A Few Recent Makes

Once Cheyanne's Quilt was finished, I got to spend some time on a few little projects.  It always feels great to make something quick after a big project. 

First up - remember the Dresden plate mini I made for my guild swap?  Well, at our meeting one of the ladies mentioned that she had seen someone sew a giant Dresden on the side of a skirt and the idea rooted itself in my brain.  So I made myself a Dresden skirt.  Fabric is from the absolutely gorgeous Bright Sun line by Sherri and Chelsi that I won in a giveaway.  :)

We attended a wedding for our friends (the bride is from Taiwan) and I whipped up these quick "his" and "hers" towels.  I'm really hoping that says "hers" in Chinese...

My nephew turned three, and of course he needed something handmade from me.  I decided on a crayon roll.  

I even included a pocket for a mini notebook.  Now both of my twins have decided they MUST have one of their own.  

I LOVE this fun transportation fabric.

And then Emily Herrick posted about this book on Instagram and I went right out and ordered it because - CRAYONS!  Also, it's an adorable book.  :)

And here are all the bee blocks I've made that haven't made it onto the old blog yet:

For Vickey:

For Jaime:

For Vickey:

 For Kristen:

For Brittney:

For Jaime:

Life is Good (When You're Retired)

This is just a quick post to let you all know I completed my May goal for ALYOF.  :)

My goal was to make something (using scraps) for a friend of mine who is retiring after 24 years of teaching.  She was the teacher who taught next door to me during my whopping 5 years of teaching third grade.  She was a fabulous teacher, mentor, and friend.  She was always so good to let me come in and rant or bounce ideas off her.  She is the kind of person who is absolutely bursting with energy and is constantly on the move.  :)  When things were going well, or when they started to get stressful, she would just brush it aside and remind us all that "life is good."  She was ALWAYS saying that.

Of course, since I HAD to make her something, I decided to go for some embellished kitchen towels.  I traced the alligator (the school's mascot) off of one of our school t-shirts and appliqued everything onto the towels, then added the ruffles.  I was thrilled to finally have a use for this big huge strip of relatively cheap red fabric that I just can't bring myself to use in a quilt.  :)  Hopefully it works okay as a towel...

I'm not sure if my friend is going to be spending more or less time in the kitchen now that she has all that free time, and her kitchen probably isn't red, but she LOVED the towels.  :D

 I'm linking up with Shanna and Melissa over at the Lovely Year of Finishes party:

My goal setting post is HERE.  My entry was #104.


And now for my June goal.  I've been working on these super fun blocks using Geta's "Building Fun" pattern (which is totally on sale until tomorrow!).  The plan for June is to finish up the blocks and sew them into a top.  I'm crossing my fingers that the stripes aren't too busy...

P.S. Don't forget to go vote for your favorite quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!  Voting closes on May 30th!

 You can find my quilt here:  Viewer's Choice
and here:  ROYGBIV

Spring/Summer Table Runner and Towels

Of course, I had to make something for my moms for Mother's Day this year.  For my mom, I had to make another table runner to go along with the fall/winter runner I gave her for Christmas.  This time it was a spring/summer runner.
Unfortunately, I don't have ANY photos from any of the steps along the way.  I must have been too busy sewing!  But I have lots and lots of finished photos...

For the Spring side, I didn't want to spend tons of time coming up with my own original idea.  Fortunately, I had the perfect pattern already available.  I won a copy of Quiltmaker magazine from Ribbon Candy Quilt Company - who is the designer of the super cute "Skinnies" pattern line.  The magazine included a pattern for this "Spring Skinnie."

I adapted the pattern a little bit to make it fit the longer table runner and I think it turned out gorgeous!  It was fun to pull out all my spring color scraps and do some matching.

The entire thing is appliqued, except for the borders, of course.

For the Summer side, I really had no clue what to do.  I searched Pinterest and eventually found this pin on one of my boards that kind of stuck:

Click on picture for link

In the end I decided to go Red, White and Blue - so this runner is perfect for the 4th of July.

Once I had decided to do the Circle of Geese blocks, I sat down with some colored pencils and several small copies of the pattern and experimented with color.  These are the three blocks I came up with, all from the same pattern!

 For quilting, I knew that I wanted something that would work for both sides of the table runner.  Last time I used fusible fleece, so I was able to do custom quilting for each side, then fuse it all together.  This time I wanted to use leftover batting that I already had on hand, plus I wanted a thinner runner.

 I wasn't able to get swirls out of my head so I ended up using Angela Walters Concentric Circles design from her book Free Motion Quilting with Angela Walters.  I was a little nervous about it because I had spent tons of time practicing it on paper and wasn't too impressed with my results.  Happily, the design looks MUCH better once it is actually quilted.  I really love how the quilting turned out.  It is dense, which is good for a table runner.  It also adds a new level of texture without interfering with the quilt design, so it is perfect.

I decided to try my hand at curved corners and they turned out great!  Because of the curves, I used bias cut binding for the first time ever (sheepish grin) and it worked beautifully.  Plus I didn't have to worry about mitered corners!  Score!

I auditioned several different fabrics for the binding - some of which probably would have been amazing, but in the end I went with this blue because it seemed the safest.  I really wanted something that would work well for BOTH sides.

And there you have it.  Another table runner.  It's about 15" x 38"


For my sweet mother-in-law, I embellished a few dish towels.  One can never have too many dish towels (especially my MIL.  She loves dish towels).  These are perfect for summer:

 

I think the watermelons are my favorite.

Up next... Father's Day!