Work in progress

My nephew will be arriving in about 15 weeks (though his mama is already hoping for a little earlier than that).  It's a miracle that he's even on his way and we're all very excited to meet him, even if he's made this pregnancy absolutely miserable for my sister-in-law. 

I started planning the idea for this quilt as soon as I found out they were having a boy.  It's been surprisingly easy to put together so far.  I'm hoping to get a good chance to sit down and finish it next weekend so I can give it to them at the shower, but here's the quilt top, ready to go once I finish piecing the back together.

It's not perfect.  The corners don't match up as nicely as I would like, but I'm still pretty darn happy with it.  I can't wait until the little guy arrives. 

Baby Blanket

I know I've been a lazy blogger, but we've been super busy around here.  It seems that everyone I know is having a baby right now.  Hubby's cousin just had hers a couple days ago, a friend is due in a little less than two months, my nephew will be here in January and my best friend has one due in April.  That's not including all of the acquaintances that are expecting as well.  So I've been in baby crafting mode during most of my free time. 

I met my friend Tracie at work and we instantly became friends.  When she told me she was pregnant, I was so excited and I knew I wanted to make something for her little one.  I pestered her for a long time to pick a name for her little guy so that I could get started.  I spent last weekend putting this baby together.

 

Please forgive the horrible lighting.  I wanted to get these done quickly so her gift could be wrapped up.  It's soft flannel with monkeys on one side (which sort of matches her theme for the nursery) and a pretty blue on the other.

I added an L for baby boy's name.  It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.  I can't help but laugh when I look at this now because less than an hour after I had completely finished the blanket and cleaned up my sewing space, Tracie texted me to tell me her husband is second guessing the name and says he doesn't like it anymore.  Great timing, eh?  Fortunately, baby's last name starts with an L, so I told her that if they change his name we'll just say it's for his last name.  I also told her she wasn't getting any more monogrammed gifts until after he's here and the name can't change. 

Now just two more months until he makes his appearance and gets to snuggle up.

Blankets and Burp Cloths

Some friends of ours are having their first baby in July.  They're expecting a little girl and next weekend I'm going to a shower for the mom-to-be.  So I spent the other day making some little goodies for her new little one.

I made a simple blanket.

Both sides are flannel.  One is solid pink and the other is white with green polka dots.  I used a yard and a half of each fabric and just made it as big as possible.  I believe it's 38" x 52".  I would have appliqued the baby's first initial onto one of the corners, but as of now they aren't sure how they're going to spell her name. 

Next I made some embellished burp cloths.

These are really easy to make.  I just measured the center section and added about 3/4" on each side.  The fabric started out at about 20" x 6".  Fat quarters would easily give you two or you could use scraps if you have large enough pieces.  Fold the edges under and sew the fabric in place.  I made two with each fabric. 

I threw in a little sundress and a book to complete the gifts.  I can't wait to celebrate this new little baby next weekend and meet her this summer.

Sewing for babies is so much fun and these projects were really easy.  It felt really good to sew again as I haven't done it since we moved seven months ago.  Now I want to keep going.

Painted Onesies

Between my super baby fever and the fact that everyone around me is pregnant I wanted to do some sort of baby craft and I'm procrastinating on the baby quilt.  So, I decided to do some painted onesies yesterday.  They are so simple.  I couldn't believe it.

First, I used my Cricut to cut out some cute shapes out of freezer paper (make sure it's shiny side down).  Then, iron it onto your onesie.  Put some sort of paper inside the onesie, under the design so that you don't have paint going through the fabric.  Fill in the design with fabric paint.  I used puff paint, but painted it on with a paint brush.  I tried a foam brush on this one, but you can see where it pulled at the fabric.

 I used a regular brush on this one and I think it turned out much better.

Then let them dry for several hours and peel off your freezer paper.  Be careful when peeling because it sticks and can peel up the fabric paint if you aren't careful.  Next time I might try peeling it off while the paint is still wet.  

Here's the final product:

Now I just need to figure out who to give them too so I can get them out of my house.  They aren't easing the baby fever at all.

I will be linking this up to Fabric Tuesday at Quiltstory and Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts.

A New Purse

I've been wanting to make a purse for a while and I had the fabrics picked out for the outside, but couldn't decide on the lining.  I've had a lot of free time this week so I finally made a decision and drew out what I wanted.  I put it all together today.

Both fabrics are from the Sanibel line by Henry Glass.  I love this line. 

