Laney Family Crafts etc.

Baby Quilt: Denise Schmidt stairway

2012-02-11T13:26:00.003-05:00

Even with the iPhone, I am bad at documenting the few things I actually get around to making these days. Sorry for the imperfect picture.

This is my latest quilt made for Desmond Henry, the one-month-old son of one of my best and oldest friends, Maya. The pattern is from Quilts, Baby! which I borrowed from my mom. They recommended making every-other row white but I wanted to use all of the DS Quilts patterns that I've bought from JoAnn Fabrics. I know this line is controversial, but I love it. We don't have a good fabric store around here, which I consider a major travesty, so finding great patterns at JoAnn has been wonderful. This is the second quilt I've made with these fabrics, so I'll try to photograph the earlier one.

This pattern was great. It was really fun to get everything cut out and then laid out in piles in order. Putting it together was addictive. I would finish one row and then think, "Ok, just one more." I was working on it while another friend was in labor and I was anxiously awaiting updates, so I was happy to have something to occupy my mind and my time. Anyway, it's a great pattern and I love the way it turned out. I can't wait to send it to Maya.

My Round Robin Blocks

2011-12-05T19:39:00.001-05:00

My Wednesday sewing circle recently got together to reveal our round-robin blocks that we made for each other. We started this project in March. Each of us put together guidelines for a 12-inch finished block, made one block ourselves to start our quilts, then passed the boxes along. There were 11 of us in the exchange, so we each ended up with 11 blocks. We all got our boxes back this week at our holiday get-together, and we all got to see all the block sets.

Everyone had unique guidelines - some people chose a fabric or two, some chose a theme or color scheme, and some chose the same block to be made in different fabrics.

My blocks were designed around this focus fabric, the bird print on the left. I found this in Peapod Fabrics and just fell in love with the colors and designs of the birds. I asked everyone to use at least one piece of the bird fabric in their block. Then I made this simple block, with the birds framed in the black, pink and gray fabrics.

Here are the blocks I got back from my talented and imaginative friends! Two people made birdhouse blocks, framing the birds, and two used flying geese motifs...

...the beautiful Ohio star is from a friend who is also from Ohio and there are blocks with names like "Darting Birds" and "Hovering Hawks", and one block was an intricate paper-pieced block (upper right).

Some people used mostly the fabrics I provided, and others incorporated new fabrics, like these Australian fabrics forming the points of this star below. And the bottom block is a color variation of my original one, to round out the cycle.

Everyone was really pleased with their blocks and we all agreed that it was fun to follow the guidelines for each block and try different things. Now I will make another block (or maybe more) and figure out how to put them together into a quilt top. Our goal is to have our quilt tops done by Easter 2012.

I won!

2011-11-22T12:01:00.001-05:00

I'm getting hooked on browsing quilting and sewing blogs lately, and it's paid off! I entered a giveaway on the blog of "Quilt Dad", aka John Adams, and I won a fat quarter bundle of these fabrics. All I had to do was comment on a post. I think I'll be entering more giveaways now!

So, what should I make with these fabrics??

Design Inspiration from LA

2011-10-24T01:55:00.001-04:00

The last time Zac was in San Francisco, he said he'd like me to make him a quilt! So we were talking about possible designs, and then Dan and I were in LA to visit him a couple weeks ago, and we all went to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) to see the exhibit "California Design, 1930-1965". It had all kinds of cool things from the time period, from the first Airstream trailer to clothes, furniture, and a full mock-up of an Eames design house. Several of the textiles made us think about possible quilt designs.

This one is an Eames textile that we liked. I could imagine making quilt squares with the Xs and dots and uneven borders. Zac suggested using large blocks and making the quilt just 20 big squares - we're working on that idea.

This is the book on the exhibit that was for sale in the gift shop. Zac likes the solid-color stripes. I don't remember seeing this in the exhibit, but apparently it was the cover of a Frank Sinatra album! It could make a nice quilt, just using the strips of solid color fabrics.

Wouldn't both of these make great quilts? And I don't even have a picture of Zac's other favorite item - the bathing suit with the giant lobster on it!

Two little quilts

2011-09-30T15:01:00.000-04:00

I recently finished two small quilts, both made from patterns from Elizabeth Hartman's blog Ohfransson.com. Hers is one of my favorite blogs. It's full of ideas and free patterns and tutorials for her designs, most of which are bright, modern quilts.

This is a baby quilt made with her modified foundation piecing technique for this spider-web design. I wanted to try it, and I used scraps in blue, white, and green. Frankly, the technique is a bit labor-intensive. I'm not sure I would make this design with this technique again, but I made enough blocks for this baby quilt - it's only 36x45 inches finished.

This is another of her designs that she calls Crazy Nine Patch. (The back of the quilt is above - it shows the individual block better) It's fun to make - you layer 9 different fabrics, make a cut through all of them, shuffle the order of one stack of pieces, then sew two different pieces together. Then you keep doing that, till each block has one patch of each of the 9 fabrics. I put mine together in her lattice arrangement, and had three extra blocks for the back of the quilt.

This quilt started out as a baby quilt when Emily was pregnant, with a group of the gold, gray, and white prints. Then we found out that Russ would be a boy (!) and I thought that some of the yellow prints were too girly. I needed more fabrics and added the greenish gold to the mix and then decided to use the gray solid (rather than white) to keep the whole thing softer-looking. I hand-quilted it with gold perle cotton and big stitches. I really like it - now I wish I had made it bigger! It's 40 x 56 inches.

College Dorm Room Bunk Bed Hangy Thingies

2011-09-06T10:19:00.001-04:00

When I was in Cleveland, Kathy and I made this for Cary's bunk bed in her dorm room. Her bed is up so high, there's no dresser or nightstand or anything to set things on. So if she's reading in bed, there's nowhere to put a book, unless she climbs down. She didn't like my idea of making a basket-and-pulley contraption like in Rear Window.

So Kathy went online and found some instructions and patterns for these. Using them as a guideline, we made up this pattern on our own. The background is corduroy; the pockets are made from an old pair of jeans of Kathy's, and the pocket lining is a really pretty polka-dot. We used all of Kathy's fabric and supplies (just Velcro, thread, and iron-on interfacing to give it strength) so it didn't cost anything.

Cary loved it.

So I went home and made another one for her roommate, Claire.

I had trouble wrapping my head around how to make a lined pocket with a little band across the top, so I cheated a little bit and did some hand-sewing. But it looks fine. The background fabric is black with gray treble clefs, which I thought was perfect for a music student.

I told Cary we could start a small business making these and selling them to dorm students who are trapped in high bunk beds in dorms. :)

Kathy's Wedding Ring quilt

2011-09-05T19:36:00.003-04:00

I was going through my pictures from our recent trip to Ohio and found this one. It's from a meeting of Kathy's quilt guild (I forget the name!). They met the first night I was at Kathy's so I got to go along with her. And I got to be the photographer!

Kathy is hiding behind this quilt, holding it up! It's another in her Double Wedding Ring series. She made one for Emily and Brian when they got married, one for Rob and Sarah for Sarah's shower, and then this one for a quilt show that her guild is doing. Each one is in a different color scheme and they are all beautiful!

Real Men Do Crafts!

2011-08-10T19:57:00.005-04:00

For his recent wedding, my son, Robbie, covered the buttons on his tux shirt with pieces of silk charmeuse from his fiance's wedding gown. He used his fly-tying equipment to do the work. That's my boy. :-)

Russell's quilt from Kathy

2011-06-26T21:59:00.006-04:00

I don't know if anyone else was going to post this, but I can't resist showing the quilt that Kathy made for Russell. It arrived when I was in Baltimore, and we all fell in love with it! Here's Russ lounging on it with his favorite teething toy, Sophie.

The quilt is so cute with bright colors that Russell really likes now. He likes to be on his tummy on something bright, and he reaches for all the bright objects. He will love this!
The back of the quilt is as cute as the front. This picture doesn't do it justice, but is spells out "Good morning Russell" in yellow block letters.

Maybe Kathy will share her source for the pattern. Good work Aunt Kathy!

