Ruthie's Romper, and other things

I'm so excited to have a baby girl! Not only are all the clothes at the store cute, but I can make pretty things for her to wear as well!

I went through my stash of patterns, mostly from Izzy & Ivy Designs, and I only had 1 pattern that was sized for 3 months.  Everything else starts around 12, 18, or 24 months.  Oh well, she will be darling when she turns 1! :)

The pattern I had was Ruthie's Romper.  Oh my gosh, it is so cute!!  It took me a few days to make.  See, I'm a quilter, not a garment/bag maker, so taking a 2 dimensional image and turning it into a 3 dimensional object doesn't click as easily in my brain.  Aside from that little hiccup, the pattern was really well illustrated and written.

Have you been to their blog?  It's so cute and they have some awesome tutorials.  The Ruthie's Romper pattern has you do some shirring at the top of the romper, and I had never done that before.  Their blog had some great tips, links, and info about shirring.  I am now totally addicted.  I'm going to make a couple more things just so I can do it! (dresses, skirts, more rompers....I'll do it if it has shirring!)

Anyway, the romper turned out really great and she looks so dang adorable in it!  Sorry the picture is kind of crappy, but the lighting in her bedroom isn't the best in the morning.  I'm sad you can't really see them, but her socks match the contrasting ruffle of the romper perfectly!

Making this little romper lit the fire under me and I went out and bought 4 different baby clothes patterns.  I love that you can buy separate pieces of baby clothing at the store (Walmart's Garanimals are my favorites).  B has tons of onesies, pants, a few shirts and skirts, etc.  But what she really needs are jackets.  I haven't been able to find any cute baby jackets in my price range (sorry, but I am NOT going to pay $50 for a jacket she'll be able to wear for a month or two), and the jackets that I could find that I kind of liked only came in a set with a onesie and pants to match.  She has tons of pants and onesies.  Literally.  We had to expand her half of the dresser into the drawers in the hall so that all of her clothes had a place to be put away.  (I am not kidding).

So anyway, I went to Joann's and bought some patterns: a couple New Look, a Simplicity, and I think a Butterick (or was it McCall's?).

Correction: I purchased 3 Simplicity patterns and 1 New Look pattern.

 At any rate, I bought some dang cute ones.  I've purchased my fabric, cut out my patterns, and am currently working on making a darling little dress and a pair of pants.  I'll post pictures when they're done.  I'm pretty excited.  :)

What are some of your favorite patterns for kids? I'd love to build up my pattern stash.

Works in Progress

The Wookie

I've been pretty busy lately.  Adjusting to having this darling new little one is a lot harder than I thought it would be!  I guess I thought it'd be easier, since my 5 year old Munchkin can pretty much fend for himself.  Boy was I wrong!!  I haven't had nearly as much sewing time as I'd like to have.  But, what can you do?

I have managed to find time to start several projects.  This year I decided I was going to continue my fabric purchasing moratorium.  Yeah, I know it's going to be hard.  It kills me that I can't buy all the darling fabric out there that is being released.  But, when I complain about it, my husband says "You can save that $10.50 per yard and put it towards our Disneyland trip in November.  Besides, you have 24 drawers FULL of fabric.  Why do you need more?"

It's true. 24 drawers.  He's totally right.  So the fabric purchasing moratorium continues.  The only thing I'm allowed to buy is fabric (mostly solids) to finish off projects that I have most of the fabric for already.  Speaking of solids....Fat Quarter Shop has the best selection of Kona cotton solids, and at an awesome price.  I'm totally in love.

SSS Quilt 2

So one of the projects I started was the Scrappy Plate Club.  I've never done a Dresden plate, but it's been on my "someday I'll make one" list for a while.  When I saw this free BOM, I jumped at the chance to actually do one!  I had a fat quarter stack that was soo cute (Simply Sweet by Barbara Jones of Quilt Soup for Henry Glass Fabrics).  The Dresden plates only used 4 inch strips, 1 of each fabric, so I had all this leftover fabric and no plan.

