Sassy Squares quilt finished!

I told you the story about this baby quilt here, in February.

Well, I machine quilted it, bound it, and it's finished!

I quilted it in clamshells, it took a little bit of time :)

I took close ups so you could see the adorable teddy bears.

I also love the bumble bees and toadstools.

I love the flowered sashing too, Japanese prints are so cute!

This is the back of the quilt.

I had some cute fabric for the middle, but there wasn't quite enough.

I used a pretty Lori Holt fabric as the border around the panel.

The panel fabric is apples, strawberries, lemons, oranges and pears.

I've had this quilt hanging on my railing for quite a few months.

It's a great feeling to finish a project!

Tee shirt quilt finished!

I machine quilted the tee shirt quilt!

It's so hard to stretch the backing fabric and get it to lay flat.

I have a wide tiled hallway that I lay the sandwich quilt on, and try to flatten out all the bumps.

Unfortunately, some of the folds weren't flattened. 

I noticed the bubbles on the backing as I was machine quilting.

I had to unpick 4 long rows, but I flattened out the bubbles and now it looks great!

I think the crosshatch quilt looks very masculine :)

The backing fabric looks gray, but it's an offwhite background with black letters.

The letters are the words to the pledge of allegiance.

Perfect for a conservative and patriotic young man :)

The fabric is by Sweetwater.

Charlotte's Baptism

My grand daughter Charlotte turned 8 and was baptized 

a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

She looks so beautiful in her white dress and gloves.

Her older sister Kennedy wore the same flower headband at her baptism too.

I've never seen Charlotte happier than she did that special day.

She was beaming!!!

Charlotte always sparkles, she's a leader, a loyal friend and an awesome missionary :)

There's a bench on the playground at school for children who feel lonely or don't have any friends.

Charlotte looks at that bench every day, and when she sees someone sitting on it, she runs over to sit down beside them and talk to them and comfort them.

Charlotte asked both of her grandmothers to speak at her baptism.

The white bag that Shauna is holding, was Charlotte's great grandmother's temple bag.

Shauna talked about 6 things that symbolized baptism and they were really cute things that Charlotte could keep.

I spoke about the holy ghost and my 6 things were a flashlight, hand sanitizer, bandaids, a book mark, a scarf (representing a blanket, because the holy ghost is a comforter) and a pair of earrings (the letter C for Charlotte).

The earrings symbolize that the holy ghost speaks softly and you have to be quiet and listen with your ears, to hear what he says.

We were invited to a luncheon afterwards and my daughter Lindsay made the room so beautiful!

The food was delicious to say the least!

Fresh fruit, croissant turkey sandwiches, potato salad and sugar cookies and brownies.

I made this scripture bag for Charlotte.

She loves panda bears!

You can find the tutorial here.

We have a tradition of giving our grandchildren a set of scriptures when they're baptized :)

I made a little trifold for Charlotte too.

Inside, she can put her special books, notebooks and a pen.

She loved the little froggies :)

It was a really wonderful day, spending it with family and friends.

Cubes Quilt quilt along

I made this Cubes quilt for the Fat Quarter Shop's quilt along.

This is the quilt top, I still have to machine quilt it :)

I love how it turned out!

I chose Tula Pink's All Star line of fabric.

All Stars is the favorite fabric prints from her Spirit Animal line.

Look at this cute squirrel!

A beautiful owl.

I really love this raccoon.

I never thought flies were pretty, but this one is!

The cutting instructions were very easy for this quilt.

The pattern calls for 18 fat quarters and 2 yards for the background.

This is the layout of one of the blocks, there are 12 of them.

The backing fabric that I chose is by Lila Tueller, and I think it's a perfect match!

I enjoyed machine quilting this quilt, I made swirls on the blocks and feathers in the sashing.

I love this little white church backdrop!

Here's a closeup of my machine quilting.

Here's a photo of the back of my quilt, but it's upside down.

Ooops!

I really enjoyed making this Cubes quilt.

It went together pretty quickly, 

considering it's made of cubes and rectangles.

