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!* :-)

 

Christmas In July Event!

It's time to break out your holiday fabrics, Christmas Carol CDs and (iced) hot cocoa guys...Rebecca at Sew Festive Handmade is holding a really fun event this summer called Christmas In July, and she's asked me to be one of her guest bloggers! Every Monday through the month of July, she will have two holiday tutorials, one being home decor, and the other will be a gift idea. At the end, she will have a linky party where everyone can link up to show what they've come up with in early preparation for the holidays! The best part is there will be prizes at the end! Who doesn't love prizes?? I am so excited for this, hopefully it will inspire me to actually start some holiday sewing early, unlike last year where I waited until the last minute and hardly got anything I wanted to do finished.  Click on over to her blog to read more about it and check back soon to see the great schedule she's got lined up. 

Gifting Handmade

This time of year is a time known to me and my friends as "birthday season".  Beginning Feb 11, I have someone close to me with a birthday every week (sometimes 2 a week...) all the way up until we end with my birthday on April 1st.  It gets kind of crazy trying to keep up with all of them and trying to get cards/gifts to everyone on time, but this year I'm proud to say I'm doing pretty good having only been late on one so far. Woot! Go me! As I mentioned before, I was working on completing a purse for one of my friends to give to her for her birthday. I did get it finished, but as I suspected it was not quite on time, but only a week late which is pretty good for me to be honest, lol.

This pattern is the Reversible Sunday Sling by Amy Butler.  It went together really well and if I hadn't gotten so busy with some other stuff going on, I definitely could have finished it in just a few days.  I love this pattern and might just have to make one for myself one day also!

I hadn't intended on making something for my bestie, as I made her a purse for Christmas, but the only idea she gave me for what she wanted for her birthday was "make-up brushes". Well, I have no idea what brushes she uses so I will just get her a gift card to Sephora so she can pick them out, but I decided to whip up a quick make-up brush roll to go along with that. 

I loosely followed this tutorial which was super easy, but I made a few changes including the pocket size, adding binding, and quilting it.  The quilting was just some quick wavy lines which I had not done before but I'm thinking of using it on a larger project, so perfect chance to try it out!  This took me all of 3 hours to do, start to finish, and if I hadn't done the quilting and binding, I'm betting it would have only taken about an hour. All in all, a quick, fun little gift..I will definitely be remembering this and possibly even making a few to stash away for future use. 

I also got some hand made stuff from my other bestie, including this lemon-sugar hand scrub she made.

Check out the totally cute way she finished off the jar! This smells delightful, and um..I kinda want to eat it...

She also gave me this pottery that was made by one of her friends.

I love the detailing on this mug!  Her friend that made this has an etsy shop if you're interested, not much is in there right now but she is quite talented! 

The best gift of all has been that I got to spend an afternoon with both of my two best friends.  The three of us live in separate towns now and it's hard to get all of us together at the same time, but we were able to make a quick trip this past weekend to get together for a bit.  It was really short, but really great to be able to spend some time together :-)

Linking up with "This Week @ Love Affair with my Brother"!

Spoiler Alert! Christmas gifts in progress!

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I can acknowledge that Christmas is coming! (Read: I have realized that I have waited too long to start making Christmas gifts / decorations and now will be in a sewing craze for the next 24 days...) But, that means I have lots of Works In Progress to share for my first link of with WIP-Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced! Fair warning though, the picture quality may not be the highest on these, my hubby has apparently high-jacked my memory card and so I had to use an iPhone to take these!

Welcome to my bag factory Santa's Workshop!

 

please don't judge me for my mess...

just realized how weird it probably looks to have a sharpening stone and "real" tape measurer on my cutting table...they are used for fabric weights (yes I'm in desperate need of some sewing notions...)

It's a complete disaster, which is usually how I roll, but this is getting a little out of hand...In fact, the only thing stopping me from cutting into more projects is the fact that I do not have anymore room to do so until I clear some stuff out. So, right now I have one project "in the machine", one "on the cutting table", a few in the "cutting queue", and of course a few in the "planning stage".  All but one of these are Christmas gifts, and most of the ladies on my list are getting purses. I had so much fun picking out fabric for each of them, trying to find just the right print for their style. Hopefully I got it right! (And also hopefully none of them are reading this blog....)

