Bean Bag!!

I started off this evening making a pillowcase dress for Miss L to match her big sisters dress I made last night but procrastination got the best of me and I wound up searching blog land and Etsy to avoid the dress (its not hard to make I just wasn't in a dress kind of mood).  I stumbled onto a cute little tutorial for making bean bags...!  What kid doesn't love to toss around a bean bag?!?


DISCLAIMER - I grew up in a house where throwing things inside was forbidden - even now I think its a great rule to have for the house and one that I do enforce with my kids (and husband!).   That being said I can't see the harm in the girls lobbing these around the living room into laundry basket or something like that.  I stuffed them with poly pellets rather than actual beans in case the girls want to take them outside and play and I don't have any beans in my house at the moment.  

This took a whopping 15 minutes or so to make and I used scraps from Miss L's dress that I haven't made yet!

I think the girls are going to love it - now I need to make more than one or they will probably fight over it!!  Plus I can see myself playing with them when the girls have gone to bed......opps was that my outside voice?!?!?

I think Miss L and Little Dude are going to have a full supply of these in the very near future (perhaps some cousins too!?!) - I just need to find some different ribbon since the stuff I used is all the ribbon I seem to have in my house.   Seems like an excuse to go shopping to me!  ;)

Pillowcase Dress

I've always wanted to sew clothes for my girls.  I remember my Mom making me shorts to wear when I was a little girl and I LOVED them and I really want to have a memory like that for my girls for when they are older.

I have NEVER sewn a piece of clothing before for myself (or anyone else and an apron doesn't count!) so I was a little leery of trying any kind of clothing out but everyone says pillowcase dresses are super easy and finally after having the fabric for a few months I finally bit the bullet and made one for my oldest - Miss S.  She came back from a weekend and Grandma and Grandpas and I had her change into it right away and surprise everyone.....she loved it!

I made the tie a little too long (quick fix tomorrow and it will be all good) and I made the arm holes a little smaller than they should be - its either that or Miss S has enormous shoulders and I don't think thats the case.  I should be able to tweak them to fit better on the next dress though.

Everyone that told me that sewing a pillowcase dress was easy didn't lie - it was actually quite easy and I didn't mess up which is always a good thing!!  I didn't attempt the bias tape on the arm holes since I'm still not sure how to do it so I just folded the edges under and did a little topstitching which worked out well.

I have matching fabric in blue that I want to make a dress for Miss L out of and then my little princesses can have matching dresses!  How cute will that be?!?!

Quilt Along Block #2 - A Success!!

After my epic fail on Wednesday I have been shying away from my sewing machine the past few days worried that I was going to screw up on this block yet again BUT I finally got some sewing done tonight on my Quilt along hosted by Skippity Do Dah Quilts.

I did mess up on cutting or sewing (still not sure which!) the 3 7/8s squares but I managed to do a little workaround and they wound up working.   I really like to lay my fabric out as I go along to make sure that I don't mess up too much along the way.

Even though I said I like to lay it out before I sew it - sometimes things get flipped around!  Sing it with me now 'one of these things is not like the other....can you tell me which one....?'.  Yep, you are right, the pinwheel on the bottom square isn't a pinwheel.  Enter seam ripper.

The top all pieced together.  I do like it but I had originally planned on using the dark fabric in place of the green and pink circles but I managed to mix things up yet again and rather than cutting MORE fabric I decided to go with the fabric that I cut.

The final block in all its glory!!!

The first two of the twelve block quilt along finished!  Its CRAZY busy and crazy colorful but I think I'll be giving it to my 4 year old daughter and what little girl doesn't love a ton of color in a blanket?!

I'm having issues cutting 7/8s of an inch - HOW DO I DO IT?!  Is there a certain ruler that clearly shows the 7/8's of an inch or is there a quick cheat way that I can do it without messing up?   I have been using the tiny (what I think is the) 7/8 marker on my big Omnigrid ruler but that didn't give me the right sized block.  One thing for sure - this quilt along is totally teaching me new things!!

