Farm Girl Vintage Fever!

Have you heard of "Farm Girl Vintage"?

Well, I have the fever!  The Farm Girl Vintage fever!

If you are on Instagram, I'm sure you have caught the fever :)

The Farm Girl Vintage sew along begins on Friday, May 1.

I will be traveling that day, so I did some sewing of my own!

I've only shared one block (the 6" strawberry) on Instagram so far.

I'm hoping I can share them when the sew along begins and it will feel like I'm sewing along on that day too!!!

I forgot to mention that you can find the 
Farm Girl Vintage sew along  on Lori's blog here.

This is my Scrappy Strawberry block, a teeny little 6" one.

All the rest of the blocks are 12".

This is the Postage Stamp block.

I turned the Postage Stamp block into a Farm Girl Star!

This is the Milking Day Block.

The Milking Day block reminds me of my daughter Rebecca.

She owns 1/14th of a cow named Patience, and milks her once a week.

You can see the post I wrote about milking Patience  here...

Patience just birthed a bull calf.
 Here are my grandchildren, Maisie and Benjamin with him.

This is my Scrappy Strawberry block.

I really like using low volume backgrounds to mix things up a little,  and add more interest.

This is my Canning Season block.

This is my Baking Day block.

The spoon is backwards as compared to the pattern, but I made it my own :)

I love Jadeite bowls, and my daughter gave me a blue one which I love!

I put the red trim on the blue Jadeite bowl simply because I love the color red.

Cherries are my favorite fruit, I can eat them all day long...
This is the Pie Cherries block.

All of the blocks have such cute vintage farm names!

There are so many ideas for quilts to make in the book, and ideas of quilts to create :)

I've made so many Haystack blocks completed, when I sew using Leaders and Enders, that I'm thinking of making this quilt first.

It's kind of hard to see the whole quilt, but there are 4 Haystack blocks sewn together to make a 12" one.

There are 12 - 12" farm girl blocks sewn on the quilt too, tied up with block posts and sashing.  I only have to make a few more 12" blocks and then I can begin assembling my quilt!

I hope you buy the book and join the sew along, it will be loads of fun!

I'll see you in another week, yeehaw!!!

Quilty Fun Birthday - Paisley

Lori Holt designed the cutest Quilty Fun Birthday Cake banner.

You can get the link to the FREE pattern and more information on my recent post, here.

I decided to make a "quilty fun" birthday cake for each of my 11 grandchildren (wow, I can't believe I'm that blessed!) this year.

I'm going to make each cake into a personalized banner, and each year their moms can hang them on the wall to make their birthdays a little more special :)

Paisley Louise will have her first birthday in May.

I made her a red velvet cake, because I know it's her dad's favorite flavor.

I made sure that the cake pedestal had a paisley pattern too!

To personalize the cake and turn it into a banner, I added a 4 l/2" strip to the bottom of the cake.

I used wonder under and cut out the letters 3" high.

I ironed them on and used a blanket stitch on my sewing machine.

I found some fabric that reminded me of sprinkles, and cut 2 l/2" strips for the borders.  

I machine quilted it and voila, a pretty banner for Paisley :)

This is Paisley Louise in the Easter dress her mom made for her.

Isn't she as cute as can be?

One is a magical age :)

Snapshots QAL - kettle

This is block #3, Put the kettle on!

Bonnie from Cotton Way, chose this block to represent your favorite drink.

One of my favorites is Kombucha, have you ever tried it?

The Synergy brand in Gingerade and Gingerberry are my favorite flavors :)

Here's my kettle!

I am using all of Bonnie and Camille's fabrics for this quilt, but not much Daysail.

I had such a large collection of their fabric that I decided to use it instead of buying more :)

I'll just buy more of other lines, Ha ha!!!

These are the 3 blocks I've made so far...

Yes, I'm sticking to the red and aqua theme, one of my many favorite color combos!

The Snapshots QAL is a fundraiser to raise money for St. Jude's hospital.

A $5 donation is suggested, and the money goes to an incredible cause, helping sick children!
All of the information is on my Snapshots QAL board on Pinterest.

Ironing Board Cover tutorial link and Fabric Organizing

The last time I made a new ironing board cover, was over 3 years ago.

I knew that I had some severe water stains on my ironing board cover, but it wasn't until it started to molt, that I couldn't wait any longer...

My son ironed his shirt every morning before he went to work, maybe that's why he moved out, lol!

(just kidding...)

I think the stains are a combination of steam and starch!
The water stains were beginning to discolor my quilt blocks when I pressed them.

I saw that Jennifer Mathis from Ellison Lane Modern sewing and design blog, had a tutorial for a 30 minute ironing board cover.

I pinned it to my Random Tutorials board on Pinterest, you can find it here.

I bought some insulate at JoAnn's, and cut two thicknesses of warm and natural, and sewed them together.

I also bought some home decor fabric by Nate Berkus.

My new ironing board cover even has some nice padding!

I love it :)

Vicki, a fellow quilter at our Sacramento Modern Quilt Guild, told us how she wraps her fabric around comic book boards, and how wonderful it makes her stash look.

I bought this pack at Amazon for $10 and later found cheaper ones at my local comic book store.

This is some of my stash before wrapping them around the boards.

Not too bad, I try to keep the stacks looking nice.

