorming and finding way more stuff than we needed...but that's the point of fabric shopping, right?? Ok, back to the point...how cute is this quilt!?


I don't have a theme for the nursery, just a color scheme (pinkish/purple and yellow, in case you're wondering), but I'm pretty obsessed with all the cute owl stuff out now, so I'm accessorizing with them :)


The owls and the trees are appliqued felt.  I'm pretty sure my mom came up with the design on her own, just found a picture of an owl online and ran with it!  


When we were discussing how to quilt, I tried to convince her that she should start with something simple, like wavy lines or something hard to mess up. But she's not one to just dip her toes into the shallow end, so she went full on FMQ! The border is filled with leaves and hearts, and the rest of it is some echo quilting around the shapes and cloud like shapes throughout the rest of the blue. 


The backing is this fun, colorful bird fabric.  The whole quilt is so soft, and I think the texture of the felt on the front will be perfect for our little one to explore.  

My husband's mom and grandmom also made us some great stuff, including a basket full of a supply of cloth diapers and inserts (yep, I'm going there...wish me luck) and some burp cloths and other little goodies like that that I forgot to take a picture of...BUT his grandmom crocheted this very pretty blanket


And they made this giant fuzzy blanket that will be so great for the whole family to curl up with on the couch...it feels so luxuriously soft


This little guy (girl?) modeling the luxuriously soft blanket was made by another one of my friends, I didn't even know things like this could be made by crocheting or knitting, I'm totally in awe!


It's even got a cute little face...tehe

Here's another pretty crocheted blanket I got from a friend from church, I had seen her working on it before and had been admiring it, so I was quite excited when I opened up the bag and there it was!


One of my besties (the one who inspired me to start sewing) gave me a giant bag filled with lots of stuff, alot of which was homemade, each one with a little tag like "Because mom needs to relax too" for some lavender bath salts and "Because girls just want to have fun" for a little taggie toy. It was such a cute and fun way to package a gift!  One of the items she made was this gown and matching headband



So pretty! I'm pretty sure this will be her homecoming outfit.

I feel like I've barely put a dent into showing all the great homemade stuff we got...there were personalized onesies, bibs, blankets, toys, oh my!! We also had a "Decorate A Onesie/Bib" station, and all of those turned out super cute too! Ah! I could go on for hours, so I'll stop while I'm ahead...

Anyway...back to my nesting.  I'll be back soon to share what I've actually been sewing!




Monday, July 9, 2012

Christmas in July Tutorial


Last week, Rebecca kicked off her Christmas in July event, and today my tutorial is being featured! Be sure to head over and check it out! While you're there, take a peek at the other tutorials that have been featured so far and enter for some great *giveaways!* :-)