Hoop Travel Bag

I posted photos to Flickr a few days back, but hadn’t gotten a chance to blog about this yet.  I made a hoop travel bag using the pattern I bought from Amanda and Ashley’s shop, The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.  It went together super fast! 

Seriously the hardest part was figuring out which fabrics to use.  I finally settled on this fabric I’ve been holding on to for a few years now.  I got these adorable kitties at Joann’s, designed by one of their in-house designers.  It is one of the better feeling fabrics I’ve encountered there and wish I would have bought more than a yard. 

I picked up the flower fabric, funny enough, when stopping for a quick visit with Amanda this summer.  The two fabrics worked well together.  In interior fabric was some Erin McMorris and was decided upon by chance.  I had Jeni pick a number while Skyping one night, and that was my final choice for a lining.  I’m glad the colors at least work somewhat well.  It was just getting ridiculous how long it took me to pick fabrics.   And the zipper was a perfect match to the lining – bonus! 

This bag has been great for holding my current project and keeping it safe.  I really love it and have plans to make more for friends! 

Little Cottage Mug Rug

In honor of Erin’s Mug Rug Madness Week I thought I’d post about my mug rug I made last month for the Portland Modern Quilt Guild swap. I forgot all about it until I saw the adorable house mug rug that Erin posted about earlier this week. I initially wasn’t going to do the swap because I just couldn’t think of something that I liked. Then one morning, about 4am when my 2 year old decided to wake up, and I put him back to bed, I was drifting back to sleep and all the sudden had a vision of this little mug rug. Once I got up at a reasonable hour, I sketched it out and later designed the template.

I not only liked the shape, but the versatility to do something with the windows and doorway. You could place novelty prints in the windows, use a wood grain print for the door, find window fabric to place in the windows… I could also see little flower boxes appliqued on, and bushes stitched on with embroidery around the base of the cottage. Someone might even be so inclined to stitch on some roof tiles or bricks on the chimney. Even better, at Christmas time make one with a string of lights on the roof and a tree peaking through the window!

I’m linking to the template so you can make your own and I REALLY hope you’ll share a photo of it in my Flickr group so I can see all the different variations. This is one of the things I love about sewing and sharing – seeing all the different possibilities.

{Quick} DIRECTIONS

Download and cut out the basic shape of the Little Cottage Template.

1. Cut out a front and back (making sure to flip the template over to cut out one of the pieces, or just layer your fabrics wrong sides together and cut out both pieces at once). Also, cut out a piece of batting to sandwich inside.

2. Embellish your cottage as you’d like, front and back if you so choose. I used an X-Acto knife to cut out the door and windows and then traced through the opening onto the fabric with a water soluble pen.
3. With right sides together (layered on your batting), stitch around the cottage (1/4” seam allowance) leaving your self an opening to turn right side out. I like to leave mine on the side, but you might like the bottom.
4. Trim the corners and turn right side out, using a knitting needle or skewer to help turn the chimney and poke out the corners. Gently.
5. Press the opening close and pin. Edge stitch around the entire cottage making sure to catch the opening and secure it close.

And that’s it. Really very simple. The hardest part is deciding how to decorate it. I went ahead and did reverse applique for the doors and window because of how quickly that went, but you could do any number of things…like stitching fabric right on top like Syko does in her designs!

Little Cottage Template (PDF)

Bunny Fabric

I totally forgot to share that I also made this cute “Diet Coke sleeve” for Jeni.  In keeping with the bunny theme I designed this little guy, made a repeat and printed him on some inkjet printable fabric sheets.  The sleeve was super easy to make and I basically followed these directions by Make It and Love It.  It went together very quick and I was excited to have one-of-a-kind fabric to make it with.

Gifts For A Friend

I recently made this mini quilt as a gift for Jeni for her birthday.  I have these little hangers with clips on them and think they are perfect for mini quilts…so as soon as I saw them in one of my bins on the shelf, I knew I needed to make one.  I selected the center from a quilt in the book Classic Quilts with Contemporary Style.  It was originally a Japanese publication (2007) and reprinted last year in English.  Because I loved the traditional feel of the block, I wanted to stick with somewhat traditional style fabrics.  I’m very happy with the selection.  The quilt itself was about 6” square.  I did a single fold binding (like this tutorial here) and it always goes so much better on these small projects that my usual double fold for big quilts.  To finish it off, I hand quilted the lighter fabrics.

Among other things, I drew this bunny for her as well.  I created a bunny shape on the computer and then printed it out and doodled inside of it.  Then I scanned it back in and “vectorized” it and printed it on linen paper.  I have an idea to make a few more of these with different animal shapes.  But of course it’s always a matter of having the time to do it.  We’ll just have to see how that plays out.

