Pouches from candy bags

 I attempted to make a zipper pouch today, using the Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial.  You can find that here.  All went well until it was time to turn the pouch right side out.  Then there were major issues:

This tutorial has you quilt your wrapper to batting and lining fabric.  I set my stitch length pretty high, but the shiny vinyl didn't want to feed through my sewing machine very well.  It resulted in a very short stitch length (despite being set at 3.5 on my Baby Lock).  When I attempted to turn the pouch right side out, it tore along several of the quilting stitches.  The stitches were close together, and acted as a perforation.  So, after much frustration, I found a different tutorial, one that didn't include quilting the front and back of the bag.  See this tutorial here.  

This is what I ended up making:

What will I do different next time?  I will not use a clear candy bag!  I purposely put the lining in with the front side inside out, so the cute fabric would show through.  There are other things that I don't like showing through the clear vinyl, like seams, etc.  It's a great tutorial though, and I will definitely use it again.  I do have one more bag of the Kit Kats, but it hasn't been opened yet........ I might have to open it soon and try again!

A few projects

It has been a long time since I've been here!  I have a lot of pictures to show you..... we'll see how this goes posting them!   

I started working on a bullseye quilt, found in this book, Quilts from Aunt Amy, written by the gals at Country Threads.  It's just a few years old...... 

Instead of neutral backgrounds, I decided to go bold, and had the perfect stack of fat quarters to use.  I should have taken a picture of the fat quarter stack, but of course I didn't think that far ahead.  Here are a few of the blocks.  I have 48 of them done, which is exactly what the pattern calls for!

Here are a few of them arranged on the floor.  The top photo was taken with flash.

This photo is taken without flash.  I'd say these are truer colors.

My oldest granddaughter is having a birthday in a couple of weeks.  I made one of these little beds from a Sterilite under the bed tote.  I guess I only have one picture of it to show you..... This should be the right size for an American Girl style doll.

I got her the Chesea doll as part of her Christmas gift.  My pictures posted in reverse order from what I had intended.  So we started with the most recent and working back.  Anyhow, I thought this little Chelsea doll was pretty cute with the sewing machine and dressform.

This one is assembled and ready to go to the quilter.  

I made a plus quilt for a fundraiser for our city's quasquicentennial (125th) celebration.  Ticket sales have started rather slowly.  I am not sure when they will have the drawing.

Not a very good picture here but I made an 18-patch quilt for a friend of mine.  Most of the strips came from our quilt guild's "trash to cash" sale.  Not only did they make this quilt, but also the next one pictured.

The one below is backed in flannel, and so warm and cozy!

This beauty and the best quilt #1 of 2 coordinating quilts that I made for my granddaughters for Christmas.  I made this one first, it is for baby sister, who is 6 months old.  I failed to get a photo of big sister's quilt.  I used theYellow Brick  Road pattern from Atkinson Designs.    

I'll stop here.  I had more photos to post, but not sure where they went when I was trying to add them to the blog!

Quilts and salsa

 I finished a quilt top today!  

I purchased the pattern about 2 weeks ago.  It's from Treehouse Textiles, The Crossroads Quilt.  I got it here.  It goes together pretty quickly, and I love the scrappiness of it.  Of course it barely put a dent in my scraps!  It finishes at about 57"x64", so lap sized.  Of course it could easily be made larger or smaller.  I am planning to hand quilt it, it's time for a new hand quilting project! I will use the #8 pearl cotton.

I also made some salsa today - 2 kinds, tomato and pineapple.  I made a big batch with tomatoes, a friend of mine had given me a bunch from her garden.  All the ingredients used were fresh, with the exception of the jalapeno's.  I didn't have any fresh on hand, so I opened this huge jar of them that I had.  

And here's the pineapple -

I also want to show you a recent quilt finish -

The color looks a bit hazy on this picture.  It really is a vibrant, bright red.  Moda's Bella Solids, Betty's Red.  This is the Dutch Rose pattern.  It was a freebie I found online, and looks a lot like the Swoon pattern that has been quite popular.  This is a late graduation gift for a great niece.  She graduated last year, before all this Covid stuff.  She lives in Arizona, and I'm not too excited to ship it, I'm afraid it might get lost.  Maybe that's irrational on my part.  Anyhow, I think it will have to wait until I can deliver it in person.  I made this with the tutorial found here.  

That's all for now........ more projects in the works and I'll have stuff to blog about again in a few days! 

Random projects from the past few months

I have been keeping busy with projects - working on them in the evening and weekends, as I've still been going to work every day during this pandemic.  Here are some things I've been working on, totally in random order - 

This is a jellyroll race quilt.  It was a jelly roll that I purchased at a quilt show several years ago.  I can't remember the fabric line, or anything about it.  I added the squares.  It was my winter hand quilting project.

