BIG elephant quilt!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.