In the machine: Amy Butler bag for my BFF.  She looked through my Amy Butler book a few months ago and really liked this, I was nervous to try to make it as its rated a little harder, but I think I can manage.


On the Cutting Table: Two more Amy Butler Bags for my hubby's Mom and Gramma. They have a little bit more traditional tastes, so I tried to keep the fabric a little toned down....

In the Cutting Queue: Another Amy Butler bag...have I mentioned I love Amy Butler patterns? I've not used too many other patterns that turn out as good as hers do, so when I came across these on sale at my LQS I had to get them.

In the Planning Stages: I just ordered some fabric to make quick blankets for my newphews, they love the movie cars, so I got some Cars fleece and some solid flannel and I'll do a simple straight line quilting on them and use felt to put their names on them. Also, I'm really hoping to make this Nativity wall hanging quilt.  I actually bought this magazine solely for this pattern about 2 months ago. I'm not sure I'll get to it in time for Christmas, but I plan to still make it so it'll be ready for next year!

Finishes: I do actually have one finish for this week, and you guessed it, it's another Amy Butler bag. This one went together pretty quickly and I think it is just perfect for the friend I made it for (though the photo does not do it justice...)

Between all of these bags and things I also still need to get my tree up and decorate! So much to do, so little time...wish me luck!

What's Thanksgiving without a turkey??

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! I am pleased to announce that I got my Turkey wall hanging quilt finished just in time to hang for the holiday AND to enter it with the final month of Celebrate Color!  So without further ado…

Introducing Thomas A. Turkey!

I had the idea a few months ago to make a turkey using the Dresden plate, I didn’t think I’d ever seen it before but I Googled it and apparently it’s all over the place!  I probably saw it at some time and just kept it in my subconscious...oh well.  Anyway, I watched this video by Missouri Quilt Company to kind of give me an idea of what they did, and then I just went with it. I knew I wanted to make the turkey but had no idea where it was going to take me, the whole thing just kind of came together as I went!  The turkey itself was made with a fat quarter bundle I got at the fabric store for the feathers along with some solid color scraps I had in my stash for the body.  I appliquéd the whole thing onto the main exterior fabric and then put on the embroidery.  After that, I put the quilt sandwich together using some nice fall-inspired backing and the binding was made with one of the fat quarters that I didn’t use for the feathers.

I am so pleased at how well this came out, and surprised, to tell you the truth! I tried a couple things on this that I have never done before, so there were plenty of things that could have gone wrong, but all-in-all it went pretty smoothly.  One thing I’m especially proud of is the embroidery.  I have wanted to try this for a while and decided this would be a great project to use it on.  When I asked a woman at the local quilt shop what kind of thread to get, she recommended I try Sulky brand thread, so I picked up some shimmery green in 40 wt, then I practiced on some scraps with a couple of methods that I saw mentioned here and there on the web.  The method I found to be the easiest was using my FMQ foot with presser feet down, guiding it through as if the needle was a pen, using a straight stitch. After I did my first word on the actual quilt, though, that just didn’t stand out enough for me.   I decided to try using a really small zig-zaq stitch, keeping the stitches as close together as I could. This was really tricky, and I had to be VERY patient moving it through to make sure my lines were smooth, but I love the effect it had. One thing I would do differently next time though is the actual tracing of the letters onto the fabric. I used a soluble pen and hand wrote the words on there, but I think next time I will print the words out on some kind of transfer paper.  I think that way would make it a little more evenly spaced and sized.  Also…some spots where I wrote with the pen keep showing back up! Grr….

Another new thing I tried was the free motion quilting.  It was so much fun to do, and after a few trials on some scrap I jumped right in.  The thread I used was a nice thin gold (I think 60 wt?) that somehow I wound up with about 1500 yards of during a different project and it was just begging to be used up. I’m not sure how or why I had such a big of a spool of this, but it was nice because I didn’t have to worry about running out in the middle of it all and the color was perfect for this project. I did have it break on me a few times which was frustrating, but I made it through and I think it looks pretty snazzy! I almost didn't add the quilting lines in the feathers, but I decided to after quilting the rest of it. I'm glad I did, I think it added some structure and finished it off nicely!

