Nov 30, 2012

Paperdoll Finishing Kit

Every Friday for the past few months, I have been blogging about my paperdoll quilt.  I have finished appliqueing and embroidering all of the blocks.  Now it is time to put the quilt together.




This is the basket I have been keeping my goodies in for a couple of years now.  
The stars and dots fabric is the border and the gingham is the binding.  The little white pom poms are sewn next to the binding.


This is the fabric that will be on the back of the quilt.
Really vintage, it looks like Betsy McCall!
 Does anyone remember her?


This colorful jellyroll will be used to sew the sashing.


Look at the sashing!!! It's tons of little squares!
I can hardly wait to start working on it.


Unfortunately I won't be able to begin putting the quilt together until the new year.  The Christmas season is always so busy, a fun busy!  I will continue this paperdoll adventure on the first Friday of 2013. 

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Nov 28, 2012

My Wedding Dress

Kennedy is such a sweetheart.  She is my 5 year old grand daughter, and Kennedy was my maiden name :)  Kennedy Grace (Grace was her great great great maternal grandmother's name) loves trying on my wedding dress, it makes her feel like a princess.




Wouldn't you have wanted to try on your grandmother's dress when you were a little girl?
Isn't Kennedy precious?
She asked me in a quiet, shy voice, "Grammy, do you still have your wedding dress?  Can I try it on?"




This is what I looked like in the dress 32 years ago!
Both the dress and my husband's tuxedo were featured on the cover of a bridal magazine in 1980.  Yes, the hat with the veil was in style back then.  Ha ha!!!


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Nov 26, 2012

I Am Thankful

We had a wonderful time at Thanksgiving, I thought I would share....My daughter Lindsay and her husband Jeremy and their three sweet little children (our grandchildren) spent a week with us over the Thanksgiving holidays.
We went to a mandarin orange grove and tasted orange treats.
We played at the playground multiple times, playing tag and chasing and laughing!
We watched "Rise of the Guardians" and munched on popcorn.
We visited Grandpa's office and got treats from his assistant.
We had a tour of the local fire station, where Bridger and Kennedy dressed up in miniature fire suits!
We had pizza at our favorite pizza joint.
We played Dominoes and nibbled on treats.
We played hide and go seek in the house at night, with all the lights off.......
We made some crafts, visited, played, ate and laughed some more.


Kennedy loves playing with the Barbies I had when I was a little girl.  I have a big box of them along with lots of clothes, some of them were made by my mother.
There was some silky green moss growing under the fir trees in the backyard.  Kennedy thought that some fairies might live there so she built them a home.  I gave her an old shoe box and with the help of her mother, she cut a door and arranged some pretty red, orange and gold leaves along with some berries and little stones.  The next morning, there was shimmer in the box and she knew that the fairies had been there!


Lindsay and Kennedy found the fairy glitter.  It really does look like a magical fairy forest.


Bridger can hardly wait to play with Jordan, Addison and Sean's Lego.  He is constantly building things, Lego is his favorite toy.  For the Reflections contest at school, he reenacted a construction worker throwing him a tootsie roll from his backhoe, out of Lego!  He won first place and will be going on to the state competition.
Since Bridger is old enough to read chapter books, I introduced him to Tintin books, another childhood memory of mine.


Charlotte loves her panda pillow that she has taken all the stuffing out of.  She also loves her pink Ruff, a pink stuffed dog.  When she is around them, she can't do anything else but suck her thumb.
Charlotte is so busy!  Busy finding the gum in my sewing room desk drawer, busy finding treats in the pantry, busy trying to sneak Mom's iphone away from her, busy unrolling all of the toilet paper in the bathroom, busy taunting her older brother and sister,  busy keeping us laughing all the time!


This is our Thanksgiving feast.


Green beans with toasted almonds, homemade cranberry sauce with some orange zest, and the turkey of course!


Ruth Chris sweet potato recipe (it is dessert!!!), stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy.


We served almost everything that is pictured in my Thanksgiving Dinner Quilt.  It hung right beside us as we ate.  I don't have a Christmas quilt yet, so I keep the Thanksgiving one up through the Christmas holidays.


I can't forget the mushroom turnovers, it has become a family tradition.  I got the recipe from a Good Housekeeping magazine in the early 80's.  Jeremy said that when he and Lindsay were spending their first Thanksgiving together as a married couple, that Lindsay told him they had to have mushroom turnovers.  He thought that was a strange request until he tried them and then he understood!


I wrote the recipe on the Thanksgiving Dinner quilt.


Here we are at our Thanksgiving table with so much to be thankful for.  We gave thanks for the rest of our family who was not with us, and especially for our son Sean who is serving a two year mission in  Porto Alegre South, Brazil.  


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Nov 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

I want to wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!
I am thankful that I have talents to share with you.
I am thankful that I have made so many friends through this blog.
I am thankful for you :)


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Nov 21, 2012

Mom's Quilt

I used a jelly roll and a charm pack to make a quilt for my mother for Christmas.
It is from Fig Tree and I think the colors will match her couch perfectly.  I used the same quilt pattern for Vanessa's quilt.


Emily's Garden in Blossom by Cotton Way.


The blanket stitch was pretty easy to do on my sewing machine.


18 circles are appliqued onto 18 squares.


This is the finished quilt.  I kept the colors in their groups....all the greens together, all the peaches together, and the browns together.


I like the appliqued flower with the nine patch center!


I machine quilted the quilt with a meandering stitch, or jigsaw pattern.


I love the back, it's from the same line and so is the binding.


