A Few Shop Highlights: Quiet Books, Photo Books, and a Quilt!

As I mentioned before, I've been busy making things for the shop lately.  I'd like to share some of the things I've been working on.

First up, I've made a few fabric photo books, each with something new to it.

This book is the first one I've made with an odd number of page spreads.  Because of the way they are put together, I made this one with a binding along the edge.  Yeah, I stitched that baby through 12 layers of fabric.  Any more than that and my machine might have exploded.  

This book was made completely from organic fabrics.  I was more limited in my fabric selections for the inside (I so wish I could show you - but out of respect for my customers, I won't).  I do wish I had used something else for the letters, though.  And don't you love the little family of owls?

This book was made for a family who is adopting a little girl from China.  They had me make this book to send to her in the orphanage while they wait to go pick her up.  How cool is that?  Each page has words in English and in Mandarin. 

Next up is this set of bibs. I tend to make bibs for my shop, but then pull them out because they are difficult to sell (the Etsy market is very over-saturated with bibs right now), and they make the BEST baby shower gifts - particularly since I always seem to have a few on hand.  Why did it take me this long to think of adding rick rack to my bibs???

I was super excited when a customer contacted me on Etsy and asked if I would finish this quilt for her. She had the top finished, just needed it quilted and bound.

Oh, and it was Queen/King sized.  Nothing I can't handle though, right?  ;)

I just did an overall stipple to keep things nice and simple.

I pulled this binding from my stash and it seemed to fit perfectly with the colors and prints in the quilt.  Woot!

Next up, quiet books.
I bought some new buttons and couldn't wait to use them in one of my color books.  Can you spot them?  I'll give you a hint - the new ones are a car, a giraffe, and an elephant. )

I also made a TON of these baby quiet books for Easter/Birthday orders.  Here are two books for Eliza and Kendall all ready to sew into books.

I also got to make these cute books for twins Liam and Quinn.  I don't get to make these bigger books very often (they are a little more expensive), so that was fun.

And lastly - some new Rummy mats.  I actually had two different customer requests last month.

For this mat, my customer wanted something extra long, with beige backgrounds and this touch of ADPi blue.  This Rummy mat is big - 24" by 48".  It was fun to make something a little different.

And lastly, this customer requested some extra personalization in the center of his mat.  It's inspired me to add a personalization option to my listings - soon.  :)

Whew!  What's next?

Aviator | Up and Away Quilt

Several months ago, my friend Emily (CrazyOldLadies) asked me to make a quilt for her to display in our local quilt shop using her most recent fabric line, Up and Away.

Naturally, she picked Lella Boutique's Aviator pattern.  Aren't the airplanes the cutest?

I loved this pattern, by the way.  It's written so that it uses the ENTIRE fat quarter, which I LOVE (also - detailed cutting instructions for the win!).  I hate it when fat quarter patterns have tons of excess left over.  I'd rather just use it all up. 

This quilt told me it wanted crosshatch quilting in the airplanes and swirly/billowy air currents in the backgrounds.  It was a bit of extra work, but I obliged. Thank HEAVENS for matching thread (wink, wink).

To save time (and because this fabric was perfect), we used the same fabric for backing and binding.  I used Cluck Cluck Sew's life changing tutorial and just folded the backing to the front. 

And there you have it!  I made something that is going to hang in a quilt shop!  It was so much fun and I hope I get to do it again someday.  Any quilt shops out there want to hire me?  ;)

Quilt stats:

Started: February/March 2017

Finished:  April 2017

Fabrics: Up and Away by Emily Herrick (plus one or two blenders)

Batting: Not entirely sure - I'm guessing Warm N Natural

Finished size: Approximately 48" x 65"

Recipient: Corn Wagon Quilt Co. (for now)

Methods used: Piecing, straight line quilting, FMQ

Binding: Backing to front

Time to Make: About 14.5 hours

Lisa's Baby Quilt

Yay for baby quilts!  And yay for new babies!

I was so excited when my friend Lisa announced that she was having her first baby.  :)  I immediately hounded her about her nursery colors/theme so that I could make her a quilt.  She requested navy, gray, and lime green with elephants.  Here was the fabric pull I put together for her:

Her husband worked for Boeing for a little while (I think), so the airplanes were perfect.  The castles print reminds me of Lisa because she has been lucky enough to travel in Europe a few times.  :)

She even had a triangle quilt on her Pinterest board - probably for the colors, but I decided to run with that.  Equilateral triangles have been on my bucket list for awhile and I had just gotten a triangle ruler for Christmas, so maybe it was meant to be?

I used this cute (and SUPER SOFT) minky for the back.  Since baby was due in the spring, I decided to try skipping the batting on this quilt.  It worked okay.  I like the light, drapey-ness (why can't that be a real word?) of it, but I almost went bonkers trying to hand sew the binding.  I think next time I'm just going to use batting.  Or maybe a layer of flannel?

Since the greens in this quilt didn't end up quilt as lime-y as I wanted, I picked this bright lime green for the binding.  :)

And there you have it!  My first triangle quilt.  It was fun!

