Talented at handwork

Last spring, my 7 year old grand daughter Kylie wanted me to help her learn a sewing skill.  I thought she was too young to use the sewing machine, so I taught her how to hand embroider.  I found some embroidery patterns and let her choose which one she wanted to stitch.  She chose this little cloud with rainbow colored raindrops.  She took forever to finish, but escalated her efforts as it got closer to Christmas.  When she showed me her finished embroidery, I was amazed at how fine her stitches were.  Even grown women have a difficult time keeping the stitches the same size.  

Kylie definately has talent with handwork!

Kylie was thinking of making her mom a pillow, but I suggested an apron.  I knew that the colors wouldn't fit her mom's decor and thought the apron would be more useful.

Isn't Kylie cute by my Singer Featherweight that I've named Elsie?

So, so cute!

Kylie's mom isn't too much bigger than she is, so the apron will fit her perfectly!  Kylie wrapped the gift herself and was so excited for her mom to open it.  Her mom loved it and couldn't believe that Kylie did "most" of the sewing!

Kylie also did a great job of keeping the seams l/4", she never let the seams run short of that.  I told her she was ready to make a quilt.  She hasn't reminded me about the quilt yet, but it's been pretty busy with all the Christmas celebrations.  

I wish I could teach all of my grandchildren who are interested, to quilt, but only three live by me.

Happy New Year!

Mod TV quilt

 I've been doing lots of secret sewing! I made this quilt for my husband for Christmas.  It's called Mod TV by Colourwerx.  The original pattern is 48" X 54", but I added an extra row on the side and on the bottom.  I had fun choosing the fabric from my stash, and was surprised that I could find so many fat quarters that matched, including solids which I only have scraps of.  Apparently my scraps were large enough for the TVs! It was a lot of fun choosing what photos to use in the TVs.

I used a few family photos.  I could have used more, but wanted it to be more of "my favorite shows" than a memory quilt.  I used photo transfer paper that I purchased at Joann's with a coupon.  My son let me use his inkjet printer, and I could get two images on each sheet.  I used two packets of transfer paper.  It was fun choosing my husband's  favorite TV shows from his growing up years.  He also loves old westerns.

I saw some John Wayne fabric online and fell in love with it!  It's made by Riley Blake and is very soft fabric.  I bought it on Etsy.  I have been trying my best to make sure all the quilts I make have a label.  I subscribed to Sweetwater's label club.  Every month I receive two labels in the mail, usually themed to the season.  This label was perfect, I just wrote the top line to personalize it even more.

I'm sure excited to see his reaction when he opens his gift Christmas morning.  To tell you the truth, he never has a huge reaction to things, so we shall see!!!

Merry Christmas!  I hope you are able to spend it with family this year.

A Very Vintage Christmas placemats

I made some more placemats.  I wasn't going to because I didn't think I would have enough time.  When I heard that my daughter and her husband and children were coming for a quick visit, I knew I had to make placemats for them this year instead of waiting until next year.  I can always squeeze in time for sewing. 

This is four year old Jacob, and he loved his stocking and candy! 

This is my daughter Rebecca, I made her the vintage ornament.

This is 10 year old Maisie, she loved her Christmas tree.

This is 8 year old Benjamin, he loved his snowman.

I also made them each a Christmas pillowcase to take home with them, and a rollie pollie little stuffed animal too.

I can never spoil the grandchildren enough!

I've made 28 very vintage placemats, and just have two more to make for my daughter and her husband, next year.

Coral Queen of rhe Sea

There's been a lot of Christmas sewing going on here!

I made my second "Coral Queen of the Sea". 

It's a Moda panel by Stacy Iest Hsu.  

Then I made a lined drawstring bag by Jeni Baker, 

her blog is In Color Order.

I've made over 200 of these bags, literally! I made them for the Young Women at our church, for their birthdays, two years in a row.

It's such a wonderful bag, I love it!  The pattern comes with many different sizes, one of them is a free tutorial.

I have a board on Pinterest devoted to the bags, 

you can check it out here.

 I'll share more Christmas sewing with you next week!

Burrito Pillowcases

Our daughter Lindsay and her family came to visit us for Thanksgiving.  We had such a wonderful time together.  Of course I had to make each of the children a Christmas pillowcase.  I used the burrito method, it's so quick, easy and pretty.

Here is the link to my Pinterest board, "Random Tutorials".

We had 8 adults, we all sat at the table.

We had five children and two teenagers at the counter.

This is me with my daughter and 3 of her children.  Three generations.

I'm very thankful for them.

"Vintage Christmas placemats

I absolutely love this book by Lori Holt.  I haven't made the cover quilt, but it's on my list!  Lori often has cute projects besides her quilts, in her books.  I make a Christmas placemat for each of my children, their spouses and their children.  They are pretty time consuming, so I make them for one family every year.

I made the figure skate for my grand daughter Reagan, who is 10 years old.  It reminds me of all the figure skating lessons I took at the indoor rink a few blocks from our house when I was Reagan's age.  I would have loved a pair of pink figure skates!  I embroidered a large "R" in the center.  Next time I'll have to do it in a different color, because it barely shows up.

This is a ginger bread girl that I made for Taylor.  I used vintage rick rack and I love all the accents of pink!

This placemat is a dolly, which I made for Riley.  Last I heard, Riley loved playing with dolls.

I made Rudolph the red nosed reindeer for Paisley.  I used glittery fabric, because Rudolph is a rock star like Paisley.

I made the candy canes for Kim, because she's such an excellent baker.

