Taking a Break.

In case anyone even checks this poor little blog anymore, I thought I would FINALLY make another post. 3 months is probably a long time to go without making a post, huh?!

Thankfully I am past the horribly miserable part of this pregnancy and hoping to enjoy the last few months before baby #2 makes an appearance!

I have lots and lots of projects that I am determined to finish. It is my goal to have NO UNFINISHED PROJECTS by the time baby comes (end of February-ish). With that in mind, I have decided to take a semi-permenant break from custom orders. As much fun as it is to make them, I just don't think I can do that at this time in my life. Someday. When I have older kids, millions of dollars, and my own shop... oh, sorry. I momentarily stepped into dream land.

The focus of this blog will now be tips, tutorials, "show and tell", and other fun stuff like that.

Quilt Club - Optional Applique`

I'm so sorry it has taken me so long to post this. We have been so busy with the holiday and such.

So, here is my optional applique for our quilt. I just felt like mine needed a little more too it... I like the way these flowers turned out and they were really simple!


First, choose which fabrics you would like to use. You will need a VERY thin fusible interfacing also. You can use anything you can find to trace your circles. I used a water bottle, a bowl, and a large cup for the flowers on the right. I just "eyeballed" the one on the left. Anyway, trace your various sized circles onto the wrong side of your fabric.


Now, sew your interfacing to your fabric with right sides facing each other (right side of the interfacing is the sticky side). I did mine by hand because I just find it a pain to sew a good circle with the sewing machine. You just have to go so slow! Make sure that your stitches are really small and close together. You don't want to leave any big gaps or you won't get a good circle.


Cut a slit in the interfacing.


Flip right side out. Now your seam is hidden and the sticky side of the interfacing is on the other side and ready to fuse to your quilt.


Turn off the steam setting on your iron and fuse your "flowers" down. I laid my ric rac slightly under each flower so that it would get fused down as well.




I used a button hole stitch to officially attach my flowers to my quilt. You could also use a hidden stitch or even more simple would be to use a tight zig zag stitch on your sewing machine. I was going for the scrappy/country look and the button hole stitch suited that best. Some sewing machines actually have this stitch setting which is so nice. Mine unfortunately does not.

To attach the ric rac, I just used a coordinating thread and used medium sized stitches. Very simple.

New Quilt Post Coming Soon

My goodness, I'm behind. I know I was supposed to post the next step in assembling our quilt, but I just haven't had a chance to upload all my photos! I promise to try to get it done before the holiday weekend.

My to do list is growing like crazy!

-post new quilt assembly tutorial
-quilt my quilt club quilt and make tutorial as I go
-bind my quilt club quilt and make tutorial as I go
-quilt and bind my "Daddy" quilt (photos soon to come)
-quilt and bind Sophie's quilt that I was supposed to have done for her 1st b-day (see, I'm behind!)
-make a little man's b-day blanket
-assemble, quilt and bind Sophie's bug blanket that she picked out (yes she really did pick the fabric out herself. she saw it as we were standing in line and went crazy over it, wouldn't let it go, and kept shouting BUG over and over again. how can you say no?!)
-1 tote bag order to fill
-2 purse orders to fill and one more possibly coming

There are so many more things I want to try to make, but clearly don't have time! I have made a promise to myself that I will not start any new (personal) projects until I finish these. We'll see. :)

Assembling Your Quilt Part 2

***Correction to Cutting Fabric here***
(Inner Border Strip should be 15" x 2" instead of 12 1/2" x 2")


Before you begin here, go make sure your 9 center squares are SQUARE. Very important!

Also, I think I forgot to mention last time to press your seams down. Some people like to press them open, others like to press them all one direction. I will leave it up to you.

Okay, so let's begin with part 2:
-Take your two 2" x 15" inner border pieces. Sew one on each side of your 9 block center square.


-Press! And if it looks like you need to, square up.
-Now take your two 2" x 18" inner border pieces. Sew one on top and one on bottom.



-Press! Square up!
-Repeat above steps with your outer border pieces.
(you don't have to square up at the end this time because we will do that again after the quilting is done)



Next week I will show you how to do an optional applique you can add to your border. Since mine is white on white, I just felt like it needed a little something more. You may like yours just like it is. That's why it's optional... :) I will also show you how to QUILT your quilt. You can always find someone in your area to do it professionally for you, but really it's not too difficult to do this size of quilt with your sewing machine (or by hand if you're really ambitious).

And sorry for the crummy photos again... I promise to start making sure I can take them during the day so they don't look so crazy!

New Quilt Post Coming Soon

I've been out of town and crazy busy, but I promise that I will post the next steps in your quilt assembly later today!


We will be attaching our small and large borders, so make sure you've got them cut! Back in a few hours...

Show It Off

Ruth posted her fabric selection for our quilt club here. Check it out! Really, really cute!

Anyone else working on their quilt and have pictures to share? If you have a blog, post 'em and let me know so I can link to them. If not, you can email them to me and I will post them here.

This will be so much more fun if we can see each other's creations come together!

Assembling Your Quilt Part 1

So, has anyone started working on their quilt yet? My Mom gave me some great fat quarters and I immediately knew they were going in my quilt. I was really on a roll the other night and got everthing cut out and even sewed a lot of it together! I stopped periodically and took pictures so I could add them in with the "tutorials". Although, it was night and I had to use the flash... I hate using my flash. Oh well.

So, once you have all your pieces cut out it's assembly time! Let's start with the center blocks. Take your nine 5 1/2 inch blocks and lay them out in the order you want them to appear in your quilt. Sew them togeter in strips of three like this:



Now, no matter how hard you try, you are bound to get these a little crooked. So, square up each strip (make sure you have straight lines across all sides).

Then, sew your stips together making sure your center squares all line up.

Now, you want to square this up as well. Trust me. It's worth the extra time in the end!



Wow, these really are yucky photos. Sorry. I hope you got the general idea here!

So, any questions so far?