Sewing bags

 Since I have all of my "grandchildren" quilts sewn....I've been wondering how to occupy all my newly acquired free time ❤️

I learned a long time ago that unless I have some ideas in my head and maybe even on paper, I can waste a lot. of time.  I've been decorating for Christmas and reading some books and preparing for our family reunion.  I've also been making some bags.  I've made about 8 Sew Together bags for gifts, but I've never made one for myself.  One of my favorite designers is Rifle Paper Co, so I used this fun "Alice in Wonderland" gold on black fabric along with some Rifle Paper flowers.  

The side is pretty colorful!  Each zipper coordinates with the color of flower fabric that I used.  Of course, I'm only as good as my fabric and zipper stash.... I think you can see that the inner lining is a black fabric with gold stars.  Not quite as scrappy as other bags I've made :)

The first pocket is pink.

The second pocket is yellow.

The third pocket is green.

The bag is matchy matchy with a punchbag I made a few weeks ago.

I love this Sew Together bag, but I may just gift it to someone special instead of keeping it for myself :)

I also made three more lined drawstring bags.  

Choosing fabric is the best!

Baby Chick quilt

 This is a quilt I have been wanting to make for a long time.  The pattern is found in Lori Holt's book, Farm Girl Vintage.  In the book this quilt has pink borders, but I wanted to make it in blues so that there would be some blue quilts in my grandchildren pile.

Funny story.....I had all the chick's little legs drawn on the fabric with a frixion pen, ready to embroider.  I was going to take the hand embroidery project with me to my son's house but decided to leave it in the car.  It was a hot Phoenix Sumer day.  That evening when I was home, I sat in front of the TV to embroider the chick's legs and the frixion pen had disappeared!!!  The pen markings are supposed to disappear when you iron them and apparently the Phoenix heat works the same magic! LOL!

I have a grandchild in mind for this quilt, but they're in the middle of the 15, so who knows what will happen.

I really enjoyed machine quilting this one, it went very smoothly.

Pretty little swirls like a soft wind in the chicken coop.

Finally, here is the label I made.  I used to hand embroider all my labels but I think a permanent fabric pen does the trick also.

The choosing of the quilts will be on Wednesday, November 24.

I've asked my son to photograph/video the entire thing and edit it to maybe 10 minutes.  I'm so excited for the event!  I've worked really diligently to have 27 quilts for 15 grandchildren to choose  from. My vision is that I will have a trunk show, telling the story about each quilt.  Each child will have a list of all 27 quilts, in alphabetical order.  They can write notes or mark their favorite ones.  Then the oldest (Bridger 16) will choose the quilt.  If they want to see a couple again, we could do that.  They will keep choosing one until everyone is happy, hopefully...

Actually, I'm the one who needs to be happy, lol!  It's been a year and a half to have all these quilts ready for this day.  It has been a labor of love.  I have thought of different grandchildren as I sewed, wondering if a particular one would like the quilt I was sewing at the time.

I'm hoping to be able to share the video here on my blog.

Thanks for following and have a great week!

Halloween 2021

 

I'm a little late with my post, but my Hallowe'en was spooktacular!!!

I'm going to show you how all of our 14 grandchildren transformed themselves for this fun night! I didn't get a photo of our oldest grandson who's 16.

Maisie (11) is dressed as a devil along with her cousin who is an angel ❤️

I'm not really sure who Ben (9) is dressed as, but he's cute!

Jacob (5) is a counter terrorist.  His Dad loved making the costume!

Charlotte (11) is Mother Gothel and Lucy (8) is Rapunzel.

Lucy has dreamed of having long hair since before she was even one year old!  Well, now she realizes just how heavy long hair is!!!

Once the wigs went on, they were transformed into their characters :)

My daughter Lindsay has been creating a Disney Haunted Mansion on her home.  She dresses as one of the maids and Kennedy (14) walked back and forth on the upstairs balcony like a ghost with spooky music playing loud for all to hear.

Reagan (10) was a beautiful Carmen Santiago.

Paisley (7) was an astronaut.  

Taylor (5) is Glenda the good witch.

Riley (3) is Tinker Bell.

Their parents were Bellatrix Lestrange and a dementor!

Izzy (6) was Estella, Kylie (8) was a Dalmatian and Neo (11) was Cruella.