Wow, what a difference!

I love the look of my fabric wrapped around the boards.

One drawback, is that this way of organizing takes up a little more room, and I don't have enough shelving to display my entire stash this way.

For now, it's a start and I arranged most of the fabric shelves with the fabric wrapped around the cardboard.

There are lots of tutorials online, just "google" wrapping quilt fabric around cardboard and you'll find them :)

Quilty Fun Birthday Cake Banner and Tablerunner

Lori Holt designed this cake block to celebrate the year anniversary of her Quilty Fun quilt book.

pssst....The book is available at JoAnn's.

You can go here to Lori's blog to get the recipe.

The first cake I baked, was Strawberry Cheesecake.

I had so much fun, that I decided to bake a Chocolate Mousse cake.

Red Velvet cake is one of our family favorites.

I baked another Red Velvet in a different color combo :)

Then I baked a strawberry cake, they are pretty addicting!

I baked another strawberry cake with one of my granddaughters in mind, and came up with an idea...

I will bake the cake into a banner, one for each of my grandchildren.

Each year, when it's their birthday, their cake banner can be displayed on their special day.

Charlotte's birthday is April 9th, she'll be five!

It's hard to tell in the photo, but the border looks like sprinkles :)

I appliqued Charlotte's name with wonder under and a machine blanket stitch.

 I made a tablerunner for Charlotte's mom, because she goes all out for birthdays :)

I thought she might like having a table runner for her festivities.

 I used a dotted fabric for the border on the table runner, and they still look like sprinkles!

It may be a while before I get around to quilting it.

I wanted to show you a photo from last week's post.

Here are some of my grandchildren with their dolls and baskets that I made for them.

Here are two granddaughters who weren't in the previous photo.

I didn't get one of their baby sister, because she was sleeping :)

Rag dolls and Quilted Storage Boxes

Amazingly, my husband and I have 11 grandchildren now!!!

We have 2 grandsons and 9 granddaughters.

I was thinking about what I could get them for a little Easter gift.

I was looking through my magazines and found an adorable little doll pattern in this magazine, it's Issue Eleven.

Look how cute she is!!!

I made my first one for a granddaughter who loves purple.

She took a while to make, I'd say about 3 hours.

I decided to make them all at once instead of one at a time.
I thought that would make me feel like I was getting more done, and it did!

This is what the hair looks like before the head's sewn together.

I just sewed the felt hair onto the flesh colored broadcloth, and sewed lines down each one to look like strands of hair.

These are all the dress pieces, I chose each color and print according to each girl's likes and personality.

I was thinking about making each little doll a quilt...but then I remembered the quilted storage baskets in this book.

I thought the fabric basket would be better, because I could make 11 of them, including one each for the grandsons.

The baskets could be like a bed for the little dolls, and the boys could use theirs for storage.

I wrote a tutorial on the baskets here.

I made the baskets with my 3 l/2" wide scraps.

This saved me a lot of time, because the strips were already cut.

I worked really hard every spare moment I had, and finally completed my little dolls in about 10 days.

They look like their watching a movie or something, lol!!!

This little doll is for Reagan Clara, she's 4 years old.

 Her favorite color is purple and she has blonde hair.

I made her basket out of prints, and there are all sorts of peek-a-boo  designs.

There's a dog, a bird, Little Red Riding Hood, an elephant, and so on...

This is Kylie Violet, she's 2 years old.

Kylie loves pink and anything pretty and feminine.

I made her basket in pink and mint green, to match her dress.

Every doll has some of the fabric from her dress, in the basket.

This is Kennedy Grace, she's 7 years old.

Kennedy's favorite color is green, so I made her a green basket.

This is Maisie Louise, she's 4 years old.

Maisie loves pink and purple.
 I used a Mary Engelbreit print for her dress and her basket is pink.

Maisie has a cat named Abby, so I used a Japanese print with cats and birds for the lining.

This is Neo (nay-oh) Kimberley, she's 4 years old.

Neo's favorite color is purple, so the doll and the basket are purple.

I don't have very much purple fabric, so this was a challenge!

This is Lucy Jane, she's 1 l/2 years old.

She's a cute little blonde toddler, so I made her doll and basket in soft  pinks.

This is Isabel Louise, she's 1 month old :)

She has no idea what she likes, so I made her doll and basket in Heather Ross fabrics to match her baby blanket and burp pads.

You can see her baby quilt here.

This is Paisley Louise, she's 10 months old :)

Paisley also doesn't know what she likes yet, so I gave her doll an orange dress and basket.

I really love orange, it's a happy, bright color.

The lining of Paisley's basket is a cute little Japanese print that I hope she will enjoy looking at.

This is Charlotte Leigh, she's 4 years old.

A lot of people have said that this is their favorite doll :)

Charlotte loves strawberries, so there are strawberries on her doll's dress and her basket is pink.

This basket is for Benjamin, he's 2 years old.

His bedroom is decorated in red and aqua, so those are the colors that I sewed his basket. 

The lining is a Japanese print with lots of cars.

I'm putting some Matchbox cars in his basket.

Last but definitely not least, is Bridger, who is 9 years old.

He is our first grandchild.

Bridger is getting a selection of Artemis Foul books in his basket.

He's also getting a copy of the book Wonder.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing all of my projects, they are a labor of love.