Easter Craft

2011-05-09T11:42:00.003-04:00

I saw this post on PurlBee before Easter and really wanted to make the Sheep Pillow. It looked so easy that even a new mom could do it. I ambitiously ordered the supplies but then remembered that Russell prefers to sleep in my arms instead of his crib. I think I got one sheep cut out over a period of 3 days and almost called it quits, but then one Saturday we went on a long walk and Russ fell asleep in the Ergo Carrier so I just let him sleep while strapped to my chest and sewed for 2 hours. I made 3 sheep pillows. 1 for James, my neighbor's 15 month old, one for Clara, my high school friend Kate's 14 month old, and one for Elise, my bff Monika's 2 year old. Monika sent a picture of the pillow and her newborn boy Gabe.
He seems suspicious of it, but I'm sure it will grow on him :)

Baby Quilt

2011-03-20T22:05:00.004-04:00

I made this baby quilt for my friend Bridget's baby, Jake. I used the directions from a recent Martha Stewart Living magazine for a large-scale log cabin pattern. Then I added the monogram, since I had made a monogrammed quilt for Bridget's daughter, Penny, when she was born. Now I have to hurry and get it in the mail (since baby Jake was born back in October and is getting big, plus the quilt is flannel and it's going to get warm soon!)

San Francisco Quilt Show

2011-03-03T01:45:00.005-05:00

The San Francisco Quilt Guild held its biannual quilt show last weekend. There were over 200 quilts displayed, and it was a great show. Here are some of the quilts in the show that I made (or at least worked on).

One of the categories was Miniature Quilts. I was working on this small Amish-style quilt (the one on the right in the photo) so I decided to put it in the show as a miniature, since it met the requirements. I did the flying geese parts using a foundation fabric. I didn't have enough time before the show to hand quilt it like I wanted to. I might still do some hand quilting before hanging it in my house. I think it's too dark with the black border - I should have used a color for the border, I think now. You can see that this category had quite a variety of quilts, based on the two hung next to mine!

The quilts in this group were made by members of my sewing circle. We had a fabric exchange where we exchanged 5" squares of fabrics, a different color each week. We ended up with ~100 squares. Then we each made a quilt out of them. Mine is the one in the center of this picture. I made a spool block out of each fabric, using some of them for the background and some for the spools. Then I set them in a solid green fabric and quilted it with a multicolored thread.

These blue quilts are part of the display of Challenge Quilts. There is a theme for the challenge quilts - this year it was "Indigo Passport". Everyone is to make a 24" square quilt, interpreting the theme however they want. Mine is the quilt on the right with the circles. I wanted to make a larger quilt with these fabrics and the quarter circle blocks, so I "practiced" on this little one. I have some nice, textured Asian fabrics that I think are perfect for this quilt. The other 2 in this picture were done by friends of mine and show a little of the variation in interpreting the theme.

Finally, this is a group quilt put together in a joint effort by my sewing circle. We used Ruth McDowell's book of paper-pieced vegetable patterns, and each chose 2 vegetables to make. (I made the ear of corn, and the 4 tomatoes.) Once we were done, we all got together and put them together into the quilt top. That was quite a contentious process - quilters have strong feelings about these things! But we forged ahead, and completed the top, and one of our members coordinated the quilting on her mid-arm quilting machine. We're going to donate it to the Food Bank. I really enjoyed doing the paper-pieced blocks, so I made more of them for myself, and am now composing my quilt top with them.

One of my volunteer jobs for the quilt show was helping with the judging, which was quite interesting. There were over 200 quilts in the show, and there were 5 judges hired to judge the quilts for various awards. We spent one long day in the home of our guild president displaying all the quilts, recording comments, and helping the judges as they looked at all the quilts and chose the winners. I learned a lot about how quilts are judged, so maybe for the next show I'll have mine judged! This year I opted out of judging for my quilts.

2011-02-11T13:28:00.003-05:00

Here's a look at Pam's and Kathy's entries for our local quilt show.

My Friendship Blocks

2011-02-03T16:34:00.010-05:00

I belong to the San Francisco Quilt Guild, and one of my favorite activities there is participating in the Friendship Block exchange. People submit patterns or kits for blocks that they want others to make for them. By making blocks for others, we collect points and when we have enough points, we can submit our own blocks for others to make. I enjoy making blocks for other people just to try new things - they vary from a straightforward patchwork blocks with fabric provided, to paper-piecing, or instructions for an improvised block using our own fabrics - almost anything goes, as long as you can convince others to make them!

I've had enough points for a while now to submit my own blocks but couldn't decide what to do. I didn't want to hand out kits with fabric for patchwork blocks - I wanted something that would allow some variation based on other people's design and fabrics. So I finally decided to ask for Paintbox Blocks.

These are blocks based on a quilt made by Elizabeth Hartman and described on her blog www.ohfransson.com. Hers is one of my favorite quilting blogs. She makes really vibrant, modern, scrappy quilts, and although she has a couple books out, she has a ton of free patterns and tutorials on her blog.

These green blocks are the first ones I made as a prototype to try out her instructions. The idea is to match a solid color with prints that are very close in color to the solid. I chose to do her "scrappy" version of the blocks to use more than one print fabric.

I really had fun going through all my fabrics, matching up solid fabrics with prints. The blocks use only small pieces of fabric (the finished blocks are just 6-in. square). So I was able to pull things out of my scrap bag for some of them. I made another set of blocks in grays- each color combination of solid and prints makes two 6-in. blocks. I think the gray ones are my favorite so far!
I ended up making 8 sets of blocks before I ran out of steam.

So for my friendship blocks, I just wrote up the instructions with a couple of diagrams, and decided to let each person use whatever color they want to. This way, I'm hoping to get a good variety of colors, and once I have them all back, I can make more blocks to fill in colors that aren't well represented. So far about 12 of the patterns have been taken by other guild members - I'm hoping to get 20 of them done eventually. The woman who organizes the friendship blocks warned me that it might take a while to get these back! So this is a slowly-evolving quilt, which fits with my quilting style anyway!

If anyone out there would like to contribute to my Paintbox Quilt, you can go to Elizabeth Hartman's website www.ohfransson.com, and look under her "Quilt Along" link for the tutorial on how to make scrappy paintbox squares. If you make me some blocks, I'll make some for you, too! I'm asking everyone to provide, along with the 2 6-in. blocks, the swatch of solid color fabric that they use, for the back of the quilt.

Last night I went to the guild meeting and found that 7 sets of blocks have been done for me - here they are:

(Whoops - the dark blue set got cut off the edge of the photo.)

Looks like I'm off to a good start!

More baby things...

2011-02-03T15:09:00.006-05:00

Emily's house is a treasure-trove of handmade baby items these days. They have so many crafty relatives and friends and Russell is the beneficiary of lots of beautiful things!
This is the baby quilt I made for him. I got the pattern from the book "I (heart) Patchwork". The pattern was for a lap quilt, so it's a bit big for a baby quilt (60 in. square), but I thought the pattern was cute for kids prints, and it can be a nap quilt or floor playmat. The main blue fabric is a cotton/linen blend, which is so nice to work with. It washes up beautifully and is so soft. I'm going to start using it more in quilts. The only drawback to it is that it stretches a bit more than pure cotton, so I was almost afraid to machine quilt it, but I followed the pattern recommendation and just machine quilted straight vertical lines down the rows of squares and it worked well. I used the blue/white/orange color scheme and used various prints for the cross pieces.
I added some hand quilting to define some of the solid blue cross shapes, where two solid ones overlapped. I used embroidery floss and big stitches. It helped anchor together the layers a bit better, too.
This is a quilt that Emily made for Russell. It's from Anna Marie Horner's book of baby patterns (I forget the name of the book). The pattern and instructions for making the wedges of strip-pieced fabrics are not very straight-forward in my opinion, and it ended up with a big "bubble" in the middle when the wedges were put together. Emily and I worked on it when I was there in October - we took apart the wedges and re-cut them with precise angles, then re-assembled the quilt top. Emily then hand-quilted it with embroidery floss and bound it. Isn't it darling? So colorful! And even though we cut it down a bit it's still plenty big for a baby quilt.

From the same Anna Marie Horner book, Emily made this little square bin in the owl print. She's using it for wipes on the changing table. It's one of a set of nesting blocks, intended as toys for the baby, but they make great bins for the baby supplies, too! And in front of it is one of a set of burp rags made by one of Emily's friends. She took a regular cloth baby diaper and sewed a panel of print fabric down the middle section. So clever - and they were getting a lot of use when I was there!

The Three-Year Knitted Quilt

2011-01-11T07:55:00.001-05:00

This is the quilt I knitted. I started it more than three years ago, when I was in a knitting group at my church and someone suggested I knit squares for a Warm Up America quilt. The Warm Up America project collects squares knitted by people all over the country (there are collection bins at most Michael's stores) and then puts them together into quilts and gives them to the homeless.