I made Santa for our son Jordan, because well....he's the Santa of the household.

I ran out of time to make myself one last year, so I finally finished it this year!  I like Reagan's better though.  I think the silver blade looks better than the pink, and I fussy cut her pocket, whereas I didn't think to do that on mine.

Here they are wrapped up and ready to drop in the mail.

To all my American friends, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with your families ❤️

To everyone else, especially my fellow Canadians, enjoy your weekend also and stay safe :)

Love and Stitches quilt along, finished!

 I finished my Love & Stitches quilt and even quilted it myself!  I put in a lot of time this past week getting it done, and was even hand binding yesterday morning to post it on Instagram, to qualify for the Giveaway :)  I already won a giveaway though, so it might be greedy to hope for winning another one!  A free quilt subscription for 6 months or get a quilt machine quilted for free!

I machine quilted this quilt with a simple cross hatch pattern using my walking foot.  My sweet daughter in law got on the floor, taped the back and then smoothed the layers and pinned the whole "sandwich" together.  I knew I should have taken a photo!  I am blessed with her help a lot ❤️

It doesn't show up much, but I quilted in Aurifil 2426, a light pink.  I think it adds interest and a little texture.

The backing almost looks like little rainbows.  I have a quilt shop that I go to sometimes, where the fabric is all $6.99/yard.  A great place to find quilt backings.  I didn't quite have enough, so I sewed a strip of orange to the bottom.

I really love this quilt pattern!  It was fun as well as easy and the blocks are really big, so they go together very fast.  The quilt  measures 75" X 90", a twin size.

I bought Megan Collin's "Sunshowers" pattern and want to make it in January when the holiday rush is over.  I think it's really cute and it would be a great addition to my "grandchildren stack".  

Love & Stitches makes #10 out of 15.  When I have amassed 15 "unused quilts", I'm going to have each grandchild choose a quilt starting with the oldest and working down in age, for the most part.

I think it will be so exciting, to watch them pick their favorite.  I only have one masculine so far, I need a couple more.

I'm interested in making Elizabeth Hartman's Penguin Party.

I also really want to make Pen and Paper Designs "Ghost" quilt.

This is my friend Nedra, she made her quilt to match her tee shirt!  If I'm going to make this quilt masculine, I probably shouldn't make my ghosts pink and purple, though!

I also have about six or seven quilt tops that I haven't quilted yet.  I'll just keep adding to the stack until the oldest grandchildren come to visit.  You can bet that I'll take lots of photos!

Have a wonderful week and thanks for visiting my blog :)

Love and Stitches quilt along

 I finished my Love and Stitches quilt top!  Just imagine a 3 l/2" border in Kona snow, around the quilt below.

I loved this quilt along, the blocks are big and the quilt top went together very fast!  I mastered curved piecing too :) This is the second quilt top completed during my hip surgery recovery, lol!

You know how there are certain fabrics that you hoard, or are afraid to cut into, because you want them to be saved for the perfect project... Well, I have Heather Bailey, Amy Butler, Japanese prints, Tanja Noel, Aneela Hooey, American Jane and of course Lori Holt.

I cut into my beautiful Cotton & Steel fabrics for this quilt and just love the color scheme :)

I'm going to attempt to machine quilt my quilt top this week, just like the pattern.  I love a cross hatch design.

I was so fortunate to be selected to win the Week 5 giveaway!

Look at these gorgeous fat quarters!

They are very soft and silky :)

Thanks for following along :)

Basket Sew Sampler quilt

 My 2017 Basket Sew Sampler quilt top is finished!  The pattern is from the 2017 Sew Sampler boxes from Fat Quarter Shop.  In 2017, I made 5 of the blocks, you can see them here.  I guess life happened, and I never finished the other 7 blocks.  The baskets are designed by Lori Holt.  My solid colored fabric collection isn't very big, mostly fat quarters or from leftover projects.  I decided to make the baskets out of solids and use different background fabrics for each block.  I made the 10 1/2" blocks, the quilt finishes at 56 1/2" X 71".  The quilt called for about 2 l/2 yards for the background.  I'm using fabric from my stash, and I don't have too many pieces that large.  Luckily, I found this Heather Bailey fabric from her Nicey Jame line and It adds a lot of sunshine!  It feels so good to see my stash slowly get smaller...

My friend took this photo of me in my sewing room, showing off the quilt.  I used a Michael Miller fabric for the inner border.  This quilt was a hip replacement recovery quilt, lol!  I still can't bend over to pin the quilt and prepare it for machine quilting. That time will come soon.

Thanks for much for following along!

Love & Stitches quilt along

 I just finished week 3 of this quilt along.

I'm finding it easy to keep up, the hearts are big and are fun to sew!

I think the pattern is so cheery and modern.

Megan Collins has the cutest rainbow quilt that I'm going to make,

you can find it on Etsy here.

I completed all my curved piecing, it was not difficult at all!

Now I won't be shy to try other patterns with curved piecing.

I followed this great tutorial 

by Jackie Kunkel of Canton Village Works.

I had to trim each piece down to size.

I'm making a throw size, so I need 20 hearts, 40 pieced curves.

I got my hearts all sewn together!

By the way, my background is Kona Snow and I had exactly enough in my stash to cut all the pieces,

 leaving only a few scraps that I threw away.

This is the order that I like my hearts.

Do you think I should make any changes?

Oops, I just saw 2 navy hearts on the same row!

I had to place each piece on the floor with a "reacher", a tool that is very handy for people who can't bend over, lol!

I'll see you again next week :)