For the binding, I used the Zig-Zag binding tutorial at Stitched in Color again.  It turned out great, though I do need some practice doing the corners and where the binding connects. I tried multiple times to connect it with the 45 angle like in the tutorial, but just couldn’t quite figure it out. I was running out of time so I wound up just placing one end over the other and stitching it like that. Oh well, it still looks nice I think. 

Other than the few little things here and there, there is not a whole lot on this I would re-do if given the chance. I love how it all came together and I’m sad that it’s so late in the season that I won’t be able to enjoy it hanging up for very long! I think I’ll try to leave it up as long as I can before hubby notices ;-)

Thanks for stopping by everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and remember the message from Thomas A. Turkey, “Count your blessings and be thankful!”  I know I have been very blessed this year and am glad to be able to share this time with my family!

Wait...what month are we in?

It has recently come to my attention that Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK...where has the time gone?! I am totally not ready, which luckily is fine because we're traveling for Thanksgiving this year...otherwise right now I'd probably be running 'round the grocery store like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to find whatever Thanksgiving feast supplies are left on the shelf, and perhaps being desperate enough to swipe some from someone's non-attended cart...ok, so I'm not really that mean, but you get my point...Thanksgiving is soon, which means the Christmas whirlwind is about to begin. Many blogs are already running their Christmas craft series, with lovely ideas for gifts to make for others, but I just came across a great series at this blog, Lily's Quilts, she is part of the quilting e-zine, Fat Quarterly, which is a great place to find alot of inspiration. Anyway, Lily's Quilts is running a series called "Christmas Gifts for Quilters" where about each week she posts an idea that someone else can get YOU for Christmas. And along with that, always a great give-a-way.  Click the button bellow to check them out, and throw some hints at your loved ones!

I SO wanted to be already started on the gifts that I plan to make this year, and you'd think that with all of these blogging-series that I've been reading I would have gotten the hint to start, but alas, I've lost track of time really haven't thought too much about it until now!! EEK! So, I've spent the last few days finishing up some other "must-finish" projects so that by the end of this weekend I can start cutting into fabric for my gifts.

First up, these are some Mosaic Quilt Blocks that I made for a quilt to be donated to a family who lost EVERYTHING in a gas utility explosion in San Bruno, CA last year.  Then recently, the husband got in a very bad car accident and has been recovering from that, while the wife is about to have their first baby! I signed up to join do. Good Stitches, a quilting bee, and while my actual quilt circle that I'll be a part of does not start until January, Kelsy posted a request for help for this family and I was pleased to be able to assist.

I was a little nervous as these were my first blocks to be made for an actual quilt EVER and of course they were going to be used by someone else, so they needed to be good. These were pretty fun to make and gave me some liberty to not be exactly square, so I think that definitely worked in my favor :)

Second on the agenda was this "Beautiful Balance" check book cover I was making for my BFF. I had made one before for my self, using Amy Butler's "Style Stitches" book (which I LOVE, BTW) and she loved it so I wanted to make one for her as well. This time, I added some little pockets to be able to store credit cards and stuff like that.

I LOVE the way this one turned out, I was tempted to not tell her I'd made it and just keep it for myself! I always get anxious about making things for people, I want the end result to be good quality and something they'll be proud to use. My bestie said she loved it, and it was perfect timing because her old wallet had just died so she has already put it to use! Phew!

Last on my agenda today will be to finish my turkey. We're making progress, and I adore him (adore him so much that I've started to refer to him like an actual pet, and sometimes even talk to him while I'm sewing...) I'm so excited for how this is going.  He's all stitched on, and I've started to add the words around him.  Today (hopefully) I will get the words complete and do the quilting.

Well, if I keep blabbing on here I'm never going to get anything done, so away I go! How about you, have you started your Christmas crafting, or are you a procrastinator like me??

At last, a fall table runner!