It was a good project for a beginning knitter like me, since the squares didn't have to be perfect and as long as you used the designated type of yarn and size needles, it was all good. I went to town and knitted a few squares. Then I started to get attached to my work and didn't really want to give up my squares to be integrated with others in a quilt that I would never see. So I decided to make my own quilt. It took me so long, I don't even think the Warm Up America project is around anymore. Besides, Cary said she wanted it (once it started looking good) so I gave it to her.

Another thing I liked about this project is that I got to crochet a little bit, too. I crocheted a black border around each square and then crocheted the squares together, also with black yarn.

The only negative is that it's not reversible. The back looks crappy because the crocheted edging only looked good on one side. It also weighs a ton.

Tree ornament

2011-01-07T00:48:00.002-05:00

I hang this ornament on our tree every year, and this year when I was taking it down, I looked closely at it and noticed how SMALL the stitches are! Who made these?? I think they were shower gifts for one of Diane's showers, but I can't imagine anyone making dozens of these. Does anyone remember who made these? Twenty-seven years, Diane - Wow!!

Christmas pillows

2010-12-15T10:15:00.002-05:00

I made these throw pillows for the Christmas season. I think I got the idea from Martha Stewart, but I couldn't find the article in the magazines or online, so I sort of did it from memory. I think Martha's were stenciled, but I made mine from fabric and ironed them on.

Scarves for St. Anthony's

2010-12-10T15:08:00.002-05:00

Dan and I volunteer at St. Anthony's dining room in San Francisco, serving meals. St. Anthony's also has a shelter, a medical clinic, and lots of other services for people in the city. This year they are having a scarf drive - they want to collect 2500 scarves to give away to their clients at Christmas. I thought it would be a good way to revive my knitting skills, and use up some excess yarn I have around the house.

Yesterday I delivered these seven scarves to them! I knit 5 of them myself, and the pink one and the gold one were done by my quilting friend, Carol, who saw me knitting and said "I have a bunch of old yarn, too!", and promptly knit two scarves to add to the pile. And Emily donated some of the yarn for mine when we were in Baltimore and she was cleaning out her craft room. (She says she's abandoning knitting in favor of sewing!)

I'm hoping that St. Anthony's does the same for next year, since I STILL have a pile of yarn sitting here, and I'm getting the hang of this.

Baby Things

2010-11-30T17:21:00.002-05:00

I've been having such fun making baby things for Emily's baby, and other kids and babies-to-be. These are two "bath buddies" I made from leftover terry cloth (see project #2 below). The pattern was in an issue of Stitch. They have such cute things in there. There are a couple other animal faces to use on these, but since I had blue fabrics, I opted for the bear. I think I'll give one of these to Alex.

These are some hooded towels (and matching washcloth) I made for Emily. I had these two orange prints that I love, but I only had 1/2 yard of each. I started out to make the hooded towel from the pattern on the Purl Bee blog, but that one has the whole towel backed with fabric. I didn't think that made a lot of sense for a baby towel and I didn't have enough fabric for that anyway, so I just got a nice thick, double-sided terry cloth and used the fabric for the hood and the binding.

And this is my version of the baby counting book that Emily made, too - it's also from a pattern in Stitch. I agree with Emily that the pattern for this was really poor. But I just improvised and I love it - I would definitely make it again and just use fusible webbing for all the numbers and shapes.

For the cover, the pattern says to use rubber stamps to stamp the numbers. I couldn't find any stamp ink for fabric, so I used fabric paint. But I didn't trust myself to get it right the first time, so I stamped the numbers on a separate piece of fabric. Then when I had a pretty good set, I sewed that strip to the front and used the rick-rack to cover the seams.

Stay tuned...I'm still working on a quilt and a knit sweater!

Liar!

2010-11-30T09:29:00.000-05:00

I like how Diane tries to pretend she's not crafty
http://just-humor-me.blogspot.com/2010/11/homemade-for-holidays.html

Emily's Redwork

2010-11-04T00:29:00.004-04:00

Quite a few years ago, when Emily was learning to sew and embroider, she and I worked together on some redwork embroidery squares.

I think we ordered the patterns from Better Homes and Gardens. Emily was probably around 12, and we completed some blocks then they got tucked away with all our other unfinished projects. Recently I ran across them, washed and ironed them, and cleaned up a few stray threads - they looked great! So I decided to put them together into a quilt for her and/or the baby. They're a bit girly for a baby boy, so I picked a neutral sashing fabric that isn't too childish-looking. I had 16 blocks that were completed and I used those for the quilt top.

There was one extra block that was bit messy - it was probably our practice one! But I used it for the quilt label. I didn't even know what year to put on the label (!) so I just put that it was quilted this year.

And one good thing about Emily being stranded in CA this past week is that I was able to finish it while she was here!

What I've been working on lately

2010-10-10T07:36:00.003-04:00

As pretty much everybody who has ever heard of this blog knows, I'm pregnant and due in January. The picture above is 4 weeks old already from when I was 21 weeks. Everything looks good in there and you can't see it here but the baby has the Laney ball nose! He's one of us! Here's what I looked like at 24 weeks:

Along with this exciting new development, of course, comes a lot of sewing! I've been working on a bunch of projects and will try to photograph them and post in the next few weeks.

Labor Day Weekend Labors

2010-09-06T18:19:00.006-04:00

I had a fun Labor Day weekend. First I made a purse/backpack from a pattern from Liesl & Co. (Kathy and Reenie have already made these, and I was so impressed that I ordered the pattern for myself.) You can also order the pattern from Purl Soho in NY with the hardware included. My only advice is to order extra rivets -- I messed up several before I got the general idea.
Next, I re-covered a set of dining room chairs for Robbie and Sarah for their place in Boston. We bought the dining room set from a friend, and the chairs were red velvet. I covered them with some pretty Ralph Lauren fabric that I had on hand..... Reenie and Kathy might recognize it from the vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We made some tote bags out of it, and I still had enough left over to cover a set of chairs!

Flea Market Find!

2010-08-16T19:59:00.002-04:00

There's a new antiques and flea market in San Francisco now at Candlestick Park, and Dan and I went on Sunday. I found this Vera Christmas tablecloth - I remember having Vera tablecloths and towels, and scarves back in the 70's. She was a very popular designer back then, known for her bright and modern floral designs. (There was another tablecloth with her bright yellow poppies design - I could swear I owned a linen towel with that design at one point!) I had heard that her designs are being revived. In fact, in New York I bought some file folders with her designs at the Museum shop. I don't think I had ever seen this Christmas design. The tablecloth is quite large, and my first thought is to cut a hole in it and make it a tree skirt - I need a tree skirt! When I got it home I realized that it's not round though, it's oval. Still could do it, but I don't know...anyone have any other ideas for ways to "re-purpose" this??

Last wedding post

2010-08-08T19:35:00.007-04:00

Okay, one more wedding post before I move on to another set of projects entirely.

When I planned my wedding I tried to ignore the traditions that were expensive or frivolous or that I knew would cause me stress. That sounds rational, right? Until I tell you that two of the things I skipped were wedding favors and bridesmaid gifts. Sorry, dear friends and family who traveled to Baltimore on a holiday weekend, but I didn't feel like wrapping Jordan almonds for you!

That's bad enough, but thinking about my best friends who were helping with the wedding and bought a $165 dress that I chose going home without even a momento of the weekend started to feel very selfish. But what could I get for these amazing women who already have it all?And on my budget of no dollars? Like many of my wedding items, I turned to Etsy and found patterns galore for purses that I figured could make to match the bridesmaid dresses. I bought this pattern http://www.etsy.com/transaction/25755640 and tried it for myself. It wasn't quite right so I added 3 inches to the middle and tried again. It turned out really cute and I made 4 moreassembly-line style.

To make it a little more practical (I did make sure it could hold a small camera and phone, but it's still tiny) I packed a nylon grocery tote from Baggu inside too. This was a Martha Stewart suggestion and it broke my cheapness rule, but I kept 2 for myself and I love them, so I'm pretty sure my bridesmaids and bride's man will love them too.

Photo by John Waire Photo

Denyse Schmidt quilt

2010-07-19T14:15:00.003-04:00

I finally finished this queen-size quilt! I wanted a summer quilt for our bed, something light and bright. I love Denyse Schmidt quilt designs, so I decided to make this one from her book "Quilts". She calls it "What a bunch of squares"! I used her color scheme, but added the thin strip of gray around each of the middle squares. And I used all solid colors except for one strip of one of her bright floral prints as a nod to the designer! (You can see it along the bottom of the quilt.)

