More Gift-making

We did not get to see our son's wife and son at Christmas Eve, as our grandson had been sick with a high fever for a couple of days prior.  I got a little more time, then, to finish up a few things for my DIL  However, our younger daughter felt a bit under the weather a couple of days after our gathering and it turned out she has COVID, after 3 years of avoiding it!  I am the only sibling of my family who has not had it yet, amazingly.  Luckily, I am not working this week.

I had leftover Windham fabrics from the Sewtopia challenge--my sister gave me her set.  I decided to make reusable gift bags for my DIL.  She is very consumer-conscious, and a minimalist who avoids having lots of "things" around.  These fabrics were right up her alley, I thought. 

I had already made her a mug mat/hotpad.  The tall fabric bag on the left was my trial effort and I did not do the boxed corners correctly on one end.  I'll keep that one!  The remainder came out very well.  I used a tutorial from Sew Crafty Me. I cut my pieces 9x12".  My boxed corners came out a lot better on this set.  I did not have any ribbon or cording suitable on hand, so went to my local fabric store today, wearing my N95 mask.  I found some striped blue and white cording that I thought would work well. 

I bought 5 yards of the cording, which was very inexpensive.  Hopefully it will hold up to some washing and use.  If not, it is easily replaced through the casings.  Another tutorial I perused did French seams for the bags, but I just used pinking shears on these, as they won't likely get heavy use.  

I love Winter sunsets.  There were lots of clouds moving around tonight and I took many pictures. 

 

This pic was taken only 20 minutes later! 

Sewtopia Palm Springs, Part 4

Sewtopia project #2 was a tablerunner, a cropped portion of the Beachside Bungalow quilt by Kim Brackett, in her Scrap Basket Beauties book.  I had all the block pieces cut and ready to sew.  I needed my husband's help to take a photo of the layout directions in the book, as I had only written down my changes on a piece of paper.  Eventually he got back to me after golfing! By that time I had finished all the blocks. 

Very scrappy but fun.  Most of the fabrics were from a JoAnn's store jelly roll, with some additions from stash.

The "corner" blocks alternated with a "twist" block. There was no further assembly as I will have to figure the  the setting triangle size for the sides.  I am glad all the center pieces got sewn, anyway!

My third project was the Four-patch X by Bonnie Hunter, but I was only able to get one block completed before the end of the last day.  

The pillow cover I made did not win the Windham challenge; I am not sure who won!  The winner was chosen when I was busy elsewhere, I suppose.

There was a great trunk show from Latifah Saafir as well, with lots of HRTs.  She was selling her new HuRTy ruler afterwards. 

Sewtopia swap gifts were on the tables in the morning.  I received a very clever zippered folding tray with goodies inside. 

When opened, it was full of loot. 

A needle minder, needle book, needle setting tool, magnetic pin holder, and mini charm pack.  Thanks, Mandy!

Look at all the Sewtopia loot given and some I took home after we played games.  I did buy the strawberry print yardage and couple of fat quarters in the Sewtopia shop.  

An ironing board cover and several bottles of Soak spray, with a Kona color book were also gifted. 

Finally, I got a couple of birthday gifts, since mine fell during Sewtopia. My sister made me an H-bag. 

Love the sewing theme and the Lucite handles. Kathy cut up and covered used campaign signs for  a sturdy base inside the bag.  Our sister-in-law gave me a beautiful lipstick holder and thread winder butterflies. 

Finally, next year's Sewtopia was announced as NASHVILLE, TN!  I have never been to Tennessee.  Kathy is excited as her daughter and friends from Missouri.can easily visit.  We look forward to another great time put on by Amy and her SEWtopia crew!

Design Wall Monday, April 23

Off my design wall is the doll quilt I'm making for Humble Quilts' annual swap.   Here's the top before sandwiching.

I SMITD it--meaning I Stitched Mostly In The Ditch (ahem). 

However, once I finished the quilting, I felt the large cornerstones were too distracting, so I trimmed them back to 1.5" from the sashing.  I had already made binding so attached that right away.

I'm much happier with the proportions now.  A label is yet to be made and attached, but this will go in the mail this week, hopefully on a lunch hour.

Next on the design wall, because 25+ UFOs are not enough, I started TWO new projects.  One is for a class a guild member is teaching next weekend.  I'm prepping sections to make a quilted Big Bag. I received one in 2014 made by a guild member in a scrap box swap, and these have been widely made by other guild members since.

While many members are using panels of single fabrics, prequilting them for assembly, I decided to make similarly pieced panels for my version, using all of the dotted fabrics in my stash.

I have a LOT of dotted fabrics, one of my stash staples, certainly.  Since this photo I've laid out and sewn two sections of 20 pieces.  Three more to go...Meanwhile, an invitation to a Baby Shower arrived the other week, so naturally I decided to make a baby quilt.  Wanting to use a bunch of charm packs and squares on hand, I chose the Meet Cute pattern designed by Preeti Harris of Sew Preeti Quilts, available HERE in the Moda Bakeshop.  

It is another strip pieced project requiring mixing of patterns and scale and color, my favorite thing.  I'll make four of the 18" blocks for a "Tummy Time" size quilt.  It feels great to be using up scraps and stash.

See more design walls on Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

Good excuse

I have a very good excuse as to why I did not post the promised photos yesterday...I left my camera at the bridal shower I attended yesterday!  But that gave me the opportunity when I picked it up to have a private visit with this happy, about-to-be-married woman, my dear friend Tanya...

...who was extremely excited about a Target gift card here.  She was equally excited about the bag I made for her:

This was made all from fabric I had on hand, from a pattern called Market Fresh in the December Quilts and More magazine.  The orange print was from the Katie Jump Rope line, as was the brown print band on the inside.  It's a good sized bag, 20 inches wide by 17 inches deep, with a squared off bottom to hold lots of stuff and outer pockets on both sides .  I put a cookbook in there.

It took 3 1/2 hours to put this together, including cutting the pieces (twice for the bag front/back when I cut the wrong width! Pesky math again).  The instructions for the straps used midweight sew-in interfacing but if I made this again I would definitely use fusible as it was rather tedious to have to pin and hold the interfacing down the middle of the strap before folding over the opposite 1/4" turned edge to the center and sewing. 

My quilt hanger assisted on a bit of a windy day for the completed top shot.  This is Rick Rack Road from the Fall/Winter 2007 Quilt Sampler magazine, which I started some months ago as told here.

A foot peeking out of the bottom and the neighbor's chimney and trees coming out of the top...a fine composer of  photography I am not, but you all know that already! 

This is the floweriest thing I have ever made but I'm really liking the purples, greens, and other soft colors for Spring/summer.  Batting has been purchased and soon this will turn into a quilt!  I was able to get some sewing done late on National Quilting Day, cutting and sewing the Greenpiece BOM pieced blocks that I have been behind on completing for the past two months.  Next month's batch will be here soon and I have yet to get the wool applique blocks started.  But I do have a plan and that's half the battle of beginning!