Until I thought of what I could do with that extra 16 inches of fabric, and I realized I could do 2 (yes, 2!) Surprisingly Super Simple quilts out of the leftovers.  I separated the colors into "really girly" and "could work for a boy" and got sewing.

Of course, it wasn't until after I got the "could work for a boy" quilt top done that I realized it was definitely too girly to give to a boy.  Turns out though that I have a friend having a baby girl later this year, so now it has a purpose, other than just sitting around waiting to be quilted.  :)

SSS Quilt 1

Another project I've been working on for what seems like FOREVER is my husband's t-shirt quilt.  About 2 years ago I went through his closet and pulled out all of the funny t-shirts he had that either didn't fit, he hadn't worn since high school (yes, he still had some of those), or were totally destroyed along the seam lines and completely unwearable anymore.  I stuck them all in a giant white trash bag and shoved it on the shelf in our closet.

Fast forward to last September, when I was cleaning out the closet and found the giant garbage bag full of shirts.  I decided that it would take up less space if I got them interfaced and trimmed into 15 inch squares than if I left them in the garbage bag.  Then, I got this wild hair that I could get it done by Christmas, and I hurried and pieced his quilt top together in November.  Naturally, by the time Christmas rolled around I was too tired and too pregnant to even think about quilting and binding, so it sat in a bag at the shop waiting for its turn.

T-shirt quilt

I finally got it quilted my first week back to work after my maternity leave.  Now I'm working on the binding, and eventually it will get done.

I quilted it with a tight meander, outline quilted the majority of the t-shirt designs, and quilted in a few special things.  Like, on his t-shirt from work (Verizon Wireless) I quilted "Can you hear me now?" It's my favorite shirt block out of all of them.

You can't really tell from the picture, but I backed the quilt in some grey minkee that I had laying around (I had bought 11 yards 3 years ago for $2/yd...killer deal, right?).  I'm binding it in a black/grey swirl print that was leftover from the back of a quilt I did for the Breaking Dawn movie.  I was so proud of myself, because I didn't have to buy anything but the lightweight polyester batting to make this quilt.  Cheapest present ever, whenever it gets done!

Made in Cherry Quilt Along

The last project I started lately was a quilt for our bed.  Have you heard about the "Made in Cherry Quilt Along"?  There's a link in my sidebar, and you should totally join us if you want to!  I used 2 different fat quarter sets that I had laying around.  One had 6 prints and One had 7 prints.  They're Art Gallery "Alhambra" and "French Riviera".  They aren't from the same line, but I thought they coordinated well together.  I bought solids for the background, the backing, and the binding.  It's going to look great when it's quilted.  I'm thinking about doing a cross hatch in the star center and then echoing the star out into the background.  It's going to look cool, I think.

Sorry my picture is so crappy.  I took it at night, and the light in our room is really bad.  I'll take a better picture when it gets finished.  Hopefully it will be day, too, so the light will be a bit better :)

Now that these projects are all done, I'm working on a few others.  Can't wait to share what I'm doing!

And hopefully it won't be too long before my next post! :)

OTOW Challenge, January

So last week I joined in on the One Thing One Week Challenge.  I decided to finish 1 wall hanging that I've been working on for years.  And guess what?!  I did it!!  I finished it!  Just like I wanted to!  I'm so proud of myself.  Usually I set goals and never get anything done, but I end up starting 5 other projects.  This year, I want to finish something every week.  And it doesn't even have to be a big something.  It could just be a block for a QAL or something small like that.  As long as I'm finishing 1 thing a week, I think I'll be okay.

So here it is, my January wall hanging for my calendar at work.  Finally finished.  And hanging up.  (Yes, the fact that it is hanging up is that big of a deal). :)

November OPAM Finishes

I have been super busy this month, which I guess is a good thing! haha  I feel like I've managed to accomplish a lot.  Maybe that's because I had firm deadlines that I had to hit with several quilts I had made tops for.  I managed to finish 6 quilts this month!  I know, totally crazy!!