The blocks are simple and went together well, but I found this huge quilt more than I could handle to machine quilt! I decided to quilt it and assemble it in strips, which I thought would be easier, but it was still really bulky for me to handle on my machine. I quilted it in concentric squares in each block, and despite my best efforts, I ended up with a lot of puckers where the lines of stitching came together. Next time (if!) I will quilt in a continuous design where the lines don't cross to avoid puckers. And in fact if I ever make another quilt this large I think I'll have someone else quilt it on a long-arm machine. I'm just not cut out for it!

All that said, on the bed it's the look I was going for for a summer quilt!

Soft Counting Book

2010-07-09T16:25:00.009-04:00

I made this book shortly after Christmas. It came from an issue of Stitch magazine and my mom traced the pattern pieces and scanned the instructions for me. For such a seemingly-simple project it was very hard to follow the instructions. Some of the shapes are supposed to be appliqued with folded-under edges and some are fused and zig-zagged. The pieces are so small that they really should have all been zig-zagged. I found it very hard to turn 1/4 inch under for the 5 hexagons.

Putting the whole thing together was also difficult. The instructions tell you to put the pages together in a different way from the way they are presented in the final product. You make a long piece that has the number 1 and the 5 hexagons on it, then when the book is put together, the hexagons line up with #5. I feel like it would have been better to just make the pages as they are in the final product and bind it some other way. The binding of each page was tough and the edges are all wobbly and uneven.

All that said, I will probably never make this project again let alone try to troubleshoot it's construction.

My friend Hillary likes the book and I'll give it to her so James can learn his numbers with the tiny hexagons. I'm sure he won't be bothered with the fact that some shapes have even edges and some are zig-zagged!

Another Wedding Present

2010-07-07T12:54:00.004-04:00

It's great having handmade crafters on both sides of my family, and not just for the awesome presents

This arrived last week from my uncle Mikel. It is all hand-made. The drawer pieces are all tongue-and-groove and it was hand-finished. It's beautiful. But what is it? It's a replica of an 18th century pipe box. The tobacco goes in the drawer and the tall compartment is for storing a tall ceramic pipe so the pipe doesn't fall over and break. Uncle Mikel specifically discouraged us to take up smoking so we will probably use this for storing keys and any very tall objects that need a new home. Right now it's hanging in our living room and looks great.

Baby Quilts close-up

2010-06-30T16:16:00.003-04:00

I can't figure out how to do some of the blogger things on my macbook, but maybe this picture will be better.

Baby Quilts

2010-06-29T17:36:00.004-04:00

I finished the baby quilts for Brian's cousin Erin and her twin boys with a flurry of hand quilting one Friday evening. I was so intent on finishing that I arrived at Zella's Pizzeria with several pieces of thread and quilters tape on my shirt, pants and arms.

I packed them up and mailed them on June 22nd which happened to be the day the babies were born! Brian's aunt Michele brought them to the hospital so the parents could open them. I will post pictures with little John Kayden and Joseph Kellen as soon as I get some. For now, I think they're getting used to being at home and have not had time for proper photoshoots.

Since the boys are twins, I wanted the quilts to look similar but not exactly identical. Brian is an identical twin but he and Doug are very different and I think their mom did a great job nurturing their individuality, so I didn't want these boys to think I think of them as two of the same person! I used 3 inch squares (my new specialty, apparently) and tried to do blue fading to green on one and blue fading to purple on the other. I also included alternating white squares to make it look more classic and organized. The way they are arranged in the picture, the blue portions overlap so it should flow green-blue-purple.

One thing I didn't realize until I bound them and was packing them up is that the blue one is 13x18 squares and the green one is 14x18 squares so it is a few inches wider. Oops! Luckily, John Kayden was born at 5 lbs. 4 oz, while Joseph Kellen is only 4 lbx. 14 oz., so for now I think John Kayden gets the green one.

We're so happy for Erin and her partner Luke and of course grandma Michele! I'm glad these were done in time to help welcome them into the world.

Wedding Present

2010-06-22T22:22:00.004-04:00

I finally took a picture of the wonderful throw that Kathy gave us for our wedding. It looks great in our living room and we really love it.

The label says "For Emily and Brian, May 2010"

Wedding Crafts part 4

2010-06-06T22:27:00.003-04:00

Everyone who reads this already saw the culmination of all of our efforts on the wedding crafts, but why not post about it anyway?

Big thanks to my bridesmaids who tied napkins, wrote table numbers, and did the flowers both in the hall and the tissue paper ones in the park! And Dan did an amazing job on the corks, ably assisted by my dad who cut the slits in them to hold the placecards. It takes a village, people!

Wedding Crafts part 3

2010-05-22T17:38:00.005-04:00

The table numbers are almost done. I painted the edges with colors corresponding to the place cards last week. Today I painted the faces and soon we just need to add, well, the numbers!

Wedding Crafts part 2

2010-05-20T17:07:00.002-04:00

Ok, cleaning is not the same as crafting, but today I ordered the flowers and finished washing the vases for the table centerpieces.

I have 18 vases and only broke 1 which I think is a pretty good ratio.
These are all from Maya's wedding in October and I'm so lucky to have them and not be scrounging around dollar stores or craigslist right now! In 8 days, we fill them with flowers.

I ordered flowers today from a local flower farm. I got some of everything they had in season including peonies and a bunch of other flowers that I had never heard of. I hope they're pretty!

Wedding Crafts part 1

2010-05-19T14:05:00.004-04:00

You knew that wedding crafts would appear in earnest at some point, right? The count-down has begun and the crafting has begun as well.

These blocks of wood will be table numbers.

These fabric strips will be napkin ties and may someday be a quilt if my crazy plan in which people round up napkin ties for me at the reception actually happens. Hmmm...some of you may be designated fabric grabbers!

So far these projects have been great fun. More soon!

Not Cool Enough

2010-04-25T21:58:00.004-04:00

I saw a great post on Anna Maria Horner's blog about quilting with embroidery floss. I even commented (which I rarely do) that I would try it on my next quilt. Well, my next quilt is one of the twins quilts for Brian's cousin. I thought that I could use the same color of thread for both quilts to help make them more similar to one another, but it turns out I'm not cool enough for colored thread.

As you can see, I have my usual obsessively-tiny white quilting thread on the left and the chunky purposefully-larger embroidery thread on the right. It turns out that I am not open-minded enough for large visible stitches. I'm back to my little white ones and if anybody can use some navy embroidery thread, let me know. I have more than a few skeins :)

2010-04-17T18:57:00.002-04:00

This is a peg-rack using thread spools as the pegs! It was posted to Facebook by Martha Guidosh, a friend of Pam and me who went to school in Hubbard with us. We think it's really cute! I've seen a similar jewelry rack where the spools were used to hang necklaces and bracelets - I was thinking of making one of those for my dresser with some old spools I picked up at a flea market.

more baby quilts

2010-04-06T13:55:00.005-04:00

My love affair with 3 inch squares is apparently not over yet. I started another patchwork quilt (2 actually) but on a smaller scale for some baby quilts. Brian's cousin is pregnant with twin boys, so we figured a couple of similar-but-not-identical quilts would be helpful. Here's a picture of early planning steps on my project board:

Wedding Invitations

2010-04-06T13:50:00.005-04:00

I haven't done any paper crafting in a long time and it was good to stamp and double-sided-tape and arrange things just so on the wedding invitations. All while watching Hulu, of course.

I don't have any pictures of the wonderful envelope liners, so you'll have to see the real thing when they arrive.

Baby Quilt update

2010-03-11T09:40:00.004-05:00

Just wanted to post a picture of the adorable James on the quilt I made for him. I've been helping his parents by hanging out with James on Thursday afternoons and we play on the quilt a lot. This quilt is probably the coolest thing I've ever made and I love that they use it so much!

San Francisco Quiltaway

2010-03-02T20:54:00.003-05:00

Every two years, the San Francisco Quilt Guild sponsors "Quiltaway", a 3-day quilting retreat. I went for the first time this year. It's three days of intense sewing and quilting, culminating in "Sew and Tell" of all the projects! Activities are a mix of group projects, working on charity quilts, classes, silent auction and door prizes, and socializing.

I signed up for a 2-day class on making this paper-pieced quilt, a pattern designed by the teacher, Deb Karasik. She is a paper-piece guru who has patterns and techniques for making this type of quilt, with sharp points. This is HER quilt that the class was based on. We brought the fabrics we wanted to use for the quilt, and everyone in the class had a different take on it -

I decided to make it in a southwest-looking color scheme. I didn't get close to finishing the quilt top in the class, despite hours and hours of working on it! Here's what I got done:

I'm not sure the outer blocks really work, and I might re-do them with a slightly different color scheme. You can probably tell that my blocks are not even sewn together yet - I'm waiting to figure out the final arrangement.

