I've Gone Out for a Bit....

I've gone out for a bit.

Until further notice, I'll be blogging over on my business page. You can find it here.  Thanks for clicking through!

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.

"I Never Get New Stuff"

The other day I wasn't feeling up to cooking, so we opted to go to Taco Bell for dinner.  Mike and I each had a $5 box (which, strangely, actually costs $5.49. Explain that to me).  If you've seen the commercials or eaten at a Taco Bell recently, you'll recall that the new deal is that with every $5 box you get a code to submit to win a new PSP Vita.

Mike submitted his code and didn't win.  They claim there's a winner every 15 minutes, or something ridiculous like that, so we decided to save my code until a random, obscure time.  I submitted it last night at 3:05 AM. Yeah, didn't win.  I threw the box away and didn't think anything of it.

Mike got a new Nook Tablet yesterday. Tonight at dinner we were watching Phineas and Ferb on Netflix on the Nook Tablet.  When it was over, Marshall started asking questions about the tablet.

Marshall:  Do you have an iPad like Jana?
Mike: No, this is a Nook Tablet.  It's kind of like Jana's iPad, but different.
Marshall:  Oh.  So where's my new PSP?
Mike:  You mean your old PSP?  It's broken, remember?  I haven't had a chance to fix it yet.
Marshall: No, my new PSP.
Mike: What are you talking about?
Marshall:  I saw the box.  Where's my new PSP?


At this point in the conversation both Mike and I realize he is talking about the Taco Bell $5 box that had a picture of the new PSP Vita on the lid.  Naturally, we start laughing.

Mike: That wasn't a new PSP.  That was mom's dinner from the other day when we had Taco Bell.  She ate all the food out of it.
Marshall: But there was a PSP on it!
Mike: That was just a picture.
Marshall: So I don't get a new PSP?
Mike: No.


Marshall pauses for a moment and looks sad.

Marshall: I never get new stuff!


Mike and I couldn't help it. We lost it.  It was the funniest thing he'd said all day (and there had been some funny things, believe me! He's at that age where everything out of his mouth is slightly silly).

He's still pretty upset that we haven't gotten him a new PSP.  I'm pretty upset I haven't got an iPad, or a baby swing, but it's something I've learned to live with.  Guess he will too.  Poor kid, the lessons they have to learn at age 5.

:)

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?  :)

We have a WINNER!!!

We have a winner!!  Thanks to random.org for providing a free number generator.  The winner was Comment Number 12!  Comment number 12 from Angel said "facebooked about it".

Congratulations Angel!  I'll email you the code for your free software.

And thanks to everyone who entered!  If you wanted to win, but didn't, you can find a $10 off coupon code in my side bar for the software.  Just click on the graphic and it will take you to the My Memories website where you can add the software and any other additional products to your cart.  Enter the discount code at checkout and you will receive $10 off!  :)