The first quilt I finished was this one I made for Mother's Day for my grandma.  It had half the binding done, and was sitting on a box in my closet.  Yep, I was that close to finishing it.  I finally bit the bullet, took it downstairs, and didn't move my butt off the couch until that dang thing was finished!!  I'm going to give it to her for Christmas, even though the label says Mother's Day 2011 on it, because Christmas is also her birthday (and I already bought her a Christmas present).

Surprisingly Super Simple quilt

Close up of Strip quilt

The second quilt I finished was a little strip quilt I made for the Breaking Dawn: Part 1 charity showing of the movie I helped with. Colton's Angels did an awesome job, as usual, making it fun and enjoyable.  The door prizes were great, thanks to tons of donors.  You can see a full list of the door prizes here.

I also finished this Surprisingly Super Simple quilt for the movie.  I thought I was so ahead of the game when I purchased my fabric back in October and pieced the quilt tops.  But then they sat at work waiting to be quilted for weeks and weeks.  Before I knew it, it was November 14th and the movie was on November 18th, and neither of the quilts were quilted!  Yikes!  Luckily I was able to pull it out and get them done just in time.

close up of the SSS quilt

I also finished this mail center I designed a few months ago.  I had the binding all attached, but just needed to stitch it down on back.  It seriously probably only took 10 minutes to finish, but it's been sitting in my drawer for weeks waiting to be finished!

Mail Center

I also finished a darling pirate quilt for my son for Christmas.  I was a little stressed that I wouldn't ever get it finished in time.  Usually when I have quilts for Christmas I put off the quilting until Christmas Eve, and then I'm up until 5 or 6 Christmas morning working on the binding.  I was determined not to do that this year, so I quilted the pirate quilt Thanksgiving weekend and attached the binding to the front.  Then it sat in a bag at home on my sewing table.  Last night I was so stressed that Munchkin would see it and ruin the surprise that I pulled it out and got it finished (plus Mike and Marshy cleaned the house and I wanted to put it away in the closet).  It took half of Iron Man 2 and about 45 minutes of Star Trek to get it bound, which isn't bad considering I was also working on laundry at the same time!

Pirate Quilt

In addition to the 2 quilts I made for the Twilight movie, I was also in charge of making the quilt and the tree skirt for the donated tree for Colton's Angels.  Every year we donate a tree and display to Festival of Trees.  Proceeds from the sales of the tree displays go straight to Primary Children's Medical Center.  Our theme this year was "L'il Boys Are Made Of".  We used this darling fabric from Sarah Jane.  It was so perfect for our theme!  I made this quick and easy strip quilt.

Festival of Trees Quilt

 I also made the tree skirt....or in this case, tree pants!  I saw a great tutorial/sew along on Sew-Mama-Sew, hosted by Monica Solario-Snow (of Happy Zombie fame).  The pattern is for tree pants, because not every tree wants to wear a skirt.  I just love that!  And it's true!  I'm kind of sick of round tree skirts, and this pattern was PERFECT for our tree.  I finished it a few weeks ago, luckily, and we took all of our tree stuff up to the South Towne Expo Center in Salt Lake City yesterday and put up our tree.  If you get a chance to go to Festival of Trees, it's well worth the $5 entrance fee.  The Festival runs from Wednesday, November 30 thru Saturday December 3.  It's definitely a fun outing for families, groups, or just by yourself.

tree pants

So, if you've made it this far (haha! sorry it's so long!) you'll realize that I finished 7 things this month!  HOLY COW!!  SEVEN!!!  I don't think I've finished that many in one month for a long time!  Of course, December is going to be totally different.  I'll be lucky if I get 1 thing done.  But hey, 1 thing is better than nothing, right?  :)

More Sewing, and a Reminder

tree pants

 I have been sewing up a storm lately!  I feel so great about getting so much accomplished.  Now if I can just get everything quilted and bound before the end of the year. haha :-)

We (Colton's Angels) are participating in Festival of Trees again.  This year our theme is "Lil' Boys Are Made Of".  I made the quilt for our display last week.  You can see it here.  This weekend (mostly Sunday) I made the tree pants, because not every tree wants to wear a skirt *snicker*.  If you'd like to see what we did in 2009 (don't ask me where the 2010 pictures went. I have no idea!!), then you can see our posts here and here.