Here are some of the other quilts that people made in the class. We had some real over-achievers in there - one woman stayed up til 2 AM one night to get her top put together!

Another thing I did was participate in a Mystery Quilt, which was fun. It involves following directions given one step at a time, not knowing what the final product will look like til it comes together in the end. Here's my quilt:
Otherwise, I made some charity preemie quilts, and I won 4 beautiful skeins of wool yarn in a drawing! We also had to make little 10-inch quilts to exchange as "souvenirs" of the quiltaway - I forgot to take a picture of mine!

Fun weekend - a luxury to be able to sew and quilt and not cook or keep house for the weekend!

Dan is the man

2010-01-21T19:39:00.002-05:00

Check out the prototype placecard holders that Dan created for our wedding:
#1 is a champagne cork with a slit in the top.
#2 is two corks sewn together and the card goes between the corks.
#3 is a single wine cork cut on one side with a slit on top.

The most amazing thing is that Dan burned (!) in the personalization with our names and wedding date. I think they're awesome but would love your opinions. Which should we choose?

Alex's photo album

2010-01-14T15:01:00.001-05:00

These are the pages for a cloth book I made for Alex. It's a pattern developed by a friend of mine who has a little business designing patterns and selling fabric and kits. This is billed as "Baby's first photo album". It incorporates photos printed on fabric into the patchwork pages. I think it's really cute, though mine didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped. I was disappointed in the quality of the photos printed onto the fabric. I played around with my printer settings and inks and everything, but couldn't get the photos reproduced very well. Anyway, I used the best ones I could get.
We didn't see Kelly, Marc, and Alex over the holidays, but are going down to visit them later this month, so I'll give it to him then.

Printable desk calendar

2010-01-11T11:41:00.003-05:00

If, like me, you've been staring at December 2009 for a couple of weeks now, you might like to replace it with this calendar. It's from the same people who posted the 2009 calendar that I used a LOT. Now I have the desk calendar at my computer desk and my amazing village calendar at my student-interaction desk.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Crafts

2009-12-20T13:37:00.003-05:00

I made a few potholders yesterday when we were snowed in. The two on the left are for Brian's grandma, Rose. The two on the right are for my neighbor. She made amazing peanut butter cupcakes on 4th of July last year, so the patriotic cupcake one is in hopes that she makes them again!

I'm also bringing my quilt home to work on using Mom's quilting sewing machine. I somehow made the backing way too big and putting the "sandwich" together was hard, but I think it will look great once it's done or at least partly done. Wish me luck getting home today and lots of productivity once I'm there!

Baby Quilt

2009-11-28T09:48:00.003-05:00

I finished the baby quilt! And the baby hasn't even been born yet!

Here's a shot of the finished product. Many many small patches. I think the largest patch is 2"x2" and most are far smaller. I started in the middle and worked my way out. After the first few sections, I took Mom's advice and used fusible interfacing underneath the patches to hold them on just a little more tightly.
I fell in love with this quilt and loved putting it together in pieces so that I got to see it evolve throughout the project. No feelings of being let down after the initial design phase was done. I'm thrilled with the way it turned out and Hillary and Jesse seem to love it just as much as I do, so I was very happy to give it to them. I'll try to get a shot of it with the baby when he/she comes next month.

Brian's latest creation

2009-11-25T15:33:00.002-05:00

Brian has been welding lately. He made the metal planter holder that I posted this summer and he just finished this coat rack. It's made of wood from a reclaimed beam from an old building and some metal curls that he cut and welded in place. I love how it looks like it's floating on the wall since the L-brackets are hidden. And I love even more that I have a place to put my work bag, jacket, and scarf when I walk in the door!

Sewing with the Baltimore girls

2009-11-14T00:04:00.001-05:00

Dan and I were in Baltimore for the last week at Emily and Brian's house. We were so busy exploring the neighborhoods, and trying out all the food and drink in the city (!) that we didn't have a lot of time to sew! But I helped Emily put together some of her postage stamp "scrap" quilt. She's using 3-inch cut squares and sewing together strips of 30. I donated some fabric and scraps from my collection to the cause and we managed to get a few more strips put together.

We used the railing in her guest room/craft room to drape all the strips. We didn't get too far arranging them, but had fun admiring all the beautiful fabrics. Izzy enjoyed it, too! She plopped down on the comforter that we were using to lay out the strips and made herself comfortable. She knows how to appreciate a good quilt!

Blogs to Follow

2009-10-30T18:16:00.002-04:00

I found a couple of crafty blogs that I wanted to share, but I don't think I can edit that list at the side of our blog. Here they are:

http://mairuru.blogspot.com/ is by a young Japanese girl who makes small hand-sewn gift-type items. I've tried a couple of the projects but I had difficulty with them - they were so tiny. But I love to read her commentary. She's reall sweet. She writes in broken English and I just love her commentary on Japanese crafts and life.

http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/ has great projects and fabrics and it's updated often.

I'm participating in a Block Party. I've never done one before, but apparently each month everybody in the group makes two blocks for one of us (there are 12 in all) so at the end of your month you have 24 blocks to put together into a quilt. There will supposedly be pictures posted on Flickr at this link:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=tethered%20threads%20block%20party&w=all

or you can just sign into Flickr and search for Tethered Threads Block Party.

Dresser Scarf

2009-10-30T18:07:00.002-04:00

This is done with English paper piecing then appliqued onto the background. I don't usually like to do hand sewing, but this looked easy enough, so I tried it, then did the hand embroidery, and since I had already done all that hand work I decided to hand quilt it too.

Snuglets

2009-10-20T19:59:00.005-04:00

It's officially autumn on the East Coast and that means time to pull out the fleece blankets. Inspired by Maya's creation that I saw on a visit to Pittsburgh this summer:
I made a fleece snuglet (an obvious rip-off of the Snuggie) for Zac. It is his Christmas present from me, but I felt he might need it during football season. Then I remembered he lives in LA and probably never ever needs a fleece anything unless he's trying to pick up hiker babes. Anyway, he likes it and facebook LOVES it.

This is incredibly easy to make. You just make two sleeve tubes and sew them into the holes you cut out. It practically makes itself! I think I made 2 in one hour. Pattern here: http://www.sissonfamily.com/Sewingroom/images/2006projects/thesnuglet.pdf
Thanks, Maya!

ROY G BIV quilt

2009-10-19T20:16:00.001-04:00

Look what my sisters made me! Pam and John are visiting us in San Francisco and Pam brought us this beautiful quilt made by her and Kathy. Pam said that she thought it was appropriate for me, because I taught her the ROY G BIV method of remembering the colors of the rainbow! (I don't remember that, but OK, as her older sister I'll take the credit!) The pattern is from a book called Simple Patchwork Gifts, which I had just gotten out of our library, and was sitting on my coffee table when Pam arrived. It's absolutely beautiful!!

New Project: Baby Quilt

2009-09-27T14:53:00.003-04:00

My friend Hillary is having a baby next month. Like a lot of the new moms I know, she is not going to find out the sex of the baby until it is born. One of the reasons for this decision is to avoid the piles of pepto pink or baby blue items that she worries her friends and family will heap upon her if she told them the baby's sex.

I found a great quilt on the Crazy Mom Quilts blog and Hillary loves it, too, so I'm starting another scrap-based project. Yesterday I made a quilt sandwich of just the backing, muslin for the top, and one layer of bamboo batting. Today I made a bunch of tiny scraps (all smaller than my 3" squares for my other scrap quilt) and pinned a few on.

Here's what it looks like now. None of the edges of the scraps are turned under. The idea is that to quilt just inside the edge of each square and that should be enough to hold it on there. And maybe with successive washes the edges will get nice and fuzzy. We'll see. I think I can get a few squares done before the Steelers game starts this afternoon and maybe a few during half time.

They use it!

2009-09-15T11:11:00.002-04:00

Babies using Laney crafts is my new favorite post.
Alex with his elephant quilt, Sept. 2009

Baby Monster

2009-09-12T19:10:00.002-04:00

Whipup posted a link to this baby monster plushie tutorial. It was very easy and turned out quite cute. This will be a gift for Monika's baby Elise who is 16 months old now.

Copy?

2009-09-03T13:03:00.003-04:00

I found this picture on Re-Nest today.