Guest Posting on Half Square Triangles

I’m guest posting about half square triangles at WhipUp today!  After seeing the awesome video by Missouri Star Quilt Company I wanted to figure out how to size this method of making half square triangles into the sizes I needed for various projects.  So I figured out some vary basic math and charted some of the sizes I tested out.  I have to say that this will be my go to method for making half square triangles for quilt projects now.  It saves so much time and the math to customize it to just the size I need is very, very simple.  So head on over and have a read!

Color Anxiety

The hardest part of quilting for me in picking out my fabrics for a quilt.  I always second guess myself and doubt my choices and ultimately it takes me a week to get started on a quilt purely because of the fabric selection process.  I can go to a quilt shop, pick out fabrics at random, just because I like them, and get home with a stack that works beautifully, without even meaning to.  But when it comes to picking out fabrics for a quilt, I’m totally lost. 

Have you seen Jeni’s The Art of Choosing posts yet?  They have been a big help in making me feel more confident in my color choices.  Not only do I feel more confident, but I feel as thought I’m making educated choices when I go to my fabric cabinet.  I started with a stack of fabric, and it’s still pretty much intact here, but I did swap out a few choices.  Even after I chose my fabric, I still wasn’t sure and snapped these photos to get Jeni’s opinion.  As soon as I loaded the photos onto the computer screen I instantly felt good about my selection.  Somehow seeing the fabrics on screen let me step back from it and see it from a whole new angle.  I loved my choices.  In the future, I will for sure be taking photos after picking fabrics to reassure myself.  It really helped me, and maybe it will help some of you, too! 

For fabric name inquires, click over to this photo and make notes and I’ll answer there.

Linen + Pink + Feathers

When I’m quilting quilts for others I pretty much always know what pattern will work best for the design.  When it comes to my own quilts, I’m usually clueless.  This quilt has sat since July waiting for quilting inspiration to hit.  I really wanted to hand quilt this with a 12 wt. variegated pink thread…  But I also knew I just don’t have the time for that.  So I went with my second love: feathers.

I love adding little swirls and curls as I go along.  It breaks it up nicely and gives it a bit of a doodle effect (which I really like in quilting).  I used a different thread for this as it was still on the machine from the last quilt, which had a minky backing and seemed to like the thinner thread better.  It’s Bottom Line by Superior and very, very thin at 60 wt.  It took me forever to get the tension right on the last quilt so I really didn’t want to mess with it.  I have another new thread coming, so I will have to do some tension adjusting, but hopefully not much as it’s just a 50 wt.  I really like using the poly thread, vs. the cotton, because I can get so much more on a bobbin and have a lot less fuzz in the machine.  I’ve used cotton up to this point, but I think I will be switching to the poly threads from Superior for awhile.  (And I really need to thank Rachel for that who also has a longarm like mine and recommended it to me!)

Something I really love about the Bottom Line thread is how it disappears into the quilt.  You still see the great texture of the quilt design, but not the thread itself.  Sometimes that’s just what I want.  I also really liked that it only took one bobbin for almost two quilts!  I like not having to stop and change bobbins. 

It’s all ready for binding, so once I have that done I’ll share the quilt in it’s full glory!

Paper Pieces

I have been spending a lot of time working on bigger projects lately, and was really feeling I needed to sew something small and useful to energize my creativity today.  I was cutting templates out from paper, and had lots of sizeable scraps left over.  I feel so guilty throwing them away because I can honestly use a scrap of paper from time to time to jot down notes, lists, ideas, measurements…  The problem is I always seem to throw the bits of paper away because I don’t want a pile of loose paper, of all different sizes, laying around.  I always save the big sheets of paper that I don’t end up using for one reason or another, and put them in a file folder to jot on the back of when I’m in a jotting kind of mood.  But sometimes, I just want a small scrap.

That’s when I decided I needed a little box to hold my scraps of paper in on my desk.  And idea began to form.  I began looking around my room trying to figure out what I could use.  Then I had one of those palm-to-forehead moments and realized I could make myself one from fabric.  I have small fabric boxes in my sewing room for sewing scraps, so why not one on my desk for paper scraps? 

I decided on a good size, opened up my Make Your Own Box pattern and went to the worksheet and figured out the sizes I would need.  Then I constructed it like my fabric basket tutorial and in no time at all, I had this simple little {pretty} way to organize all those little pieces of paper.  I am always amazed when the smallest of projects puts the biggest of smiles on my face.