I used Monica of Happy Zombie's pattern that she did for the Sew Mama Sew! holiday sew-along.  You can find the pattern and instructions here, here, and here.

donation quilt

You can see all of the darling tree pants that everyone has done on the flickr group.  Can I just tell you all how much I love flickr?  Yeah, it's pretty awesome.  Like, the bees knees awesome.

I also pieced this darling red, black and white quilt top.  We are doing a charity showing of Breaking Dawn this year (we did Eclipse and New Moon previous years).  We are selling tickets for $25 which includes your movie ticket, your donation, and an entry into our door prize drawing.  It is going to be a lot of fun.

This quilt, once finished, is going to be part of the door prizes!  I'm making another quilt for it, too, which should be done later this week.  Hopefully they'll be quilted by next week, maybe sooner. :)

I'm feeling pretty good about how much sewing I've done.  I have a few projects that need to be finished in time for the Sweetbriar Cove Open House on Thursday, but once they are done I will be able to start sewing on my own stuff for Christmas!!  I'm really excited about all the things I have planned for this year.  Now the trick is just finding the time to get it all done.  If you have any tips for getting everything done, I'd love to hear them in the comments! :)

Also, a quick reminder that TODAY is your last day to enter my giveaway.  The giveaway ends tonight at Midnight, mountain time, so make sure you enter! :)

OPAM Catch-Up

I've been slacking off on the reporting of my OPAM finishes.  It's not that I haven't done anything since May, just that I've mostly been on Twitter instead of blogging so I tweet my finishes and never get around to actually posting about them on here.  So today I'm going to make up for that and catch ya'all up on what I've done this summer!

Eeyore cross stitch, June

In June I finished this fun cross stitch.  It was more straight stitching that actual cross stitching, but it was still really fun.  Marshall was really excited when I told him I was making it for his room.  He has the "E is for Eeyore" one hanging on his wall currently.  He loves Winnie the Pooh, and I fell in love with this simple design when I saw it at the store.  Now all I need to do is find a frame that will fit it (it's kind of a weird size) and actually hang it on the wall.  But at least the hard part is done!

Birds Nest necklace, August

I kind of took July off.  I figured I could take 1 month off out of the year, since I know I'm going to be getting things done all the way up until December, what with Christmas and all.

Strawberry pin cushion, August

In August we hosted a day retreat for Salem Days and did all sorts of fun crafts, projects, and sewing things.  We learned how to do the hexi flowers for a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt, we made pincushions, pin holders, burned edge flower pins, birds nest necklaces, and even learned how to make awesome (and easy!) cinnamon rolls.  It was a lot of fun.  Lunch was included, too, and we had lots of trunk shows.  I promise some day I'll actually post about it.  I took a ton of pictures, just haven't gotten around to actually posting yet.

Magnetic Pin Ring, August

 In September, Mike said that I had too much fabric and couldn't buy any more until I depleted my stash a little.  I'm sure it has nothing to do with the 85+ yards of fabric I came home with one day after a $2/yd sale at our local quilt shop.  So, I reorganized my fabric, crafts, WISPs, patterns, and sewing area into something cleaner and more manageable (I now have 24 plastic Sterilite drawers full of fabric, WISPs, and notions).

Bambi soft book, September

I decided that since I had purchased fabric to do a whole bunch of different projects, I'd better finish those up first.  I made 6 quilt tops (but since they aren't quilted and bound they don't count yet) for Marshall and baby.  I finished a quilt top that I thought I had thrown away years ago!  I finished the quilt top I had made for a Mother's Day present (now to get it quilted for Christmas).  I had a random Honey Bun of fabric and sewed it into a quilt top for baby.  I also finished the quilt top and the bag for the Above All Fabric quilt along this past spring.  I found a panel of fabric I had bought to make one of those softy books and whipped it up in about 30 minutes (Bambie, see photo below).  I actually felt pretty productive in September, even though I didn't get a ton finished completely.

