Travel Pillows

This is such a cute little pillow, the size is 12" X 16".

This can be a little pillow to travel with, to decorate your bed, to use as a doll pillow or even a little dog pillow :)

I use mine to put behind my lower back on long car trips, and also for long flights.

I have a tutorial I made a while back, with all the measurements, and I have a boy version without a gathered ruffle.

You can find my travel pillow tutorial here.

I made this pillow out of Sarah Jane's Wee Wander collection.

I wish I had bought this line, I only have a couple of fat quarters.

This pillow is from Sarah Jane's Let's Pretend fabric line.

Little crowns, aren't they cute?

The ruffle is from Sarah Jane's Children at Play fabric line.

This little pillow was made from a Japanese print.

It matches a quilted wall hanging I made, you can see it here.

I love all the little people and animals and strawberries and details.

The ruffle is from Lori Holt's Gracie Girl fabric line.

These travel pillows are so much fun to make!

You can see more pillows I've made, here, here, and here :)

Sweet and Simple Table Runner

Welcome to my Scrappy Summer Sew Along!

It is being hosted by Lori Holt at Bee in my Bonnet.

I posted about making this table runner here, in July.

The part finally arrived for my sewing machine and I'm able to use it again!

I quilted the table runner with my walking foot and added a scrappy binding.

I save all of my leftover bindings, they are perfect for a scrappy look.

Voila, it's finished, I'll be mailing it to my daughter in law tomorrow.

I'm going to ask her to take a photo of what it looks like on her table so I can share it with you.

I backed the table runner with a "happy" fabric to make it reversible.

The weather is so warm and sunny, I had to take an outdoor shot.

The table runner is fluttering gently in the soft, Delta breeze.

Patchwork Please!

 I made 2 little Triangle Patchwork Box Pouches from this book by Ayumi, you can find her blog here.

Sorry for the yellowish photo, I took it at night.

I auditioned all of my color combos to make sure they looked great together.

I made this box pouch once before and I paper pieced the triangles.

You can see my tutorial here.

 This time I cut out triangles and sewed them all together by chain stitching.

I should have watched my own tutorial!

I don't paper piece very often and always have to refresh my memory before attempting a new paper piecing project.

The points are beautiful and crisp with paper piecing and I can't always guarantee perfect points otherwise.

I know some people who can, but I'm not 100% there.

Sewing the zipper was soooooo easy!

I just topstitched them on.

See the little twill tape on each end?

Do you ever shop at Anthropologie, one of my favorite stores?

Those ribbons are the handles from their shopping bags, I always save them :)

Ayumi gives you extra fabric in the measurements, so I trimmed mine off and they are perfect!

The whole bag is lined with quilt batting which gives the bag great body and sizing.

So cute!!!

Colorful goodness :)

The lining looks a little large in the photo, but it actually fits perfectly.

Even the sides are done in patchwork.

I love the red geometric fabric, but I don't remember the name of it.

I bought 5 yards on sale once, used it for a quilt back and have been using scraps of it ever since.

I'll be sad when it's all gone.

Squeel!!!  The bottoms are in patchwork too!

Each of the sides of the box pouch have different patchwork.

These pouches are a little tricky to make the first time, but after completing one, the second one was easier.

I'm going to fill one of these bags with goodies and give it for a gift to a quilty friend.

The other bag will go to a friend on her birthday.

I hope she likes it :)

Guitar strap with tutorial link

My son Sean recently traded in his trumpet for an electric guitar.

He had everything except for a guitar strap, so I told him I'd make him one.

I looked through all of my "girlie" fabrics in pinks, reds, oranges, etc, and found a few rather "masculine" looking pieces.

Sean chose this one.

I found a tutorial link and pinned it to my "random tutorials" board on Pinterest, you can find it here.

The tutorial is by "one shabby chick", and you can look at her blog here.

This guitar strap is so quick and easy to make.

Notice the nice hardware?

There is a link on the tutorial, where you can buy a guitar strap for about $5.00 and use the hardware that comes with it.

I prepared the strap and used my walking foot to stitch it together.

Once all the lines were sewn on the strap, I wove the strap through the buckle and zigzagged the end to the strap.

This step secures the strap and finishes the end.

There were 2 other pieces of hardware that I attached, it was really just that easy!

Isn't this the most handsome guitar strap you've ever seen?

Ha ha!  I hope you might have a need for a guitar strap someday soon and that  this tutorial will be useful to you :)

Scrappy Cross Roads

I made two scrappy cross roads blocks a few weeks ago, you can see them here.

I have a scrap bin with 2 l/2" wide scraps in it, grouped by color.

It wasn't as time consuming to make a block, I already had lots of 

2 l/2" squares, or 2 l/2" strips that I could cut into squares :)

I made 2 more blocks, making a total of 4 which equalled a beautiful square!

It was so much fun using all of my happy scraps.

The color combinations are endless.

I'm thinking of making one of my daughters a blue one to go on her dining room table.

I had enough squares cut out to make a 5th block.

Wouldn't this make a beautiful quilt?
I think I will make a mini quilt from my 5th square :)

Painting Furniture with Annie Sloan's Chalkpaint

I thought this shelf had a really unusual shape, and bought it about 2 years ago with the intent of painting it.

Don't you love my Matryoshka dolls?

My mother bought them at Expo 67, the World's fair, from the USSR pavilion, and gave them to me a few years ago :)

Below the dolls is my antique "Anne of Green Gables" collection.

The green book on the extreme left next to the blue one, is first edition 1909!

Both of my parents and their families before them all the way to Scotland, are from Prince Edward Island.

I had a day with nothing on the calendar, so I decided to paint.

Yummy, doesn't this look delicious?

I loooooove red!!!

You can paint over anything with chalk paint, even fabric.

This piece of furniture has a cheap finish but the paint still went on really well.

I love a distressed look on furniture, and with chalk paint, you don't have to keep you strokes even.

You can just stroke the brush any direction you want, it's so easy!

It didn't take long to paint the shelf at all and it dries very fast, like 5 or 10 minutes.

See that little black stool in the background?

It's going to be painted soon.

I'm sort of sick of black furniture, and want to brighten them up.

The next step is to start sanding the shelf with a little sanding block, to add to the distressed look.

See how the original color of the shelf is showing through when it's sanded? 

 See the chalky look?

That will disappear soon, I'll show you how.

I really like the distressed look and it's so easy to attain!

The next step is to wax the shelf, that gets rid of the "chalk" look and gives it a really nice finish.

After the shelf is covered with a thin coat of wax which was applied with a round brush, I just polish it up with a buffing sponge.

It takes a little bit of elbow grease to polish up all the nooks and crannies, but it's not much work at all.

My shelf is painted, waxed, buffed and back in place, all in a matter of 2 or 3 hours :)

I think the dolls look much nicer on the red shelf, don't you?