Quilt Block #2 - EPIC FAIL......

Wow - I should NOT be sewing today....... I was all excited to do the second quilt block for the Quilt Along hosted by Skippity Do Dah Quilts so when I saw that she posted this weeks block up I jumped to my fabric stash to see what I could use for this block.  Not only did I cut the wrong size fabric....I cut the wrong size fabric THREE times.....  The instructions from the quilt along were perfect, it was just me and my rediculous baby brain that kept messing up.

I cut 4 3/4" squares rather than 4 1/4" squares.... and 4 7/8" squares rather than 3 7/8" squares.... and I completely forgot and cut my re-cut 4 1/4" squares into quarters rather than in half...(those are the pink triangle tails you can see in the upper right hand corner of the picture)...

I am pretty sure these triangles are ok but I REALLY need to put my sewing stuff away for the day so I don't do the angry sew thing!!

Well I'm bummed, I was totally looking forward to my finished block today but due to my continued screw ups I guess they'll be a tomorrow thing!  I love the look of the block and I think my crazy fabric colors might actually look pretty good this week - it will be interesting to see if tomorrow is as disastrous as today was!  

I'm IN!

I signed up for the Friday Night Sew in hosted by Crafty Vegas Mom on this coming Friday night.  My girls are at my Moms and her husbands house this weekend and my husband is working that night so I've got a date with my sewing machine!!!

I'm not sure if I'm going to work on the Crazy Cat Blanket, my Dirty 30's blanket, or something else that might catch my fancy between now and Friday night.  

Quilt Along - Block #1 Finished!!

I started the Quilt Along on Tuesday but for some reason when I was trying to finish it that night my sewing machine decided that it was done for the day and kept eating fabric.  So rather than throwing a hissy fit or fighting with the machine I called it a night and came back to it today.

The purple boarder looks almost blue in the picture but it turned out better than I thought it would which is always a plus!

I went through my stash again to see what 'might' work together without having seriously CRAZY color patterns going on but I think any way I look at it I'm going to have one psychedelic quilt on my hands.

This week was a learning experience for me since I've never done Hour Glass blocks before but I'm really happy with how it turned out.   I'm looking forward to next weeks block - hopefully I'll know how to do it if not let another learning experience begin!  ;)

One Flower Wednesday

Its time again for One Flower Wednesday!

I started doing the edging this week and I'm quite happy how it looks so far.  I'm pretty sure that I'm doing it the right way and if not I'm sure I'll be able to attack it with a seam ripper if I need to but I'm hoping that it wont come to that!

The bottom flower is this weeks flower - just proving that I got my one flower done for the week!!

So far I've pegged off 8 flowers for my table runner and I know I still have LOTS to go - good thing they are a great late evening project while watching mindless tv!

My First Quilt Along!

I was perusing my blog roll this morning and came across a new Quilt Along that just started today over at Skippity Do Dah Quilts and jumped in with both feet!  I'm super excited and hoping that I didn't bite off more than I can chew!!

Its a 12 week quilt along and when I'm finished I'll have 12 fully completed quilt blocks for the quilt top.  As much as I would have loved to run out and bought a bunch of fabric for this quilt along I made a promise to myself that I'll just use the fabric in my stash and see what I come up with.  That being said I have a wide range of totally girly fabrics that don't necessarily go together.

This is a portion of what I was trying to go through to figure out what fabrics might work well with this quilt.  I've got a bunch of cheap'ish fabric from my local Fabricland but only a few pieces work together with each other so I think its going to be a VERY wild, busy and crazy quilt by the end of the 12 weeks but thats ok - thats what scrap quilts are all about or at least what I keep telling myself!

I finally decided on four fabrics that I'm pretty sure that I like together.  Part of me wants to run to the fabric store to find a 'better' boarder fabric BUT I'm sticking to my guns and not going to buy anything for the quilt top (I'll need to get some batting and backing but thats a different story!!).  