The artist is named Emily Fischer. Should I steal her ideas? We already share a name and this would be a great quilt for the Engineers in our family.
Link here

2009-09-02T13:09:00.003-04:00

I finally finished Susan's bed quilt. It's made from a pattern in a Kaffe Fassett book, with mostly Amy Butler fabrics.

New Amy Butler patterns

2009-08-31T12:42:00.003-04:00

Check out this new CD for sale by Amy Butler. http://www.amybutlerdesign.com/products/software.php
It's full of patterns - I guess instead of publishing a book, she's just put the patterns on the CD. I LOVE some of the projects shown, especially the quilts. I think I might have to have this CD...I haven't seen it in any of the stores yet so I guess I'll have to start shopping more!

Pom-Poms

2009-08-24T11:15:00.007-04:00

I just got back from a great weekend in New York to celebrate with my friend Jan before her upcoming wedding in October. We threw a little party for her at her apartment and it gave me the chance to try out some decorating ideas I've been thinking of for my own wedding next spring.One of them is the seemingly-ubiquitous pom-poms (or am I the only one who sees these because normal people don't read wedding blogs?). I made them out of folded tissue paper and we unfolded them after they made the bus ride to NYC.
I got to check out the pom pom-making skills of two of my bridesmaids, Jen and Jan, and they did very well. What do you guys think of these?

Are they too casual for an indoor reception?

Rainbow from the garden

2009-08-23T17:58:00.002-04:00

A recent weekday harvest from our deck. I just really liked the color spectrum. I'm not trying to brag :)

Weekend quilting with Lauren

2009-08-18T20:59:00.006-04:00

I spent last weekend at Lauren's apartment, and we spent some of our time (when we weren't at the pool, or the park, or shopping) finishing up the quilt that she is making for her college friend, Heather, who is getting married in September.

Lauren had already finished the center of the top, which has crazy-quilted hearts on a swirly beige background.

We added the inner border, made out of random pieces of all of the fabrics that are in the hearts.

Then she added a pretty purplish-navy blue outer border. Then we drove down to Robbie's house (he wasn't home) and we used his hardwood floors to pin the quilt together.

Taggy Blanket Success

2009-08-11T13:58:00.003-04:00

Another picture of the adorable Gabe Friedman enjoying an Emily Fisher original. Gabe's mom, Erin, reports that he loves the tags and attempts to put the whole blanket in his mouth, which sounds like a great endorsement to me!

Summer Crafts

2009-08-04T20:26:00.007-04:00

This summer, I took on a couple of small projects. The first is a purse made from a Nancy Zieman pattern. The pattern was great, but the accompanying directions were extremely complicated. However, I did manage to get a nice purse out of it.

I got a book out of the library called "Sew Darn Cute", and found a pattern for this little craft apron. It's made of canvas with fabric ironed onto it. I've had this piece of flowered fabric sitting in the basement for a year, and didn't know what to do with it. I think the fabric was perfect for this apron. I especially like the "scissor holster", don't you?

I do what Martha says

2009-07-31T14:04:00.002-04:00

The latest issue of Martha Stewart Living was waiting for me when I returned from my trip to Paris this month. She suggested making coasters out of old maps and I thought this would be a great present for my friend Mindy since we had just finished a wonderful trip together and because I knew she needed felt-lined coasters because cork sticks to her table's surface. I followed Martha's instructions and just glued a layer of felt underneath the cork. They're not exactly uniform in shape, but they include most of the monuments and attractions that we visited and will keep that table ring-free!

Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco

2009-07-20T11:44:00.004-04:00

This year was the second year that the Renegade Craft Fair was held in San Francisco. I loved it last year and went back to see what was new this year. This is a very "crafty" fair with everything hand-made. Most of the vendors are young, and also sell their things on Etsy online. Most of them only have one table of things for sale, but there were over 200 vendors this year, so lots of variety, and some very creative crafts! Some of my favorite things: beautiful letterpress cards and paper products...

...lots of purses and bags of all sizes and shapes - purses, tote bags, etc. There was a lot of Amy Butler fabric and patterns used. The vinyl bags are very similar to the ones that Emily and I made from the patterns in the Denyse Schmidt book. (Hmm....I have some of that vinyl left over!)

I was impressed that quite a few people had hand-made clothes, mostly dresses, and many made with funky fabric combinations.

There are apparently a lot of talented graphic artists out there, putting their designs onto everything from baby onesies, to posters, T shirts, bags, pillows, tea towels, etc....

There wasn't much pottery in this show, but this was one of them and I think it's beautiful!

These were some of my favorite bags - they're made entirely from vintage fabrics (can you tell?!) and they use men's ties as handles, with the tie ends just sewn to the two sides of the bag.
I might have to make one of these myself.

And of course one of the best things about this show is that it was at Fort Mason, which is right on the bay, and it was a beautiful day to be out in San Francisco!

Dress update

2009-07-19T15:38:00.003-04:00

Here's Elise Andrade in one of the smocked dresses I made. I love her model pose here.
The dress got lots of love on Facebook :)

Summer Harvests

2009-07-10T11:39:00.005-04:00

The wild raspberries are ripening near the State Park where we take Izzy on hikes and last weekend I brought back 1.5 pints. They're delicious and I made a great tart with them that disappeared before I could take a photo of it.

In other news, our garden has expanded. Brian bought some pepper plants and more basil to go with my herbs and tomatoes. He also built this window box (deck side box?) for them out of steel. I think it looks great.

And finally my first tomatoes are ripening. I think these two will be perfectly ripe while I'm in Paris next week, so I'll miss them but Paris is a pretty good consolation prize!

Repurposed

2009-07-05T14:22:00.005-04:00

Inspired by these links (lei neckline via WhipUp and flower collar) and the possibility of using up more fabric leftover from the remnants of my fail dress, I "made" this shirt.

Started out by improving the neckline of a rather boring Old Navy black t-shirt:(this project was already a success at this point)
Then I made a bunch of rounded squarish and somewhat-leaf-like shapes. I sewed them together with one running stitch and then gathered them to scrunch them. At first, it was too long:
and looked like I lost part of my lei after some luau drama. I shortened it and it was better:

Brian calls this my shirt with "flair".

Weekend Sewing

2009-07-03T22:26:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago I bough Heather Ross's Weekend Sewing. I was resistant to this book at first, but many of my daily-read bloggers loved it and she was on the Martha Stewart show in a great segment, so I bought it. I used elastic thread for the first time and made bloomers for Sarah's imminent baby girl, plus a cute dress for Elise (Monika's baby and recipient of my first diaper bag creation).
This smocked dress is frighteningly similar to the one Molly is wearing in this picture and it makes me want to try to make the dress that Jedy is wearing in that picture!

they use it!

2009-06-27T00:09:00.005-04:00

Just a quick picture of Gabe Friedman, recipient of one of my changing pads, just hanging out enjoying the changing pad lifestyle.

It's wonderful to see it in use!

Floral Design Day 4

2009-06-25T11:20:00.004-04:00

Last night was our final day of floral design. We got a certificate and a really pretty calla lily to take home, but more importantly we made...the tower.

The tower is a tall glass vase (white so that you can't tell the stems are sticking into a brick of styrofoam) with a ball of stuff on top. First, we start with the greens (above). Then we just stick flowers all over it until it's time to stop.

I find that silk flowers actually look better outside. Here's a picture of them in natural light:

These things cost $50 apiece if you buy them from my instructor. It is $15 worth of materials and about 15 minutes worth of work, tops.
Overall it was a good class, but again, you will not be seeing most of what we learned at my wedding :)

Blankets

2009-06-20T20:43:00.006-04:00

Last week I decided to use some scraps to make a few blankets that I thought could be useful for picnics in the park or perhaps seating for friends with little kids during our wedding (which will also be in the park). We had two blankets when Zac and I were little called the "zoo blankets" because I guess they had zoo animals on them. Anyway, they had canvas backing and were perfect for sitting on the ground.

I wanted to do 3" squares that would be randomly chosen and pieced together. Once I got out all of my fabrics, I found that I have a lot of green/blue and a lot of yellow/pink but not many reds and not many solids, so I modified my randomness scheme to attempt to put every square next to at least one coordinating fabric. I also started doing a little bit of strip piecing to make the process more efficient. Here's what I have so far:

I decided to make each strip 30 squares long, which means I have 4 done and 26 to go!

If anybody has fabric scraps that they are not using or can spare a 3" strip of, please send them to me. I'm running out of scraps and my natural tendency to hoard may stop this project in its tracks.

Thanks in advance for any fabric donations!