First of all, I am linking this post up with Celebrate Color, so welcome anyone who is stopping by for Celebrate Color! I hope you'll stay for a bit! :)

As mentioned previously, I LOVE decorating for fall.  I don't understand why people are so quick to jump right to Christmas, when there's so much beauty in fall colors also.  Don't get me wrong, I love me some Christmas too... but something about the slower pace of fall, the cooler temps and beautiful colors lets me relax and unwind before the craziness of the holiday season begins.  With pumpkin spice latte in hand, I pulled out my box of decorations from last year at the first sign of cooling weather (and here in central Florida, that equates to a drop to about 87 degrees...) I have a hutch that holds all of our TV equipment that I usually have a table runner on which I change out for the seasons, and I could have sworn I had a fall one.  Apparently, I either lost it or I was hallucinating because it was no where to be found...oh well, that gave me an excuse to try my hand at some holiday crafting!  Now, I'm not much of a planner...I just like to find some fabric I like and go with it, but I had just bought an Accuquilt Go! Baby fabric cutter which came with some triangle and square dies, so I decided to try it out with my runner, making a few of these blocks:

I think this block is called a Saw Tooth Saw, I tried to google it but there are so many star blocks...who knows which one I actually made (actually...if anyone does, feel free to fill me in!), but I love it! Anyway, I had originally planned to make the star part with the patterned fabric, and solid as the background but somehow or another I didn't have enough fabric to do that, so it ended up being flip-flopped and I am glad that it did, I really like the way they turned out. 

I pieced together the back with some solid brown, solid orange and one of the patterns that did not make the cut for the front

Then it was time for the binding, which is where things really started to fall apart. My first attempt was TERRIBLE. I made some continuous bias tape (which as it turns out was completely unnecessary) at 1 inch thick (which, as it also turns out, was a really bad idea) Knowing that I couldn't get that on very straight with a stitch-in-the-ditch technique I decided to attach it using a decorative stitch to help hide my errors. Well that was an epic failure. There are many things that I could name as to why it went wrong, but what I ended up with were uneven stitches, the binding on the back not getting sewed with the front, and some sections came unfolded. I did the whole top until I realized just how bad it was. Frustrated, I decided to take a break from it for the time being...

A few days later, I think Rachel over at Stitched in Color must have known that I was struggling and posted this lovely tutorial on zig-zag binding. The idea behind this is kind of what I was going for, so this was exactly what I needed to help me try again, and get a decent result. If only I had a delorean and could read this tute BEFORE my ill-fated first attempt. There was no way I was going to attempt to rip out all those stitches, so I wound up just cutting off the parts of the binding that hadn't been stitched yet and just covering it all up with the new binding (shhhh don't tell anyone!) I was pretty bummed about how un-perfect this turned out, but considering this is the closest thing I've done to a quilt thus far, I guess I can blame it on the learning curve.

I am pleased that I finally got this put together, and unless you know what's wrong with it or look too closely, it looks pretty darn cute on my TV hutch!

Thanks again for stopping by, can't wait to see all the other projects being posted for Celebrate Color! I might also have another one ready soon, if I can get my act together!

The Costume Ordeal

So I had hoped to be blogging my progress on my Advent Calender, or maybe my Fall Table Runner for entry into Celebrate Color, but unfortunately I am STILL trying to finish a costume I had agreed to make a friend of mine a few weeks back, and man has this been an ordeal.  You see, my friend is doing an "All-Saints-Day" festival for the kids at her church.  She is dressing up like a nun, and her husband is going to dress up as St. Francis.  Her husband is about 6'3", and they could not find a costume to fit a man so tall, so she asked me how easy it would to sew up a simple tunic for him. I thought "Oh heck, shouldn't be hard at all! Nothin to it, sure I'll do it for you!" Well...having never sewed a garment before, and not having any sort of pattern, I should have thought this through a little more. But, oh well, no time to second guess this, I had to get started! We found a picture on line of the idea she had for it...

Yeah, so he's not supposed to look as creepy as this guy, but it gives the general idea of what we were going for.  My first step was to figure out how much fabric I would need...In some kind of crazy math, I came to the conclusion that I'd need about 6 yards.  After I had drawn up a lovely plan (ok, so it was a stick figure with a rectangle around it...) I ventured off to Jo-Anns for some cheapo brown cotton fabric and took it home to get started.  I cut out the part to be the robe itself with a hole for the head, and thought "Heck, this is going to be a cinch!"

 that's a whole lotta fabric....