 Quilt stats:

Started: January 2016

Finished: March 2017

Fabrics: Dear Stella (pluses), Up and Away (green airplanes), Flight (navy airplanes), Magic (castles), Equestrian (arrows), and some others I can't remember

Batting: NONE

Finished size: Approximately 44" x 52"

Recipient: Lisa and Baby Boy

Methods used: Triangle piecing, straight line quilting

Binding: Hand Stitched to the Back

Time to Make: About 8.5 hours

WHW RS Sampler Quilt FINISHED!!!

Okay, so this has been finished for awhile now.  I've just been putting off taking pictures.  I now have these two, so we can call this officially finished, right?

For those of you who don't know - back in 2016 I taught a beginner's quilt class to some of the ladies in my neighborhood.  It was tons of fun and I'm hoping to do it again sometime.  Just giving the hubby a little time to recover from all those evenings putting the kids to bed on his own.  ;)

I have an entire page dedicated to this quilt class, with posts and links for every block and every step of the way.  CHECK IT OUT HERE. 

Participants made 12 blocks, each utilizing a different skill which we learned in class that week.  They had the option of making their blocks 12" or 9".  I also wrote up instructions for alternate blocks - different blocks using the same techniques learned that week.

For my quilt, I used a fat eighth bundle of rainbow fabrics from a swap (again through the guild).  There were times when I wondered if all those colors were going to come together in the end, but ultimately I'm calling it a win because it's finished. ;)

I would have arranged my blocks differently, but I REALLY wanted them to be in the same order we made them. 

I made all of "regular" blocks in the 12" size.

I also made all of the "alternate" blocks in the 9" size, for a double sided quilt.  I added the patchwork top/bottom borders to this side to bring it up to size.  I kept the quilting to a simple meander, and bound it with a couple of multicolored prints. 

And there you go!

 Quilt stats:

Started: March 2016

Finished: December 2016

Fabrics: A variety of rainbow prints from a Fat Eighth swap

Batting: Pellon 80/20 Cotton/Poly

Finished size: Approximately 44" x 58"

Recipient: Me.  I'm saving this one in case I teach this class again

Methods used: EVERYTHING!  regular piecing, sliced (disappearing) blocks, strip piecing, HSTs, flying geese, stitch and flip triangles, raw edge applique, foundation paper piecing, EPP, straight line quilting, free motion quilting

Binding: Hand Stitched to the Back

Time to Make: ROUGHLY 20-25 hours?  (NOT including pattern or blog post writing)

Time for Some Catching Up: Smallish Projects of Late

Hi friends!

I've got a few things to share with you, so be prepared for an onslaught of posts from me.  :)

My Etsy shop had a record breaking number of orders in March, which meant that I was pretty busy for the months of March AND April (I even had to close my shop to catch up.  Even now only half of the listings are up).  But I am officially all caught up now and it's time to share a few non-Etsy projects I've finished since... well, December.  ;P

First up are these Vinyl Project Bags. I made these as part of a swap for our Guild back in November.  Check out the tutorial for these HERE:  Thimbleanna Vinyl Project Bag.
I couldn't stop at just one, so I made four.

Funny story - I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it to our November guild meeting, so I dropped these off with a friend to swap for me.  When I went to pick up my new bags from her, I was a little surprised to see one of my own bags (since we were swapping) in my little pile.  I didn't think much of it, though.  I just figured it was because I made so many bags and there weren't a lot to swap around. I was actually pretty happy I didn't have to part with all of mine in the end.  Several months later, I went to use said bag and discovered I had somehow sewn the zipper in wrong, so that the pocket part was completely closed off!  Ha!  I think my friends must have had a good laugh over that one when it came time to swap.  :)  Luckily, this was a pretty easy fix with a pair of scissors.  ;)

Next up is another swap from December.  This time we were swapping Red and Green Mini Mini quilts.  Here is the one I made (if I'm remembering right, it measures about 6.5" square).  I've been dying to try these cathedral windows style hexies for awhile.
I got a cute little wreath shaped Mini Mini in return and I love it. 

My mom has been hinting that she wants a non-Christmasy winter table runner for awhile.  So I whipped this up for her and it was so much fun.   I was inspired by THIS photo on Pinterest, but other than that I just sort of went for it.  This one was a little hard for me to give away...

And finally, I made this football pillow for our family Superbowl Party.  Looking back, I probably should have made the laces much shorter, but there you have it.  My Grandma used to make one like this every year for her Superbowl parties (which were a big deal - Grandma had 7 sons, 1 son-in-law, and a whole lot of grandkids).  Then we would all bet on the final score and the winner got to take home the football pillow.  As luck would have it, I was the winner this year.  ;p

And since I feel the need to document, but not so much the need to take pictures - I want to mention that I also made a few pillowcases (Batman for Jaxson, Superman for Bronx, and Frozen for Adele - the little girl I babysit once a week), a dinosaur crayon roll for Noah, and a car mat (from a panel) for Noah.

The End.  For now.  I'll be back soon with a few bigger finishes.  :)