Saturday Stash

Got these fabrics yesterday for a requested pink and black quilt. They wanted bright batiks, but I happen to know they love skulls too, so they will be very surprised and happy when they see the finished quilt! I couldn't believe my luck when I saw the skull fabric in the right colors. It's going to be squares and frames, probably queen to king sized. Why do I keep committing to huge quilts when I'm an all-by-hander??? Glutton for punishment I guess! I am also quilting the gnome homes quilt for a Christmas gift, so I'll have that to show soon.

Toddler Dress and Newborn Pants

I made a little 3 year old dress for Gigi using some gorgeous purple/blue Amy Butler Love! Haven't gotten a photo of her in it yet. I used this free tutorial again from Oliver + S. That's the same tute I used for this pink dress and this blue dress and this orange/brown one. I think I'm a little afraid to try a new pattern! It's not as easy making clothes without a sewing machine.



I also made these little newborn pants with cuffs for our new grandson Kyler. I used this free tutorial from Made by Rae.

Lookin' good, baby.



I really enjoyed making them from Japanese elephant fabric and putting on the little cuffs - no big deal, just like binding a quilt.

Enjoy!

Cabin in the Snow Mini Quilt

I've always kind of wanted to make a mini quilt and so today I did! I made this Cabin in the Snow as a mug rug for a dear friend of mine. It measures 6" by 5". It's a lot cuter in person, it has more depth to the colors and you can see the little swirls in the white on white snow.



I didn't use a pattern or draw one out, I just started making tiny wonky stars by cutting 1" squares and following Sillyboodilly's great tutorial to piece them. Then I just estimated the size of everything else. The door is yellow to show that someone has a light on for you and is waiting by the fire.



On the back I used one of my oldest and most favorite fabrics. It reminds me of the bare branches in the snow of my childhood home, Milwaukee. The tiny 1/4" binding was difficult for me to sew on, witness the terrible corner on the bottom left in the photo!

I am missing fall in my homeland and wish I were soon in a cabin in the snow "up north", which in Milwaukee-speak means "anywhere in Wisconsin that is not Milwaukee".

Enjoy!

Gnome Homes Top Finished!

Hello all! Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. I went through a non-crafty period, but I'm back in the saddle now! I finally finished the gnome home top for my wonderful MIL for Xmas. I fell in love with these gnome homes last year and decided to make my own copy of some of the blocks I saw on the Bee Imaginative Blog, like these and these.


Click any photo to see the detail!


Here are a few closeups for ya. Ooops, I cut off the tree top! Oh well, still like it.


This poor gnome can't even live in his own main floor - it's a jungle down there.


Here's what my stash looks like now in my Ikea Bergsbo cabinet. The five piles on the very top are the only remnants of the quilt store fabric I used to buy before I discovered designer fabric! I have been slowly getting rid of it, and slowly increasing my stash of Amy Butler, Heather Ross, Tina Givens, etc. etc. After the great scrap bucket giveaway from two posts ago, I am down to the three buckets you see here.


How many designers can you identify from this closeup? Click to see bigger.


Here's why I haven't been posting much, too busy enjoying the gorgeous Texas "fall" weather with Mr. Babyquilts and kiddos at McKinney Falls State Park. Gigi says I'm 2 and too tired to walk anymore!

Cheers everyone, hope to post again soon.
Wendy

Three Year Old Dress

I made G another little dress, but this one is a bit bigger, that's why it looks a little funny. I made it in three year old size to last until next summer. The fabric is Arcadia. I used the same free Oliver+S tute as I used for the blue Amy Butler Belle dress and the pink Amy Butler Wallflower dress.


She refused to smile...


...until I brought out Wolf's new kitten! His name is Flash.

Anyone Want Some Scraps???

Ok, I'm finally ready to admit it. I have wayyyyyy too many scraps. I never thought it would come to this. I really didn't. I was actually buying scraps for a while on etsy, but now it's come to the point where I have too many even for me. The SEVEN, yes, seven buckets above are full to bursting with scraps and I want to give some away.



The ones I'm giving away are from these four buckets, my "regular" quilt store fabric scraps. I'm a scrapaholic, but I'm not crazy, I can't part with my all-designer scrap buckets! Three of the buckets are quilting cottons and the fourth is all flannel (the one second from the right with the suns/moons).

Here's all you have to do to get scraps: Leave a comment on this post stating your intent to send a request and I will send you my address. Next, send me the price of a flat rate box and your address and I will stuff it bursting full of scraps and send it to you. That's it. Everything must go! If you're in the U.S., a small flat rate box costs five bucks to send. If you're in Canada or Mexico, it's $11. Any other country is $13. I anticipate being able to send everyone scraps that sends me a request, but if I run out, I'll send your money back, obviously. I love being in a community where people trust each other. Ok ya'll, let the commenting begin!

Hexagon Turtle Quilt

A finish! I've been very busy lately so haven't been able to post on the progress of this quilt, but here it is finished! This was a commission for my dear friend/boss Angela for a friend of hers who is due soon. Angela wanted a giant turtle but didn't know how I would achieve that. Hmmmm. Me neither! I originally thought I wanted to make the turtle shell kind of like a spider web but that meant a hex center with parallelograms and arcs surrounding, and no cutting directions. Huh? Yeah, not that. So I remembered that I'm good at hexagons, having hand pieced literally thousands of them for the feedsack GFG quilt a few years ago, so I tried that and it worked!


I printed a small hex off the internet and blew it up to get about a five inch hex and then made a cardboard pattern from it. Angela wanted ric rac around the edge of the shell and a turned head to mimic the turtles in the Wendy Slotboom fabric I used for the piecing. I made the eye and chin out of wool felt so it could be ironed if desired.


I chose the Amy Butler honeycomb for the background because it echoes the shape of turtle shells and also kind of looks like water rippling, so the turtle is swimming. I outline quilted all the hexagons and used the Slotboom turtle fabric for the backing.


I had to applique the whole thing onto the honeycomb piece, then I cut out the part under the hexes to save it for scrap. It sure would have been a lot easier to applique this thing if I'd had a machine! I kind of thought the edges of the hexes would be cool as the edges of the shell since some turtles look like that, but that wouldn't have worked with the ric rac. So as I desperately searched for something oval that was big enough to trace around, Mr. Babyquilts simply said, "Why not fold it in half like a Valentine heart and cut it even that way?" Smarty. That never even occurred to me. So I did and it worked perfectly.


I was in a super rush for time or I would have done a few extra things like successive rings of outline quilting around the hands and feet to show paddling movement, and I might have embroidered claws on the turtle too. I would have also made a separate binding out of the blue honeycomb instead of having to turn the back to the front for binding, which I consider cheating but is sooooo much easier and faster! Hope you like it. Cheers.
Wendy