Floral Design: Day 3

2009-06-18T19:56:00.003-04:00

Last night was the third and penultimate floral design class and was another exercise in silk flowers. We made sort-of-cascading bouquets in these weird angled plastic holders that made me quadrouply sure that I will do a "normal" hand-tied bouquet of live flowers for my wedding.

The good news is that the teacher liked my composition and didn't adjust it much besides pulling the flowers out a little bit because I tend to shove as many blooms into a small space as possible and it looks better if you just give them some space.

The teacher told us about one bride for whom she made a bouquet of white roses that cascaded down so that it was only 2 inches from the floor. I will add this to the list of floral elements that you are allowed to slap me for if you see them anywhere near me.

next week: reception centerpieces and "the tower". I still don't know exactly what the tower is, but I'll let you know when I find out!

Floral Design: Day 2

2009-06-11T09:46:00.009-04:00

Last night was my second day of Floral Design: Weddings start to finish. We did bouquets. First, we made what I consider a normal bouquet, but it was made of silk flowers. It really doesn't look bad. When Brian saw it he said "Bam. Flowers are done." I don't love it that much, but I'm glad I have an idea of what to do with real flowers for a simple bouquet.

Next, we made a bouquet of real flowers using a bouquet holder. The holder is a sphere of floral foam encased in a grid of plastic and with a plastic handle. It allows you to make a round bouquet if that's what you're into.

This isn't really my cup of tea. Some of the flowers in this ball thing are actually really pretty. The greens are nice and the daisy button poms (I have no idea if that's the real name, but that's what my teacher calls them) are pretty. I brought the few leftover flowers home and made an arrangement that is more me:

Better

2009-06-10T16:35:00.003-04:00

I destroyed my epic fail dress and turned the ruffle into the waistband of a skirt. It's not completely done yet because it is a little too big in the waist and I'd like it to be snug so that my mediocre hem job is less noticeable--see how it's sagging in the front a little bit? This second picture shows the skirt better and the asterisks mark evidence that it's still too big. I had to lead with the other picture, though, because it shows 1) how silly I feel taking my own picture for a blog, and 2) my pile of random fabric on the ironing board. More on that project later.

BIG elephant quilt!

2009-06-05T20:22:00.005-04:00

This is the quilt I made for Kelly and Marc's baby, Alex. I first saw this quilt on the blog house on hill road and thought I could duplicate it. Then a couple weeks ago I was browsing the craft books at the local bookstore, and I saw the pattern for it in the book Quilts, Baby! So I bought the book. I only had two weeks to make a quilt before going down to LA to see Alex and I thought this would be easy. The pattern was really nothing more than I got off the blog - just the outline of the elephant to enlarge, and general instructions. The applique is fused on, and handling that large of an applique is more challenging than I thought. I drafted the pattern directly onto the paper side of the fusible webbing, and had to tape two pieces together to get it big enough. It's hard to tell from the picture how big it is, but the quilt overall is 38 x 54, so that's one big elephant applique!

Once I started playing around with fabrics, I found I liked this color scheme of gray, blue, black, and green, and pulled some fabrics that I had to use. Who would have thought of using gray for baby quilt? The quilt back was part of the pattern in the book, and the fabric is a Denyse Schmidt fabric I found on sale at Peapod Fabrics. I thought I was being really clever to incorporate the quilt label into the strip on the back, then realized that the quilting lines criss-crossed it. It's OK, though. There's another similar quilt by this same designer, Erin Harris, that is a giraffe. Maybe I'll try it for the next baby!

Floral Design Day 1

2009-06-04T14:53:00.005-04:00

As you all know (I think), I'm getting married next year. While I hope that my portion of this blog doesn't turn into weddings, weddings, weddings, there are several projects that I want to do myself and I'll need the input of my crafty family, so you might have to put up with some wedding posts. First, I thought, "Hey, I bet I can do all the flowers for our wedding myself, with the help of some key aunts and cousins. This can't be hard." The next step was to enroll in a floral design class at Community College of Baltimore County. Last night was the first of 4 meetings and we learned about boutinniers. Our instructor is a proponent of fake flowers and rhinestones as well as flower balls, giant baskets, and many other things that are on the opposite side of the design spectrum from Martha Stewart. As you know, I tend to put myself closer to the Martha side. But I did learn some stuff.

Here are pictures of my creations from the first class. They are pretty silly.

Shopping

2009-05-31T14:00:00.003-04:00

I was in New York over Memorial Day weekend and go to go visit Purl Soho in person. I love their blog and they had very cute fabric. It's a small place (about the size of PeaPod, Mom) and they have great Japanese fabric (some of which I could not afford) along with adorable prints (many of which I could afford). I never know how much to buy when I see something that I think is cute but for which I have no project in mind. I went with 1/2-yards. I love my purchases and will definitely be back!

My New Crafts

2009-05-29T17:32:00.008-04:00

Here are some pictures of my latest creations. The tote bags are from the book Patchwork Style, which is one of those Japanese sewing books, but this one's been translated into Engish. It has the greatest little projects in it. I borrowed it from the library, but I'm going to buy it - it's a keeper.

The other bag is an Amy Butler pattern, which I bought when SUSAN AND I MET HER at a local sewing and yarn shop.

The pillow is a shameless knock-off from Anthropologie.

I'm also posting pictures of the quilt Pam and Reenie and I made for Diane and gave her last month. Pam made the best label for the back.

Wish I knew how to arrange the pictures and text on this blog so it looks prettier.

FAIL

2009-05-25T18:24:00.004-04:00

My mom sent me to BurdaStyle a few months ago and it's pretty great. All kinds of cheap or free patterns and advice about sewing and lots of project inspiration. I downloaded the pattern for the "coffee date" dress pictured at the left. Isn't it adorable??? I like the ruffle but it's not overpowering. It looks a little bit like you stuffed a napkin in your collar, but not overly so :) I bought a soft blue-gray linen to make the pattern and here's what I got: Obviously, I have not been styled--do not have cute shoes on and am not posing in a cactus garden of some type, but even if I were, this thing would be hideous. The waist is a critical 1.5 inches above my natural waist. The fabric is too soft and gets lumpy at the seams (see the waistline) and the ruffle looks awful. Luckily, I think I can make the skirt work on its own. I'll keep you posted.

FAIL

2009-05-20T22:43:00.001-04:00

I made a really cute dress that came out really ugly. I'll post pictures if I can convince myself that it will work as a cautionary tale.

UFOs

2009-05-19T17:59:00.004-04:00

One of my resolutions this year was to finish some of the un-finished objects in my basement craft stash. Last week I finished these 2 quilts.

The first one was from a class I took that used Marti Michell templates to make stars. I made one scrappy star in the class, and the instructor took my idea and made a whole quilt out of similar squares. So I bought her pattern and made the quilt. Somehow, I think there was a missed opportunity for me to make some money there.

The red and white quilt is my "garage sale" quilt. I bought all of the red and white fabrics at a garage sale at the home of a woman who obviously had a lot of fabrics in her stash. I used a pattern from one of the quilt magazines that Kathy had on her coffee table. It's a pretty big quilt, and I'd like to put it in one of the kids' rooms (guest rooms), but need to do some painting and floor refinishing first.

Baby Booties

2009-04-16T17:52:00.004-04:00

After a short hiatus from baby stuff, I came back to make these really cute and easy kimono booties from homespun threads. They're made in 2 pieces each and they fold over one another like a kimono. I accidentally made the sole upside down on the one on the far left and I think it's even cuter that way, though one on the right is a better example of how they're put together. I'll give these pairs to Danny and Sarah for their little one due in July and if they use them (do babies ever wear shoes?), I'll add these to my repertoire.

New Dress

2009-04-11T18:11:00.003-04:00

This dress is one of the many projects I fell in love with in Midwest Modern. And of course I had to get Amy Butler fabric to make it. I bought the fabric ages ago and thought I could get it done by Easter, but didn't start cutting out pieces until last Monday! Luckily it was an easy dress to sew and I got to test out my sewing machine's zipper foot and hem foot. If it warms up a little bit, I'll wear it to church tomorrow morning. Happy Easter!

Easter Treats

2009-04-08T21:02:00.003-04:00

I adapted a Christmas cookie recipe for Easter, and though I would include the recipe here. The original recipe is for Christmas wreath cookies, which are green, and have red hots on them to represent holly berries. I had the idea that, without the green food coloring, they might look like bird nests, and jelly beans would look like eggs. I think they came out cute, and they taste good, and are somewhat healthy, too.