I proceeded to measure out the shoulders and cut a spot for the arms, then I hemmed up the bottoms and sides, and thought now all I had to do was throw on some sleeves and a hood, bada bing, bada boom, we'll have ourselves a tunic!  I was quickly on my way to victory! I guess I got too confident too quickly, because this is where things started to go downhill...Did I mention that I was only going off of rough measurements, and wasn't able to actually put this on the person to make sure everything fit? I had my hubby try it on to give me an idea, but he's not near 6'3", so I was left to estimate...ALOT. 

On to the sleeves...I guesstimated a length, did my best to figure out how big the sleeve hole was to get the width, and cut myself a rectangle. Then, I cut it to curve with the arm hole, sewed it up so it was a tube, and proceeded to try to attach this thing...Needless to say, this was a disaster. Enter seam ripper. Maybe I needed to sew it on BEFORE I sew it into a tube...Nope, disaster #2...good thing I still had my seem ripper handy.  I started trying to think of a better way to do this, and finally decided I needed to maybe "google" how to attach a sleeve.  Yep, should have done it before sewing up the sides of the garment so it can lay flat to attach it. Alright, easy enough, nothin my good ole friend the seem ripper couldn't help me fix! So, garment apart, laying flat, I pinned and attached the sleeve. Success!!  Finally think I got it figured out, until I measured the length...dang, I had turned the rectangle the wrong way before I cut the curve, and wouldn't you know the sleeve is too short now...I attempted sleeve number two with the correct dimensions, and it was much better, so I felt confident to (ONE MORE TIME) rip the seams and redo the first sleeve.

Why hello there, BFF's...

Well by this time, I was running out of fabric, so it was off to Jo-Anns to get some more. 2 more yards should do it for one more sleeve and the hood.  I get home, cut out my rectangle for the other sleeve, and go to pin it on when I realized I had gotten the WRONG FABRIC!! Uuugggh you've got to be kidding me! Back to the store... (20 minutes away, mind you...) Grabbed myself 1 more yard of the RIGHT fabric (I figured I could use the other stuff for the hood thing, the color matched it was just a slightly different material).  I finally did get the second one attached, and I pinned up the sides to finish it off and turns out, the hems on the bottom don't match up! Duh...should have waited to hem the bottom... (hello again, seem ripper). Anyway, I finally got the sides all stitched up, evened out the bottom and hemmed it back up. PHEW! I don't really know what went wrong, but the armpit area wound up looking pretty wonky, but at this point...I was willing to let the slide so long as it fits him right.   

I packed it all up and brought it to my friend at work today so she can take it home to her hubby to make sure it fits, I made it extra long *just in case* so I'm expecting to have her bring it back so I can hem it up to final length. I'm still waiting to hear how it went...Tonight I made the hood, and surprisingly, that went together with no problems at all

Tada!

God willing, this will all look good once its on and finished off with the rope belt. I hope to have a picture of him in it if all goes well.  One thing is for sure after this project, I now know that you can improv on some things, but garments (that other people are relying on you to make...) are not one of them! 

Crafty Holidays

Well, I'm not quite finished with my fall decor (remember that table runner and other super-fun sewing project I mentioned last week?), but I have gotten a jump start on my Christmas projects as well.  I *really* wanted to make an Advent calendar this year, so when I saw that one of the *No Excuses* Holiday Sew Alongs over at Sew, Mama, Sew! was a cute Advent calendar, I jumped right in! We are in week two, and I am making some progress...

Week 1--Fabric selection and cutting




Week 2--Fusing and top stitching


If you pay close attention, you'll notice that some of my fabrics keep changing as I progress, but that's how I roll. I tend to start off a project thinking of making it one way, and wind up making many changes in the process and it turns out totally different! But that's okay, keeps things interesting I suppose! Check back soon as I share my progress with this fun little sew-along, and to see my finished fall projects! Happy crafting!