The lining:

It's not the greatest picture (taking pictures of the inside is always difficult), but it at least shows you the adorable turquoise polka-dot and that there are pockets in the same green fabric as the outside.  I need to work on my pocket skills, but I'm really happy with how this one turned out.  Now I just need to take all my stuff out of my other purse and switch over. 

Craftiness Coming

I am lacking supplies for pretty much all of the projects I want to work on right now.  However, tomorrow I will be making a trip to Joann's, which has a ton of stuff on sale at the moment, and I will be stocking up so I can hopefully work on something soon.  Not having the supplies to do anything crafty is making me crazy. 

In the meantime, inspire me.  What are you working on?  What cool things have you found lately? 

Quickie Pin-Cushion

Now that I've started sewing I really see the use for a pin cushion.  At first I thought I'd just use the little container my pins came in.  Usually that works fine, until I'm reaching in to grab a bunch and I stab myself in the finger.  So I thought I'd make a pin cushion.  I found this little guy and used that as my inspiration.  I left off the button and instead of filling it with fluff I used rice to weigh it down to make it a little easier to use. 


Basically, just patch together some small pieces (2.5x2.5 squares in this one, but you could probably adjust the size to your liking) and once you've got a 2x2 square sew together like you would a pillow.  Flip it inside out then stuff and sew up the hole. 

Ta-da!

Quick and easy and pretty cheap too since I already had these fabrics on hand. 

Vinyl on Canvas Tutorial

I've seen these around the blogosphere lately and I thought it would be perfect for some art in my craft room.  Since we're renting all of our walls are white and I thought they could use a pop of color.

For supplies, you'll need paint

I chose these two colors.  You can do one if you choose, but I wanted the slight color variation of using two.  Brand doesn't matter.

You'll also need a paintbrush.  If you want to see brush strokes, use a standard brush.  If you want a smoother look use a foam brush.  I chose foam.

Pick out some vinyl in a color that you like along with some transfer tape.

Finally you'll need a canvas in your chosen size.  I went with an 11x14 because that was the biggest size Wal-Mart had in stock and I didn't feel like driving to a craft store.

Start with the darker color so it will show through.  You don't really have to worry about making it look good because you'll be painting over it.

As you can see, mine is not pretty.

Then paint over in your lighter coat.  I didn't wait for mine to dry.  I wanted it to mix together a little bit.

Not a huge difference in photos, but in person you can see darker and lighter patches, which is what I wanted.

Then make sure to paint your edges.  You could leave them white, but if you do that you'll want to tape them off at the start so you don't get paint on them.

I wish mine had the staples on the back instead of the sides, but that's all they had and I don't think they'll be too noticeable once it's on the wall.

Then pick your shape.  I used one from the Lyrical Letters Cricut cartridge.  I bought it thinking it was just another font cartridge, but it has some beautiful shapes.  I already knew what size I needed because I'd cut it out of some extra white paper I had laying around.

Cut your shape.  Any cutting machine will work.

Then pull away all of the vinyl you don't want on your canvas leaving behind the backing piece and your image.

These pictures are sort of hard to see because I used white vinyl, but hopefully they'll help.

Then peel off the backing for your transfer tape and put the sticky side against the vinyl.  The instructions say to move your vinyl, but this cut has so many long parts that I didn't want to risk getting it all stuck together so I did it this way.  It worked just fine.

Mine came with a large popsicle stick to help the two pieces stick, but you could use a credit card or something else that is stiff enough to not bend when you apply pressure.

Rub all over your image so that it will stick to the transfer tape.  Then pull back.  If any pieces don't stick just put the tape back and rub with the stick again.  Then place it on your canvas in your chosen location and rub again.  Again, pull back gently and if any part doesn't stay on the canvas just put the tape back and rub again. 

In the end you'll end up with this

I haven't hung mine yet, but I will hopefully get it up in the next week so that I can have something pretty to look at in my craft room.

On a slightly different note, have you guessed my favorite color yet?

Building Things

Today was a very productive day for DH and I.  We got some errands done and then decided that it was time to organize our house a little more.

We started with this,

and this.

Any guesses on what we got?






We got one of these!

I've been wanting to get one of these for a while.  I have so many crafty things that I thought this would be the perfect solution without having to buy a bunch of tools so DH could make me a custom storage shelf.  It was even on sale.

So we spent the day putting it together along with installing a new shelf in the closet of DH's office so he would have some extra space too.  This thing was actually pretty easy to put together.  The instructions weren't the easiest to follow, but the pictures certainly helped.  A husband that understands how to put stuff like this together was helpful as well.