This is a quilt I made for a bridal shower gift for my neighbor .  It went together fast, I made it from start to finish in less than a week.  That's the beauty of rag quilts.  They are quick.  The deer heads are appliqued on to random squares.  

The red quilt below is finally at the quilters.  I made this for a graduation gift for my great niece.  She graduated in 2019.  It is similar to Swoon, but it is a free pattern I found online.  When I find it again, I'll link to it!  😀

I had a bunch of solid scraps that I purchased at our quilt guild's "trash to cash" a while back.  It was at least last October, maybe longer ago.  I had seen Bonnie Hunter's Bricks and Stepping Stones pattern (free on her blog) and thought it would work well for these scraps.  It's waiting to go to the quilter.

Many more random projects coming to you in the days ahead.  Stay tuned!

A few projects...  Quilts for babies - one for a baby girl, one for a baby boy.  Both are ready to be gifted.

I love a simple patchwork quilt.  These were made with 2.5" squares.

I am going to see my granddaughter this weekend.  They are moving to a new place.   I thought she could use some new pillowcases.... Ideally the pillowcase in the middle should have had the fabric running the other way, so the overall design would show on the width of the pillowcase.  Unfortunately, I did not have enough fabric to make it that way.  Oh well, it's for a 3 year old, she'll enjoy it just as much this way!

I seem to be obscessed with donut fabric lately.  Look closely, both the pillowcase on the left, and the one on the right are made with donut fabric.  I made a stop at Joann's yesterday, and guess what?  I bought more donut fabric.  

December Projects

I have been busy, working on small projects for Christmas.  I'll share what I can! 

I got this quilt top done, and was hoping it would be a finished quilt by now, but I got distracted by some other projects.  I am planning to hand quilt it, it's not too big, about 40"x 56".  I have it all quilted around the "Noel", and I did keep going, but will need to take a bunch of the quilting out, as it is rather bunched up.  I used Hobbs Heirloom fusible batting, and at first I thought it was working great.  That was until it came loose.  I will need to try and fuse it again, and/or baste it, I suppose.

I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago, and the group of us did a Christmas sock exchange.  Maybe you've seen the idea out there, if not, you can Google it.  Lots of ideas for a game to play and exchange the socks.  Kind of like "dirty Bingo" that we played years ago to exchange white elephant gifts.  Anyhow, I found Frosty the Snowman socks online at Target.  I added my dollar store purchases.  Second photo is Bumpkin, letting me know that my loot passes inspection.

 I also included the mug rug in the photo below.  I have been making lots of mug rugs!

In fact, so many that my finger tips are sore from hand stitching binding....I tend to poke myself with the needle a lot!

I did buy the pattern for the red truck.  It was so cute, I couldn't resist!

I got it on Etsy... it was a PDF instant download.  I got it here.

I also made a few bibs......

Top Rudolph and bottom snowman are for my granddaughter.  The middle 2 I gave to a friend for her 2 grandsons.  They were so fun to make.  I found a free toddler bib pattern online.  The other pattern I already had, and I have used a lot.  This time I made my own bias binding......... (ooohhh fancy!)

Appliques from Shiny Happy World.

Ok, I think that is it for now! I will be babysitting my granddaughter today. She will be 2 next month. I am looking forward to a fun day!

Christmas quilt top finished and house blocks

When I was cleaning the basement a few weeks ago, I found some 9 patch quilt blocks that I made, years ago.  I'm thinking they were made in the late 90's... so about 20 years ago.  Anyhow, I didn't think to take a picture of the blocks alone.

I only had 24 of the blocks, and they were made with 3" squares, so it wasn't going to make a very big quilt.  So, I decided to make some hourglass blocks to use with them.  I had the red plaid on hand, it came from some old stuff that I got when a friend of mine was cleaning out her parents' house.  There was just enough of it.  The off-whites were from my stash too, I used about 4 different ones that I had.  

If you look closely, there are some really old ones in here.  I remember making Christmas stockings for my boys out of some of this fabric.... so that puts it over 30 years old.  And there are some non-Christmas ones as well, I don't know if you can see it in the photo above, but that block in the center, the burgundy colored square has chickens on it.  It truly was a "use what you have" at the time.

The color looks different outside today!  Now to find backing. I'm sure I've got something in my stash, and then I'll need to get it quilted.  I thought very briefly about hand quilting it.  But I don't know when I would get it done.  So off to the long armer it will go.

We are making little house blocks in our block exchange group in the quilt guild I belong to.  There are 12 of us in the exchange.  We each need to make 12 blocks of 2 different houses, so 24 in all.  Here are mine -- they really did go together quickly and were fun to make!

We were instructed to make them in "happy" colors, and we were not to use black or gray.  I can't remember what was said about brown, but I really wanted to use the brown bias plaid for the chimney on the first block, so I did.   Hopefully I didn't break any rules!

I hope you all have a good week, and Happy Thanksgiving!!