Here's the recipe:

30 large marshmallows

1 stick margarine

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 tsp. food coloring (for Christmas wreaths)

4 1/2 cups corn flakes

Melt marshmallows and butter over low heat. Add vanilla and food coloring (if desired.) Stir in corn flakes until coated. Shape into wreaths (or bird nests) and add red hots (or jelly beans.) (It helps if you butter your hands before trying to shape the cookies, because they are sticky.) Let cool on waxed paper for 24 hours.

Lauren's New Old Chair

2009-04-08T20:58:00.004-04:00

Lauren took an old couch and chair with her when she moved to Cincinnati. They originally belonged to John's great uncle Bob, and I think are made of mahogany. The cushions were all ripped and stained, and Lauren chose some fabric and had them recovered. The upholsterer also refinished all of the wood. She just got the chair back while we were visiting last weekend, and it is beautiful! Now I want it back!

More Stuffed Animal Attempts

2009-04-07T10:57:00.005-04:00

Found a very cute pattern for this chicken on Whipup.net here and had to try it. I like that most of these are purposely-funky animals. I felt no pressure to try to make this look like a real chicken. Hence, the teal legs! Plus, babies won't know the difference. Izzy has already given all of the stuffed animals her seal of approval. She's tried to play with all of them and seems to like the donkeys the best.

Another Donkey

2009-04-07T10:54:00.001-04:00

My second donkey is blonde and somewhat less Eyeore-like than the first. Do blonde donkeys even exist?

Stuffed Animals

2009-04-03T19:56:00.004-04:00

After my glorious success (ha!) with the kitty pillow, I found a pattern for this Donkey on Etsy's Storque here. I think it's totally adorable and want to make an entire stable full of donkeys to distribute to kids or Donkey-lovers everywhere. However, it's hard to make something that small and harder to stuff it and make it actually stand up. I'll keep you posted about any new Donkeys that may show up.

Kitty Pillow 2.0

2009-03-29T12:27:00.004-04:00

I don't know who made it, but I have a cat-shaped pillow that was given to me when I was a baby. We've always called it "kitty pillow" and I still use it all the time
After a recent trip to visit friends, I decided to make one for Carmella. She's 8 and loves cats so it seemed like a good, easy gift. Amy Butler has a pattern called "Cozy Kitty" which is like kitty pillow but kind of Japanese looking.
I made the mistake of picking two busy fabrics for the body and face. They both also have circular patterns, so the eyes sort of blended into the face. I tried to accent them with embroidery. I'm not sure it was fully-successful.
Carmella is also becoming interested in sewing, so maybe she'll be able to perfect the pattern :)

Spring Planting

2009-03-12T16:39:00.003-04:00

I'm currently under the illusion that I can successfully grow plants. A few weeks ago I started seeds for basil and cherry tomato plants. Brian was skeptical and said that it was too early to grow plants in Maryland. He also said it was wiser to buy established plants from a garden center instead of starting from seeds. He was wrong about the first part because my seeds are sprouting and we've had warm Spring weather already. I'm trying to prove him wrong on the second point, but that will take months of paying attention to these little guys. I'll keep you posted.

More Baby Stuff

2009-03-11T15:00:00.004-04:00

Another changing pad for another baby. This one is for my cousin Heather who I think is due in May. I also made a couple of more taggy blankets and am officially out of ribbon, so no more babies until I can stock up again!

I also made this hooded towel for Sarah and Danny because I'd love to fill the diaper bag that I made for them with goodies. The pattern was from the PurlBee but they used a bias tape method and I just sewed right sides together, turned inside-out, and topostitched.

San Francisco Quilt Show

2009-03-09T13:35:00.002-04:00

The San Francisco Quilt Guild held its bi-annual show this past weekend. This is the first time I've participated in the show as a member. It was fun, and exhausting (even though I only had to do two easy shifts taking money at the door)! The picture above is my Wednesday sewing circle, which is just a small group of guild members who get together every other week to work on projects together. We made this group quilt by cutting up a picture and each making a quilt to represent one "slice" of the image. Then they were hung up sie-by-side to re-create the picture. Each of us used whatever techniques we wanted to, so each panel is different. It was great fun to put together and seemed to generate a lot of interest at the show. Every time I tried to take a picture of it, it had a group of people standing in front of it. Late on the last day of the show, we all got together for this picture. The members are Priscilla, Dani, Melissa, Dorte, me, and Janelle. Missing is Carol, who is in Australia and mailed us her finished panel from there! The project was Carol's suggestion as we were debating what kind of group quilt we could make for the show.

The only other quilt I entered was this small (24" square) challenge quilt. The challenge topic was "How Green is your Quilt?". I wanted to try this paper-piecing pattern that I found in a magazine, so I made it to represent green trees and used it for the challenge quilt. There were ~20 quilts in the challenge exhibit, with many different interpretations of "green".

There were so many beautiful quilts, of all kinds, in the show that I couldn't take pictures of all of them. This one is one of my favorites, made by the featured quilt artist, Judi Mathieson. I think I'll try to make one like it with some of my Asian fabrics.
These quilt shows are so inspiring - I'll undoubtedly be trying to do more quilting in the days ahead. Maybe by the next show in 2011 I'll be ready to enter a quilt for judging!

Craft-Warming Gifts!

2009-02-24T10:34:00.004-05:00

Last week I got a great present in the mail from Aunt Kathy: an Amy Butler book and 15 fat quarters from the midwest modern fabric collection. It's great timing because I'm ready to make some smaller things after that big bag and I really fell in love with these fabrics while working on the recent baby gifts.

Diaper bag #2

2009-02-17T14:05:00.005-05:00

I finished Sarah's diaper bag last week and I'm kind of in love with it. I used this great Joel Dewberry fabric for the outside and Amy Butler Midwest Modern inside pockets. I love this fabric and I just found out they're having a girl, so the pink is more appropriate.

The accompanying changing pad is also Amy Butler Midwest Modern fabric but in teals and blues just in case it was a boy or so that Danny would feel manly while changing diapers :)

Group Quilt - my part is done!

2009-02-07T15:02:00.005-05:00

If you remember, my small quilt group is doing a group quilt for our guild show next month. We sliced up a picture, and each of us will do one slice of the picture, then we will hang them all side-by-side to re-create the image. My "slice" of the picture is shown at the left. And now (...drum roll...) I just finished my panel and here it is:

I really had fun doing this. I used a variety of techniques, just doing one section at a time, doing whatever seemed to work for that section. I used a lot of fusible webbing, so the whole thing is stiff enough to stand up on its own! In two weeks, we're all getting together to put the quilt together and submit it for the show. I've seen most of the other sections in progress, and it's amazing how well they flow together! Of course we're all a bit nervous about how it will look and line up once we get all 7 sections together. So far it looks great, though! Stay tuned for the finished product.

Baby Gifts

2009-02-06T14:52:00.003-05:00

This is the taggy blanket. As my friends have started to have babies, I've learned a lot. For instance, babies seem to love the silky tags found on blankets, clothing, toys, etc. Like the old story in which a kid is more interested in the box than the toy inside, babies seem to like tags as much as the toys to which they're attached. The solution: cut out the toy and give babies what they want--lots of tags.
I made this blanket for my friends Erin and Mike, who are having a baby in May. It is small (baby-sized?), only about 18x20" made of flannel and an assortment of silky ribbons that Mom and I bought at a discount fabric store in San Francisco.

New Year Print-out Craft

2009-01-22T11:34:00.004-05:00

I found a great printable desk calendar at the vintage glam blog and now I finally have a desk calendar to go along with my outlook calendar, my gmail calendar, and my pile of scrap paper with to-do lists on them. Maybe this year I'll be able to keep dates straight!

More Presents

2009-01-18T10:24:00.005-05:00

I seem to do most of my sewing right around the holidays, but not necessarily in time for Christmas. This weekend, I made placemats for my old roommate, Mindy. She bought a condo in Chapel Hill a few years ago and just bought dining room furniture for it. I'm thrilled for her since she no longer has to eat her meals on the couch. I'm also jealous because we still don't have dining room furniture and therefore eat all our meals on the couch!
We found these great fabrics at Whizbang Fabrics in San Francisco. One side has a print of old cars, which I really like and speaks to Mindy's love of cars. The back has fair-trade fabric from South Africa, which we picked up for 1/2 off. I made them smaller than Mom's placemat pattern because I didn't buy enough fabric for 20x16, so I made them 18x13". They seem pretty big, though. I put one layer of felt in between for some bulk and hopefully the ability to absorb liquid better than two layers of cotton alone.
I'll mail them this week and will update later with the answer to the question: Do people use placemats anymore?