Once it was built, it looked like this:

Those off-colored squares are actually where the wall shows through.  It only has backing for five of the squares.  Please ignore the rest of the mess in the closet.

Then, I spent a couple hours cleaning my craft room, getting rid of stuff, and reorganizing so that this little baby now looks like this:

From left to right, top to bottom we have stamps, scrapbooking tools, fabric, scrapbooking decorations, cards and envelopes, Cricut supplies, random crafts, paint and coloring tools, and pictures and ribbon.  On top is my sewing box, a couple of old disposable cameras that I need to get developed and my iron.

I love having everything in its own little space and it's all so easy to find now.  I just need a better way to store my fabric and I'll be happy. 

How do you organize your crafts?

Working on it

While I haven't fully completed anything on my list lately, I'm working on a few things.

1.  On Saturday afternoon DH carried all of the empty picture frames we have into my craft room and told me that he wanted to put pictures in them.  Mostly, he wanted to use the new laser level he got for Christmas and that seemed like a good way to do that.  We couldn't do all of them.  I didn't realize how many 5x7 frames we had.  Since we have zero 5x7 photos right now we left those for another day.  We did manage to fill these two:

These were wedding gifts from DH's aunt.  They are now hanging in our house and I love having pictures up.  We put up some of our favorites from our wedding.  I wish it would have occurred to me to have DH use his laser level to put up some of the wall art we also got as wedding gifts.  But I'm happy with this for now. 

2.  I started playing around with a calligraphy book that I picked up for DH years ago.  I didn't realize there were so many fonts so I probably won't be learning all of them (although it looks like it would be easy to transfer the shapes).  I will pick one that I like and try to make all of the letters look pretty.  Then I'll declare that one done.  It needs a lot more work.  Some of the letters look nice.  Others do not.  Some look pretty darn sad. 

3.  It looks like I might finally be getting that storage shelf I've wanted for a while now.  Hopefully I can get it soon so that I don't have to have stuff scattered everywhere.

4.  I'm signed up to take a class at the junior college.  I'm waitlisted so I'm not sure if I'll get in.  I'm a little afraid.  I think I can learn the information easily, but the teacher wasn't exactly the friendliest person I've ever encountered.  I'm a little worried.

No-Sew Blanket Tutorial

Yesterday I dragged DH with me to Joann's because they were having some awesome sales and I wanted to get some fabric.  While we were there I picked up some fleece that was on sale and today I used it to make a no-sew blanket.  I've made these before and they were pretty popular a couple years ago.  I love the one I already have, but since DH steals it all the time I thought I'd make another.  These are really easy to make and don't involve a lot of skill so they are awesome for someone who is still learning.  I'm not sure who first came up with the idea, but if this is someone's original idea please let me know so I can give credit.

First, gather your materials.  You'll need two pieces of fleece that measure either 2 yards or 2 1/4 depending on how long you want it.  My first blanket was 2 yards, this is 2 1/4.  You could probably make it longer if you wanted, but this size works for me.

I chose a blue and a light brown that I thought would fit well with the colors in our house.

These are the tools I used.  You can substitute for other tools if you don't already have these.  I used two rulers, my self-healing mat, a rotary cutter and some scissors.  In reality, you could get away with just the scissors, but the rest of the tools made my life a little easier.

Lay out your first color of fleece on a large flat surface.  I used the floor because I don't have a table big enough for the whole thing to lay out.  Then line up the second piece of fleece on top of it.  They might be slightly different sizes, but they should be fairly close.  Smooth out both pieces.

Once smooth, I used my mat underneath both layers of fabric and used the rotary cutter and ruler to cut off the edges and make the two pieces line up perfectly.  You could also use scissors and just eyeball it.

Then use the ruler and measure every inch or so.  You'll cut a ton of 3" strips out of both fabrics.  I eventually gave up on the ruler and just made sure my cuts were close to an inch apart and about 3" long.  It's not a big deal if they aren't perfect.  You really won't be able to tell once it's done.

Make sure to cut off the corners so that the blanket can be tied together properly.

Then start tying a bunch of simple knots.  They look just like the first step in tying your shoes.  The only thing you have to worry about here is making sure that you don't miss a pair or end up leaving out a strip.

Once you've finished tying them all you're done.  You can tie them twice if you like.  It will help them stay a little bit better when you wash it, but it's an optional step. 

Then enjoy your nice warm blanket.

 This is the blue side of my finished project.  I can't wait to use it tonight.