I had originally taken this picture as an EPIC FAIL picture since I thought we were cutting the 5 big squares as pinwheels and I thought I messed up but after re-reading the instructions I realized I didn't screw up and thats always a good feeling!!!

This is the block top laid out before having the smaller blocks pieced together.  I had managed to sew the bottom row together then my sewing machine kept messing up on me and eating my fabric.  After switching thread, turning the machine off for a while, cleaning some extra lint out, giving it a good whack and yelling at it I finally had to turn it off for the night before I started 'Angry Sewing'.  Angry Sewing is a bad, bad thing since I always manage to do way more damage than good when I get into a huff trying to sew.

Hopefully my machine will be in a better mood tomorrow when I start back on it and finish the rows and add the boarder to it.

Week 1 almost finished - 11 more weeks to go!!!

How does my Garden Grow?!

As much as I have tried to ignore it I have been bitten by the gardening bug this year...!  Because I can't tear up the back 6x8 foot patch that I really wanted to this year I've decided to go the container garden route instead.  I've always wanted to be a gardener but for some reason (probably due to having a purple thumb rather than a green one!!!) I usually manage to kill my plants without much effort.  This year I REALLY want to have a container garden that I can actually harvest some food from - even if its just a few nibbles here and there.  Nothing beats food straight from the garden!!

We hit the garden centre on Friday and picked up some flowers, strawberries and tomatoes.

The flowers are in the planter box - its not in its final home on the deck, I'm still not sure where its going to go but its pretty on the deck stairs for now.

We picked up a pretty big tomato plant, hopefully it won't take too much for it to start producing some fruit!  The girls are pretty excited for the flowers to turn into tomatoes.

We also picked up some strawberries but didn't get a planter box to put them in (opps).  The planter box that we put the flowers in was supposed to be used for the strawberries but the girls were desperate to put the flowers in the box so the strawberries will stay in their containers until we get a new planter box this week.

My SIL has asked me to watch my neice's tomato plant while they are gone on holidays next week so we planted it in some soil and gave it a pot to grow in.....and now I'm PRAYING that I don't kill it before they get back from holidays!  Its just so cute and tiny in its little pot!

I really want to go out and get a ton more plants but I think I should take it one step at a time and if I don't kill my plants that I have right now maybe I can do a little more next year!  

Wish me (or should I say my poor plants!) good luck!  

Tumbling Dots Quilt - Top Complete!!!

I've been a sewing/cutting machine the past few days (with plenty of rest and relaxation in between!) and have managed to get the entire quilt top finished for the Tumbling Dots quilt that I'm making for our newest addition that is due to arrive in August.

The other day I managed to cut up all the tumblers for the body of the quilt so today I managed to get the yellow boarder tumblers cut.  Through a bit of trial and error I think I have finally figured out the easiest way to cut the tumblers with the least amount of waste - but I'm sure I can still find a better way - wasting fabric kills me!!  At least I'm getting some good scraps out of the deal this way!

The rows all laid out on the table before quilting them together.

The finished top.  I still have to square up the sides and find some backing in the near future but I'm quite happy with how it turned out!  Its approximately 30 x 40 inches which is a great size for throwing down on the ground so the little guy will be up off the carpet and on something nice and cozy.

I think I'm going to do echo quilting to finish the top but I've never done it before so I might try out a quick trial run on some scraps before I attack the entire quilt top and bite off more than I can (or want!!) to chew!

One Flower Wednesday!

Wow, its Wednesday again and time for some 'gardening'.  I got two more flowers done this week.

Now I have a total of 6 flowers in my garden.  I'm going to start to sew them all together with the white spacer in between each flower in the next few weeks and then keep adding the bizillion more that I need to still do!

I was going to do a wall hanging but I think I might do a table runner instead.  I love the way they look and it doesn't have to be too big either!