Thursday, February 12, 2015

Pillows with my Boys

Every Christmas I help my nephews make something for their mamas. This year I decided we'd do pillows. My younger nephews' mom and grandma both drive dump trucks, so when I got this awesome Busy City paper piecing pattern I knew that would be great! The boys picked out the colors and fabrics and I think they did a great job! The 6.5 year old picked out the pinks for his mom (she does love pink!) and the 9 year old picked some cute ones for his grandma.







For my oldest nephew's mom I decided on a simple heart pattern that I just quickly sketched out. Again, he picked out all the fabrics. After I pieced and quilted each pillow, the boys got to use the sewing machine! I did a simple flap style backing with some cute winter themed fabric, used my new-to-me embroidery machine to create a label right on the back, and let the boys stitch them up! I had fun playing with some of the decorative stitches on the new machine as well, very fun for quilting!



Before stitching into pillow top



Proud boy and happy mama!



Tuesday, February 10, 2015

PMQG Medallion Quilt Finish

I've posted a couple of times about our PMQG project last year. Part 1 and Part 2. Instead of a Block of the Month, we did a Medallion Along. Each month, the five of us officers designed and released a new border for the medallion. It was so fun seeing what fabrics everyone used, and with different options for each round plus everyone choosing different medallion centers, they all came out so unique and beautiful! Here is a link to our Flickr if you would like to see some more!

Here is the finished quilt, hanging at Modern Domestic! I worked my tail off to finish the quilting and binding in time to enter it for our show at Modern Domestic! I free motion quilted a in each round and then bound it in Violet Craft's Domino Dice. I'm so happy with how it turned out and can't wait to get it back! The quilts will be hanging at Modern Domestic through the end of February I believe.




And here it is when I finished the top at our January guild Sew Day...


I really love the back I made for it, but don't have a good picture of it yet. I used Anna Maria Horner's Hand Drawn Garden in Sketchbook and pieced in a bit of Momo Avant Garden along with strips of turquoise and purple solids.



Sunday, February 08, 2015

A Boxcar Tote for ME!

A couple weeks ago I won a sewing class to local shop Modern Domestic. And the class was taught by a friend of mine, so that was extra fun! The class was for the Boxcar Tote by Alexia Abegg. I haven't made a ton of bags in the last couple years so I was super stoked! After spending way too long picking out fabric from my stash, I narrowed it down to about 8 fabrics. I only needed 6, so I did some creative swapping with the pattern pieces.

I'm really happy with how it turned out and will definitely make it again! I added a long strap, I like a shoulder strap and the pattern only calls for the small handles. The only thing I don't like is that I used the right kind of interfacing for most of the bag, but a slightly lighter interfacing on the large lining pieces, so the whole thing is just a touch saggier than I like. Lesson learned!









I added a magnetic snap to one of the outer pockets, and divided the other outer pocket into two. (all of the things I changed here were suggested by the teacher! I likes these changes and would do them next time as well)



Inside the bag I divided the inner pocket off-center so the smaller section would easily hold my phone. (again suggested by my friend/teacher)





For the fabrics I used Cotton + Steel, Kate and Birdie, RK Essex Linen in Steel, the alphabet print is Baby Jane, the scissors print is Half Moon Modern, and the main print is from the Handmade line by Macrina Busato. The blue binding is Squared Elements and I have no idea what the tiny aqua dot binding is. Maybe from Joann.

I used another print from the Handmade line a while back on a project for my friend Pam! It's such a cute line, I wish it had received more attention. (I also wish it had a more unique name than "Handmade," it's quite hard to search for and get relevant search returns!)