Izzy was the perfect Estella!  The perfect size and the wig and outfit were so cute on her.

Cruella had 'FUTURE' on her forehead, just like the movie!

Cute little Dalmatian ❤️

My husband and I were Hagrid and Professor McGonagall.  

My husband was the perfect Hagrid!

I created Hogwarts in my trunk at the Trunk or Treat.

My son dressed as an 8foot Sasquatch (on stilts).  He terrified me in his costume about 6 years ago when I didn't know that it was him!!!

The same son and his family and our youngest grandchild, Sabrina.  A cute Star Wars family!

aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.......

Two of our sons live a few blocks away from us and we had our 2nd annual Halloween party.  The meatballs had eyeballs in them!

I was a "Grammy Witch" which like a normal grammy but more MAGICAL 😂

These are the grandchildren who I get to see whenever I want :)

The blood was delicious, type AB.

The dessert was so delicious and really spooky!  The cake is red velvet and the cake pops are really buck eye balls, so good!

We have a lot of fun with our party.  The appetizers are at one house, dinner at another and dessert at yet another house!  We play games or do an activity at each house too.  This year we celebrated on Halloween night, but last year we chose a different evening.  I really love setting traditions since we finally live by two of our children.  I hope you enjoyed the halloween fashion show! 

Bats & Boos

I finished my Bats and Boos table topper.  I made mine a little different though.  It is directional so that everything is in sync with the witch's face in the middle of the quilt.

 

I absolutely love quilt alongs, it's so much fun seeing everyone's finished quilt.

Now I've finally got a Halloween table runner for my table and it matches the centerpiece I made with a branch and acorns.

This was a short post, but one that celebrates Halloween!

Silo Barn quilt

 I've made so many barns and silo barns from Lori Holt's "Farm Girl Vintage" book.  I made a quilt out of the "Quilty Barn" block, which you can see here.

June 1, 2015, I made the Silo Barn quilt, which you can see here and in the photo below.

 The Fat Quarter Shop and Lori are having a sew along called the "Quilty Barn" qal.  I knew this would be a great opportunity for me to get my little quilt out of the closet and machine quilt it, finally!!!

I machine quilted the quilt with a wavy stitch on my sewing machine.

This is the quickest sew along I've ever done!!! LOL

I backed the quilt with some chicken fabric which wasn't quite wide enough, so I added some apple fabric on the side.  

Chickens eat apple, right?  Chickens live in barns, right?

This quilt will be going in my grandchildren pile, it's #26.  I'm just making one more... That will be 27 quilts for 15 grandchildren to choose from.  I think that's a pretty good selection :)

Chuckles Quilt

In August 2017,  my Sew Sampler box from the Fat Quarter Shop, had this cute pattern enclosed with a fat eighth pack of Elizabeth Haartman fabric.  I bought the Kona solid for the back (I liked blue instead of gray) and it was tucked away for all these years.  I used most of the fat eighth pack for the "Awesome Ocean" quilt that I made.  I just pulled some scraps from my stash and made these cute little fish.  It was surprisingly fast to make!  I used the wavy stitch on my Bernina 750QE and the quilt was machine quilted in no time at all. Well, it did take time, but not as much as other quilts :)

I found the cutest fish fabric for the back. I had to piece it a little but I think that adds character and interest to the quilt.

This is a much better view of the fish fabric, and the label I made.

Here's the quilt pattern, I love anything designed by Elizabeth Hartman.  This quilt is definitely going into my grandchildren pile!

My Best Friends qal

 I was able to quilt and bind my Best Friends quilt which I absolutely love! There are four blocks in this quilt. Economy, log cabin, courthouse steps and pineapple. Each of the blocks are 6”, so the quilt finishes at 48.5” square. The quilt pattern is available at Fat Quarter's blog, Jolly Jabber.  It's free!

I fussy cut the centers of all the economy blocks, I love doing that!  I did a straight line machine quilting,  a l/2" apart.  I used a scrappy binding too.

For the backing of the quilt, I used 6 half yard pieces of one of Lori Holt's older fabric lines.  It's called Flower Patch.

I think this fabric is beautiful and I'm so happy I was able to showcase it on the back of this quilt.

This quilt is going into the grandchildren pile :)