Thanks Fat Quarter Shop for the opportunity to be in your Cubes quilt quilt along :)

The Greatest Showman!

This post isn't about sewing or quilting.

We have been busy planning youth conference for months.

Youth Conference is for youth ages 14-18. 

We play some games, do service projects, take faith promoting classes, watch or participate in a talent show, have a dance and end with a testimony meeting.

It runs from Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday evening.

As an opener to the talent show, the leaders did a short dance and lip sync to "The Greatest Showman"!

I was the bearded lady, lol!

If you ever want to wear a beard, buy some "spirit gum" on Amazon and cut hair from a wig in little pieces and adhere to your chin.

It feels pretty comfortable and is easy to remove.

I pulled the hairs off in sections and removed a little bit of glue residue from my face with rubbing alcohol.

Easy peasy!

I don't know if you've seen the movie, but it's amazing!

Here's a selfie of the amazing ladies whom I work with :)

Here's the team we danced and performed together and put in so many hours planning uplifting activities for our youth!

Tee shirt quilt

I'm making a tee shirt quilt for a young man who's graduating from High School in May.

His Mom has been collecting his shirts since 

he was about 5 or 6 years old.

It would be really easy to cut all the logos out the same size, maybe 12" square.

The reality is that not all the logos are the same size!

When I made a tee shirt for my son about 4 years ago, it was completely custom and I thought it was so pretty.

A lot of work but worth it.

You can see his here and here :)

The secret to making a tee shirt quilt is to use an iron on 

"woven" stabilizer.

The stabilizer keeps those slippery fabrics (sports jerseys) and stretchy knits in place, as if they are quilting fabrics.

I cut out the logos, iron on the stabilizer, and then trim them with my rotary cutter to the size that looks the best, or fits the best.

Another secret, is to use a cloth when ironing the tee shirt logos at ALL TIMES!

I smeared the tip of the "y" on the Blue Jays a little 

because I forgot....

You can see it when the quilt blocks are laid out below.

The "Simms" block was a strip of fabric that was embroidered and then sewed to the jersey.  

I just cut off the embroidered section, that's what I mean when I say that I'm at the mercy of the logos, lol!

There is no way I could have cut this into a 12" square!

The blocks have all been trimmed, 

and I recorded the size of each block.

I laid the blocks out, mostly in chronological order.

I quilted the young man's name, 

using Lori Holt's Spelling Bee book.

I used red because it balances out the other two blocks.

(I received a few more shirts after I had the quilt puzzle calculated)

Garrett loves the NY giants (red and blue) and blue was the color of both of the high schools that he went to.

I used gray for the background of his name to make it look more like a jersey, but it looks a little brown :(

This architectural rendering took me hours!!!

I fit all the logos, added sashing, and I had to do it in a manner that I was still able to sew.  

For instance, the blocks had to be graphed into larger blocks.

I did this before I received the extra shitts, 

that's why it's good have an eraser close by :)

I had to cut the tee shirt at an angle because that's where the seam was.

I sewed some red Kona along the seam, pressed it away from the seam, trimmed it and it will never be noticeable :)

 Here's my redesigned architectural rendering, most of the adjustments were made at the top of the pattern.

Here are all the sashing pieces, I used 2 packs of Alpha Bitties.

The numbers are circled and I used double letters for the blue Alpha Bitties.

I crossed off the sashing pieces as I used them.

 Here is the quilt top all finished!

I added a 2 1/2" border to give it a NY Giants color theme.

I used white sashing on my son's quilt, but noticed that it got dirty very easily.

I like the "rich" look of the blue sashing, and there are quite a few white blocks that wouldn't have shown up very well if I had used white.

A few interesting things to note about the tee shirts.

Garrett is the young man's name, Simms is his middle name and Ruslin is his last name, all on the quilt :)

The reason I put his name at the bottom of the quilt is because I pictured the quilt laying on his bed in his college dorm.

When he walks into the room, he will immediately see his name and remember how much his mom loves him because she lovingly had this quilt made for him :)

I'll show you the quilt again when it's machine quilted.

That will be a challenge because the quilt top is heavier than normal because of the weight of the tee shirts!