Swap Quilt-The Design

I signed up for Jenna's SewHappyGeek Tablerunner/Wall Hanging Swap and was so excited to make something cool for my partner.  It's actually my first swap ever.  Based on stalking my partner's Flickr profile and inspiration board, I decided to make a fall-foilage wall hanging in some calm, neutral colors.  Very strange for me, something not bright!  Here's the final wall-hanging in case you want to skip right to the meat!

The first thing I did was sketch my general design idea out in pencil on a regular sized piece of paper (in pic, bottom right) then trace it onto a transparency (top right).  I used my old-from-university-surplus overhead projector to enlarge and reverse it, and then traced the full sized pattern on freezer paper.

I decided to use the Caryl Fallert piecing method (described previously here and here), so the next step was to ink the pattern and put registration marks all over it so the whole thing could be reassembled.

Here are a couple of shots of my potential fabric palette;  I wound up going with the pale blue for the background and the bottom right green/brown print for the forest floor.

I decided the three biggest tree trunks should be pieced, the largest with geese and the smaller two just string pieced.  In all cases, I tried to keep the light-dark gradient consistent so that the whole quilt would look like it had a unified light source. I just used a mish-mash of light cream, medium brown, and dark brown scraps for the piecing.  For the skinnier, back tree trunks I used one of Caryl Fallert's gradient fabrics to maintain the same light-dark pattern even though the trunks weren't pieced (you can see them hanging off to the left in the bottom picture.

Up next, the leaves and the quilting!

Swap Quilt-The Pouch

I'm working on writing up a couple of posts about the swap quilt I made for Jenna's SewHappyGeek tablerunner/wallhanging swap, but in the meantime, I thought I'd show some pictures of the pouch I made to send to my partner as a little extra goodie.  I made it based on the same idea as my first pouch, except this time I actually got the measurements correct.  

I definitely want to give a shout out to Anna over at Noodlehead.  Her tutorial for assembling the pouch is pretty much what I've been doing, and similar to what you can find lots of places.  What makes her description way cool and special is that she totally explains how to get the zipper ends to actually work out properly!!  None of my previous ones ever looked quite right, but thanks to her explanation and diagram, they came out great on this one.  I had some problems with the purple quilting thread, it didn't run as smoothly as some of my other thread, but all in all I think the pouch turned out cute.  I hope my partner likes it!

Have you guys learned any tricks lately for stuff that's been throwing you off?  I love when someone finally explains something in such a way as to give me that "light bulb" moment.

Linking up over at

Halloween-The Recent Years

Happy Halloween everyone!

I've always been one of those make-your-own costume people, but in spite of how much I love sewing, I try to minimize costume sewing  (this in spite of the upcoming massive non-Halloween costume sewing I'm orchestrating for a church event, but that's another post).  It seems like I'd just rather make quilts!  So usually my costumes are compilations of things I've sewn and things I've crafted and things I've cobbled together from all over the place.  

In recent years, I've only dressed up if we've had a Halloween party or event to attend since we hardly ever have trick-or-treaters around.  I really do love thinking up fun costumes, and of course the internet is a great source of inspiration.   We're not dressing up this year, but here are some of the costumes I've made from the proverbial "yore".

2010.  I was a fruitfly- drosophila to be exact.  I had fun making it, especially the hat with the big red eyes, and the homemade fly wings but most people didn't get it.

2009.  This was one of my favorite costume years.  Also, since it was the first year Mike and I were together, I was actually able to get him to dress up.  We went as Peanut Butter and Jellyfish (I mean, who doesn't love a terrible pun).  I made his peanut butter shirt and hat, and my jellyfish outfit.  I failed to consider that maneuvering through a party with a large umbrella attached to my head would be difficult, but it was fun all the same.

2004.  Another one of my favorite costume years.  I went as the Madwoman of Chaillot, as portrayed by the incomparable Katharine Hepburn.  I was working at a theater back then and we were allowed to dress up for work on Halloween.  It was a complete blast.  I loved gathering up everything to make all the layers of this costume, especially the hat.

2001.  This year I just went in one of my old RenFaire type dresses.  The year was mostly notable because my then boyfriend had just come here from India and had never celebrated Halloween.  He wasn't too excited about costumes, so I convinced him to go as a Christmas tree; I just sewed a bunch of fake Christmas branches and ornaments onto an old green shirt and there he went.  Sadly, my friends and I tried to host a big party with all the members of our class (~40 people) but not one single person showed up!  The five of us had great fun though.

1997-1998.  These were college years, and while my friend Melinda always sewed fabulous intricate costumes for herself and her now-husband,  I usually just made something up.  On the left- I was some sort of Chemistry-witch-street-salesperson with chemistry supplies hanging inside my cape for any passers-by who happened to need a graduated cylinder.  On the right- I went as the queen of hearts, inspired by Alice in Wonderland.

