Wednesday, July 28, 2010

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.

Monday, July 26, 2010

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!

Friday, July 23, 2010

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