Above All Fabric bag, September

I also whipped up a table cloth for our kitchen table, with matching napkins, from a random layer cake that I had lying around.  It's super cute, and I love the bright colors.  I happened to even have some yardage from the fabric line, so it worked out perfectly for me!  I designed and made a mail holder to hang on the wall, too, but it's not quite done yet, so I can't count it.  Maybe next month!

Napkins, September

This month, I've felt added pressure to get things done.  With the holiday season quickly approaching, I know that my personal schedule isn't going to be as open as I'd like.  I'm also worried that when the baby comes I won't have anything ready for her.  What if she comes early?  That's my big concern.  If she comes early, she won't have any quilts, my glider won't be finished, I won't have curtains hanging in the room.

Table Cloth, September

So, as a result, I finished recovering the cushions for the glider we bought back in June at a yard sale.  I bought it from my sister-in-law, Jana.  We had big plans for it.  We were going to totally redo it, but time management got the better of us and all we really accomplished was repainting it black.

finished glider & cushions, October

The cushions have been sitting in the middle of my living room floor for several months.  This week I finally decided to tackle the dang things!  I ripped them apart, made a paper pattern, and quickly pieced together new cushions.  I used Joel Dewberry fabric (that I've had since June!!), reinforced with medium weight interfacing.  On the back cushion I just re-inserted the original cushion with several layers of batting for added padding.  On the bottom cushion I bought a piece of 2 inch foam and squished it in there.  The bottom cushion didn't turn out perfect, but it sure is comfortable!

Floor Pillow, October

I put the whole glider back together last night and it didn't fall apart when I sat in it, so that is definitely a good thing!!  While I was testing it out, I decided that I needed an ottoman or something to put my feet on.  Glider ottomans are Ex-Pen-Sive!  So, what I decided to do was to make a floor pillow instead!  I used this awesome tutorial from Living with Punks (eliminating the handle, since I won't be needing to move it around much).

Yoshi Slug, giving up his guts

When it came time to stuff the thing, I realized that rather than rip into my new bag of stuffing, I could just rip apart Yoshi Slug and use all the stuffing that was in him.  It worked out perfectly!  I even had a little left over, which I shoved into my newer stuffing bag.  Now Yoshi Slug is tucked away neatly in a drawer, not taking up very much space, and the floor pillow is finished.

Marshall was pretty excited when he woke up this morning.  He came running into our room shouting "What's this round thing that matches my chair?  Is it for me to sit on?!"  He then spent the next ten minutes bouncing around his room on the floor pillow.  Glad it's getting some use already!

I have big plans for November, as it quickly approaches.  I'm hoping to actually get several quilts for baby, and other family members, finished, quilted, and bound well before Christmas.  I know, it probably won't get done, but at least it's in my plans!

Costume Fail

THE IDEA:  Mario Riding Yoshi.  I have my husband to thank for this one!

THE PROGRESS:

1. Make up your own pattern.  First I sketched out what I wanted it to look like, then I drew all of the pattern pieces out on white bulletin board paper that I bought at Office Depot for like $7.  I have plenty left over for more projects in the future.
2. Practice with muslin.  Muslin's pretty cheap, especially if you buy it at Joann's with a coupon, so I practiced with some extra muslin I had rather than cutting into my expensive fabric.  (Okay, I got the quilting solids for $7/yd, but still....didn't want to have to go buy more after screwing it up.)
3. Once you realize that the muslin pieces work, do it all again with the real fabric.  Repetitive, boring, but well worth it. 
4. Figure out how to piece the individual components all together.  This was tricky and required some improvisation on my part.  Being a quilter, I am SO not good at 3 dimensional items, so this was a HUGE challenge for me.
5. Stuff the sucker.  This project took a TON of stuffing!  Almost 2 giant bags full.
6. If you do it right, then everything will turn out nicely.  If not, repeat steps 3-5 until you get it right.

Seems like cake, right?  Hahahahaha! Here are some shots (taken with my iPhone 4) of my progress.  I didn't take any pictures of Step 1 or 2, but 3 through 6 are pretty comical ;)

So, first I made the tail.  It turned out pretty good, I thought.  Then I pieced the body together and somehow managed to attache it to the head.  That was really hard.  I don't want to ever do that again!