I would highly recommend this pattern, it uses one jelly roll and one charm pack.  It is a lot of fun to sew, and is simple.
One thing I would suggest is that when you are sewing the strips together, rotate sewing from each end.  I didn't do that with Vanessa's quilt, and had to stretch it a lot to get it back into shape!

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Nov 19, 2012

Vanessa's Quilt

I made this quilt 4 years ago.  


It takes a jelly roll and a charm pack.  I used the "sweet" line from Moda.


I made the quilt for my then 16 year old daughter Vanessa.


I always loved this line with its gingham, polka dots, stripes and roses.  I love the colors too.


The circles were so easy.....you trace circles onto wonder under and iron it to the wrong side of the square charm.  I cut the circles out and ironed them onto a square charm.  Then I stitched the circle onto the square with a blanket stitch on my sewing machine.


On Wednesday, I will show you a quilt I made for my Mom for Christmas using this pattern, but a different line of fabric.  
f
I love seeing a pattern made with different colors and styles.

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Nov 16, 2012

Paperdoll Block

These are Blocks 1 and 2, I completed them on schedule when I was taking the class from Lori in Utah.  Then we moved to Florida.
We had four grand daughters born within seven months of each other, and I was very busy making them all baby quilts, quilted wall hangings and very detailed blessing gowns with bonnets to match.
My paperdoll quilt was put to the side and I have just worked on it here and there since then.
Let me introduce to you, Rebecca Louise and Lindsay Leigh, my paperdolls named after my real life daughters who are only 16 months apart in age.  They are now 31 and 30 years in real life :)
I changed the dolls around a little and changed their hair color.  
Lindsay was born on Thursday, it's embroidered on her underwear.
Notice the detail?  Rebecca is wearing an old fashioned roller skate key around her neck.  She has a band aid on her elbow and her knee.  Her toes are painted red.  




The directions....the scissors are appliqued, and the rest is embroidered.  I remember as a really little girl, cutting out paperdolls.  Sometimes I wasn't too careful and cut off their tabs :)



This is Blocks 1 and 2 completed.  
FRIENDS 
all that
you
will need
is 
your
IMAGINATION
to begin
your 
many
ADVENTURES
together




All the blocks lying on top of each other and folded in half, waiting to be blocked and sewn together.




All 14 patterns are finished!



I still have more to show you next Friday :)

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Nov 14, 2012

Angel Picture DIY

My husband bought an angel picture for our bedroom in the 1980's.  
Our bedroom was painted blue with blue flowered wallpaper, and angels were popular then.
After many years, we were tired of the picture.
I recycled it to the bathroom which had a huge empty space.
Wow, naked cupid angels in the bathroom :)


We moved again and this time there was no big "hidden" wall to hang the angel picture.
I told my husband that we should get rid of the picture.
He was more than happy to oblige because he hates clutter.
I took a second look and realized that the frame was really nice.
It has two different flower motif.


I have been wanting to hang a chalkboard in the house and this frame would be perfect for that!
The picture is matted, so I was just going to remove the matte and assumed the angels were printed on cardboard.  Not so!
The print was paper, and was only a little larger than the opening of the matte.  
There was a heavy cardboard on the back of the matted angel picture and it was all attached.
I took out the picture, matte and cardboard and painted spray painted the cardboard with black chalk paint.  So easy!!!
I painted the frame aqua, and rubbed a black glaze over the motifs.


Voila!  I got Sean to write his favorite scripture at the top before he left for his two year church mission to Brazil, two years ago.
Then I wrote a cute quote on the rest of the chalkboard.
I want to get a nice Thanksgiving quote to put on there.
This project was so easy!

Nov 12, 2012

Comforts of Home

I made this quilt in 2008 and 2009.  I made so many friends and learned new skills.  This is the most amazing quilt I have ever made.
"Comforts of Home" designed by Lori Holt.
This is the main block.  Everything centers around the home, and every room in the home is represented in this quilt.
The detail is incredible!


The "chair" block is my favorite.  Everything is appliqued, and accented with embroidery.


I love the tassels in the rug, the slippers and the curved satin stitch on the chair ruffle.




This was the same phone we used growing up and I embroidered our old telephone number.


I had a pair of roller skates exactly like these...they worked best with rubber soled running shoes.  There are 32 pattern pieces in this block, each one is very tiny.


This quote is so true.




When I was a two years old, I remember stretching up on my tippy toes and spelling out the word WESTINGHOUSE.  I could barely reach the letters.


Do you remember playing any of these games?


This word rang true for me when I was making this quilt.  I later sewed a green button for the dot on the "i".




Everyone I've shown this quilt to, loves this block!  My son used to watch the Andy Griffith show all the time.  I printed the photo onto fabric that can be put through the printer and then appliqued it in place.  We had a TV like this when I was little :)


I embroidered the countries where my sons served their church missions.  My youngest is in Brazil and I am going to add my sons in law, Spain, Baltimore and Italy.


Isn't this old fashioned tub cute?



We never had a radio like this, but my Mom did.


This always makes me smile :)  Donny Osmond was in elementary school, James Taylor was in middle school, and Led Zeppelin was in high school!


The finished quilt!


I forgot to take some closeup photos of the bed, with the pillows embroidered "Mr." and "Mrs.", and the cute clothesline, the crockpot and the fireplace.



Cindy did a phenomenal job with the quilting.  


I embroidered a poem on the back, and when I realized how much time I had spent on it, I used pigma pen to write about my family.


The embroidery really sets off the quilt.


Quilters make the best friends!
This is the day of our last "Comforts of Home" quilt class.  
Me and Lori.


Marianne, me and Betty.


Nadine (Material Girls) and me.


Beth and me.


I hope you enjoyed seeing my most favorite quilt of all!!!

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