Hope you guys have gotten a laugh out of some of my crazy costumes.  What are you dressing up as this year?

Bloggers Quilt Festival- Fall 2011 One Hen, Two Ducks

Hi Everybody and Welcome!

Thanks so much to Amy for hosting the Bloggers Quilt Festival,  what a fun way for us to share our stuff!

This quilt is called One Hen, Two Ducks.  Don't bother looking for the ducks, there aren't any!  Since it's sort of an "I Spy" quilt, filled with fun things to find and discover, I named it after an old "I Spy" style poem my sister and I learned long ago.

I started this quilt in a One Block Wonders class given by Maxine Rosenthal, and it's one of my favorites.  The bright color scheme and bright-on-black quilting are fairly common ways for me to work;  I recently made a neutral quilt for a swap and it was a (pleasant) shock to my system not to use crazy saturated colors all the time.

In this quilt, all the blocks were made from this fun Laurel Burch panel, and I left a large black section off to one side so I could include some blocks that didn't coordinate quite so well.

Here's a picture as I was assembling the blocks into rows, and some pictures of some of the regions up close.

My very favorite part of this quilt is actually the quilting.  It was the first really large quilt I'd ever made and definitely the first quilt in which I was brave enough to free motion quilt in bright contrasting colors!  I love these little half-leaf-half-centipedes that crawl all over the black background!

I hope you enjoy my quilt and all the others in the 2011 fall Bloggers Quilt Festival!

Halloween-The Mom Years

I was inspired by Kenda to pull out some old Halloween crafty costume pictures to share.  She has made the best dinosaur costume (I want the tail really bad) for her son and the most clever skeleton costumes for herself and her husband.  Seriously, you should go check them out straight away.

Anyway, my mom is the most crafty art sewing person I know and she always made awesome costumes when my sister and I were little.  I have a few pictures from back then I thought I'd share since I don't have any kids to make costumes for now.  Maybe next year I can dig up some of the others.  I'm not really sure about some of the years; it's awfully hard to judge ages with all the costum-ery on!

c. 1987

c. 1988  That's me during my shirley temple curly hair phase.  The Snow White costume my sister is wearing was the most intricate thing I think my mom ever made us.  It had a bunch of separate pieces (the cape, the collar, the dress- not too mention the rather wretched wig) and was an absolute favorite in the dress up bin until we outgrew it.  Somewhere I have to find some better pictures of it.

c.1989  You can see we definitely reused costumes. Hand-me-downs are the way to go.  Also, yes, I am wearing a pom-pom on my head.

c. 1990  Simple matching kitties that year!

What are your kids dressing up as this Halloween?

Christmas Crochet: The Beginning

I spent a lot of time this weekend working on my swap quilt and it is now almost finished (yay!).  In the evenings though I made a few small Christmas crochets.  I'm pretty picky about not getting out my Christmas decorations too early, but I'm all about doing Christmas crafting and Christmas shopping way ahead.

I borrowed this little leaflet from my mom's stash a couple years back, it was published in 1983 (when she presumably bought it) and although it is falling apart I still have all the pages. It has a bunch of  angel and snowflake crochet patterns which I really love;  I think they are cute and lacy but easy to crochet.  They're meant to be done with skinny white thread, and I've actually made several things out of this leaflet in past years, including the large angel tree topper using the skinny thread.  When I get out my Christmas decorations later in the year I'll show them here.

In the meantime though, what I had was washcloth yarn in some sort of Christmassy colors so I made the small angel ornament.  It obviously came out much bigger than if I'd used the smaller yarn (way too big for a tree ornament), but I think she's cute all the same.  I have her standing on a paper cone in the picture, but I'm not sure how I'll prop her up permanently.  In the leaflet, they suggest sugar starch but I'm not sure that will work on such a large heavyweight yarn.

Then I made "snowflake #3" out of the same yarn combo.  It was sort of balled up at the end, so I blocked it flat overnight.  It looks cute, but is also pretty big.  Sadly, I think it looks more like a trivet than a snowflake, so I think in future I'll stick to the skinny white yarn for the snowflake patterns.

How about you guys,  anyone start Christmas crafts yet?

Sneak Peak of Swap Quilt

I've been busy working away on my swap quilt for Jenna's Sew Happy Geek Tablerunner/Wall Hanging Swap and since it's a secret swap, detailed posts on it will have to wait a while.  So for today, just a quick sneak peak of that project.

And then some pictures of my four legged family members.  I mean, what better blog filler is there than puppies!

This is Bentley, the super lovable SUPER BOUNCY pit bull mix.

This is my sweet pea Bullett, also known as Bratwurst (for his fat sausage shape).  We have no idea what he is, but love him a bunch. Don't let his adorable face fool you,  he and Bentley get into all sorts of trouble together.

And this is Missy the tiny Shih Tzu.  Don't let her cute face fool you either-  she's the boss dog who rules the roost.

I hope everyone has a fabulous fall weekend!