Finished gift

I got it put in the frame a few days before we left for our trip.   I'm very happy with the way it turned out.   I also think I'm done with French knots for a while.  

Auction quilt, done

I love grabbing quilts from the dryer after their first wash.  This time was not a let down.   

And a wedding gift

Another WIP.  A wedding gift for my husband's cousin.  It might get done on the plane ride to the wedding.  *Fingers crossed*  

Another idea from Pinterest.  I'm going to add their initials to the middle of the tree and depending on how much time I've got left, I might add some texture to the tree branches and trunk.  It'll go inside an 11 X 7 picture frame.  

The red circle I drew is a new quilting find.  It's a Pilot erasable gel pen.  The marks go away with a warm iron, great for quilters.  It does retain a white line after you use a warm iron and after you put it in the cold (I experimented at home with scraps in the freezer) but once you wash it, the white ghost mark doesn't come back.  I'm not going to wash this project but possibly just wet and blot the areas where I added the pen marks just to be safe.

Smaller baby hood towels

Since D asked, here's the tutorial for the baby hooded towels.

Humane Society auction quilt

Last year after the auction for a local humane society fundraiser, I mentioned to my dad, one of their volunteers that I would provide something for the auction.  For a while there, I wasn't sure if it was going to happen or not because the person who organized it last year has since left the position.  I made the quilt top from scraps and then kinda just sat on it for a while. 

I guess it's appropriate that it's cat approved seeing where it's going to end up.

I fixed it after Ramses stepped all over it.

And then done.
I added a border and called it a good size for a baby quilt.

Then all of the sudden the auction was back on and I have a deadline.  It needs to be done by April 10th now.  Ack!  

This was the progress after the better part of a Sunday.  I filled and emptied an entire bobbin and then had to call it quits for the day.  I did a little more last night as well before I figured out that one of the white fabrics is MUCH thicker than the others.  It keeps breaking the top thread despite me changing my needle size (I need to make a post about needle sizes after I do some proper research.  After consulting my quilting buddy, I'm going to stick with 70/10 for piecing but 90/14 for quilting and binding).

The inside of the quilt is a loopy overlapping stipple.  The border is going to have larger figure 8's.

Hooded towels

I've made baby towels before but my kids wanted bigger kid hooded towels.  The pattern I used before wouldn't work for bigger kids since it doubled up the hand towel that made the hood.  That made it way too small for their now school aged heads.  A little thinking and testing before I went to cutting and I came up with this idea.

What you'll need,
A bath towel
A hand towel
Pins
Scissors
Ruler
Marking pen or pencil
Sewing machine

First cut off those pesky outside bands off the short sides.  They are really really tough to sew through.  It's not good when you have to sew them into seams.

Fold the two now cut sides together and pin.  I used my favorite marking device, a dress makers chalk wheel and marked in two inches from the edge.  Sew along this line and then

Trim the excess near the edge, leaving 1/4 to 1/2 in seam.

Open up your hand towel,  The seam you just made in in the middle vertically here.

(Pretend you're ignoring all the fuzz that comes off onto the floor as well)

Pin one edge up about 1/2 an inch or so.  The inside of the towel and the seam is showing at the bottom there.   Sew in the middle of your turned edge.

Find the center of larger towel and use a pin to mark it

Lay your hand towel hood with the sewn edge on top (the raw unfinished seam is still showing at the bottom, the same orientation as above) and match up your middle seams placing the larger towel on top of the hood.

Sew along the band of the larger towel all down the length of the hood.  This will enclose the edge you flipped up on the hood.

The kids love their towels and now I'm trying to figure out how to make adult sized hooded towels as well.  I'll report back later on those.

More sewing and more projects coming up.

One more bag

I really try not to have too many projects going at one time.  I needed to get the baby blanket done before I made my sister in law a Nikki bag.  

I added a key ring on some satin ribbon sewn  into the middle of the bag.  I think I'll do this for all the bags from now on. 

Next up for this pattern, I need to add zippers of some kind.  I know it shouldn't be too difficult and there are tons of tutorials out there.

I think I'm going to try a new bag pattern next time to be honest.  I just need something new to work on.  This one, a free pattern from Amy Butler, the Blossom  Bag.

Another nephew

Finished another nephew quilt in 2014.


All washed and crinkly.



The navy and white backing fabric was a whopping 38 inches wide once I took off selvages and got it washed.  Luckily I had some extra blocks that I didn't use for the front that I used to make it wider.



I had pinned a similar pattern but I was able to draft it myself.  The pattern called for little bitty squares and triangles but I tried my hand at improv piecing.  I wasted a bunch of fabric and it really was a stretch to not think so hard at it but it was a lot of fun.

The basics of the quilt were half square triangles, one solid and one patterned and then add really wide sashings between them.