Then I realized that Yoshi needs arms. Duh!  Brain fart on my part.  I drew up a quick template, played around with some muslin (steps 1 and 2) and then went to town with my green quilting cotton.  I think the arms turned out pretty good.  Again, attaching the hand to the arm was pretty tricky, and I did it twice!  I was pretty impressed with myself. ;)

I wanted to make sure that Yoshi's head looked okay stuffed, so even though I wasn't finished with the entire body, I went ahead and stuffed the head.  Mike didn't think I got it quite right, but I think it looks okay.  I put extra stuffing in the cheek areas to give the illusion of the puffy cheeks (see the picture above of what he really should look like).

It was about at this point that Mike and Marshall both pointed out to me that:
a) I had forgotten to sew Yoshi's spikes into the seam when I pieced the back to the head AND
b) there was a weird bump thingy on the front of Yoshi's head, near where the eyes would go.  I wasn't too worried though, because I knew that I was hand-stitching the eyes on to the head, and that they would cover up the weird bumpy thing.

These are the eyes.  Didn't they turn out so great?!  I was really happy with them.  I was originally going to applique on a piece of black for the pupils, but decided that the buttons looked so much cuter.

During the Sunday session of LDS General Conference I decided to work on the pants while I listened to the talks.  They were all really good talks, and I think that my attention was not completely on what I was doing, because I totally screwed up on the pants multiple times!!

First, I sewed the front closed.  Like, seriously, how do you sew pants wrong?  I know how pants work.  You have to be able to walk in pants, so clearly you don't sew the center side seams together, right? hehe If only I could have remembered that!  I had to re-sew the stupid pants like 4 times because I kept sewing the wrong seams!

Do you like my photo of my screwed up pants?  Yeah, I had a great laugh when it happened the first time!

After I got the pants right, finally, I let the project sit for a week.  I picked it up today and made an executive decision to just sew the tail to the body and stuff the sucker up.  So I did.  This is the end result.

I call him Yoshi Slug.  Yeah, he looks kind of sad, doesn't he?  I'm hoping that I can just unpick the tail from the body, pull the stuffing out, and try something else.

Until then, I am calling this my first (hopefully not annual) Halloween costume FAIL.  Marshall will be going as Harry Potter instead, which is actually a good thing because it is way less stressful than Mario riding Yoshi!

Do you have a Halloween costume fail?  I'd love to hear about it! Leave a comment telling me about yours, or a link to your blog post if you have one!

22 More February OPAM finishes!

I am totally on a roll!  I have gotten so much done this weekend.  Of course, most of it doesn't count as a finish, yet, but it will soon!  I quilted the Cherry House Quilt Along quilt I made (pics to come soon).

There was a quilt top that was abandoned at the shop over 6 years ago.  I've tried to contact the piecer, but she hasn't come to get it in 6 years, so  took it home yesterday to finish.  It just needed to be squared up and have the 3 remaining borders attached, so I did so.  I also seamed the back.  I need a little bit more of the binding fabric, and then it will be ready to be quilted.  We are going to donate it to Colton's Angels for the hospital.

I also pieced a quilt top together for the local high school.  They commissioned me to make a t-shirt quilt for their principal, who left the school for a district job.  It turned out really great, and I can't wait to share pictures with you all when it's finished!

I've also been working on some blocks for Blockapalooza.  I have 3 of the 10 blocks finished, so far.

So, like I said, none of them really count as finishes....yet.

BUT THEN!  I have had a giant IKEA blue bag full of fleece blankets sitting on my living room floor for the past 3 weeks.  At Colton's Angels we cut out and fused little heart appliques onto the blankets.  All they needed before they were finished was to be zig-zagged around.  I volunteered, and took the bag home.  Today, I finished zig-zagging around 22 of the blankets!  It's only about half the bag, but at least they're ready to go back to the shop!

Aren't they cute?  We did blue for boys and white for the girls.  They are going to go in newborn kits with a onesie and pair of socks that the hospital can give to indigent mothers of newborns.

I'm hoping to get the rest of the blankets (12 more, I just counted) done sometime this week.