Stitching in the Barn

I was looking at my old Craftsy account and noticed I put some free baby shoe patterns on my wishlist ages ago. There have been 2 babies, a boy and a girl, born into my family recently so I thought these would make great gifts.  Then the JoAnn's ad came in and Simplicity patterns were on sale. So after looking at their website catalog, which is in the middle of being updated, I saw they had several baby shoe patterns to sew. When I got got the store, there were only 2 available so I bought those along with pink felt and fleece, on sale, and some fusible fleece to make them. I absolutely fell in love with view G on Simplicity 1677. They are the cutest little felt and fleece Ugg style booties and I knew I'd have to sew these up right away. It was only 3 pattern pieces but it took longer to sew than I anticipated. I made them over a couple of days and I stayed up too late to finish them. The color is best in the first picture.

We, my MIL, daughter and I, worked on our crazy quilt blocks all through 2015. These are our first crazy quilt blocks pieced! I used the method where you randomly cut a 5 sided polygon, place it on a piece of muslin and randomly add strips around it.

I bought these 2.5 inch Urban Odyssey strips from Connecting Threads and sewed them into a quick quilt ages ago. It's like the Jelly Roll Race 2 quilt from MSQC . I used 2 jelly roll packs because they had less than 40 strips but I can't remember how many there were. I pulled out the brown colorway strips and used them for the inner border and the little squares. To use two of the same prints, I sewed them short ends together with a square between to break them up a bit. if you sew them like individual strips, they can fall in weird places in the quilt and sew together in distracting ways. I love how the brown squares are scattered like confetti.

I got my order in the mail from Connecting Threads Thursday and bought the supplies I needed that night to do the Zip Zip bag in Pen and Inked . I cut it out Saturday and constructed it Sunday. I took some shortcuts by buying black bias binding and using a strap that was in my stash from an old lunchbox. This area was a bit tricky to turn the corners and sew. I broke the tip of my titanium needle somewhere around this area. Fortunately, it didn't fly into my face and I was near the end. The ugly corners were folded to the back in the end so that hid it. This was an easy gratification project. I loved the easy construction and wished I had thought up of this pattern. I feel so accomplished!  It's a good size, maybe a bit long for me. As my kids have gotten older, my purses have gotten smaller. I transferred my purse contents to this one that night. It was a tight fit and I think I travel light. I think it's because it's so flat. I might have to hang...

I started out the new year by sewing! I sewed this block on January 2. I have never done a square in a square type block before. I really enjoyed how it looked a bit wrong after the first two triangles were attached, with the long tails hanging off the ends, but then it worked out. It came out great for being cheap fabric. I literally bought these block kits for a dime before I knew there was a difference in quality. I had to starch the heck out of them. I pulled this one out because I wanted to sew something and came across it. I was really impressed with how my skills have improved. The next day I sewed up this one So easy but it was just so much fun! I really miss sewing blocks. they took me about an hour each. I have a lot of these already made in different blocks that I'll probably make up into a quilting practice quilt or two & use for car quilts. I can use the practice.

My added free time and love of quilting has brought on a renewal of a love of fabric. When I saw the new Pen And Ink collection on Connecting Threads , I knew I had to have some! I really love that when your order is shipped it gives you an estimated delivery date but it comes a couple days sooner. My order was supposed to get here Saturday, January 16 but it arrived Thursday the 14th. It may be because I'm technically in a rural area but it's really close enough to the big city that it doesn't take much longer. I got the Zip Zip bags kit , the Jazz Age table runner along with one 10 inch square sampler set of 17 fabrics in that collection. I also got some clearance stuff, 5 inch square packs and a set of fat quarters. I love getting new fabric & petting them! Then, I got the JoAnn's ad in the mail. Anti pill fleece was 70% off so I bought 4 yards for window blankets. While there, I found a lovely navy knit that looks nice on both sides. I got 3 yard...

I started this blog almost 5 years ago on January 24, 2010 . Wow! I can't believe its been that long. I haven't had a big presence on the internet but that wasn't my goal. I just wanted to post what I made. I haven't made a lot but I hope my 200th post happens less than 5 years from now. At least now my pictures are better but I think that's due to better software and my new phone. I'm too busy working on a quilt to post my usual length. It's going OK. I'm in a "done is better than perfect" mindset.  I'll get a better picture later but here's a preview: I know its customary to host a giveaway on this momentous occasion but, sorry, I just don't have the time. Maybe I'll choose another day to do it, probably in the summer, even though it won't be exactly on time. Have a great day! Happy sewing!

When I played a You Tube video for my MIL, showing what I wanted to achieve on our next project, the tutorial for this ornament showed up in the sidebar. She was immediately enthralled with it so we went out to JoAnn's and grabbed a few 1/2 yards of fabric. When we brought it back, I realized we bought the exact same fabrics used in the video. I guess they really do help advertise subconsciously.

(I forgot how to use Blogger. I set a time for my posts to be published but I still saved them as drafts by accident. There are now 2 other new posts older than this one uploaded today but dated earlier.) Now that the tea set quilts were done, me & my daughter convinced my MIL to do a crazy quilt. She wasn't too crazy about it but she went along with it. We know how much she loves embellishing and know that she will have a lot of fun with this quilt. We went to the quilt store and she let my daughter pick out the fabrics for it. She chose a green to aqua color scheme with a few browns thrown in for neutrals. The lady cutting our fabric was as impressed as we were with how beautiful it was. Here's a  picture after she folded it up all nice for us. the thread spools are a couple from Connecting Threads that I had in my stash.   We couldn't wait to get started but we had to because my MIL was flying back home. It was so hard to not touch that scrumptious fabric...

My daughter, MIL & I sew together. The project we chose to do in 2014 was a paper pieced quilt of a tea set. We found the patterns at Piece By Number here: http://piecebynumber.com/grandmas-tea-party-mini-quilt/ MIL was concerned some of the pieces looked small so we enlarged the pot & cup blocks by 150% and changed the setting to only four cups. My daughter is an art major so she helped us pick some coordinating fabric for me & my MIL's quilts, then picked out some others for hers.

I did get our dice bags finished last year. This is the first one I did with a pocket on the lining and the paper piecing page for my next block.

Happy New Year!!!! It seems like every year I start off wanting to sew and blog more. I get new quilting stuff for Christmas that I'm excited about and work slows down for me in January. Then, I get sick/depressed/busy again, forget all about blogging and last year I actually didn't get a lot of sewing in. It was a crazy year. I have 6 drafts saved up from January of last year that I didn't get to post because I didn't have the pictures ready and never got around to them. I think this will be my year to change all that. At the end of 2015, I finally got to sew something other than mending! It finally got cold here in DFW after Christmas so my daughter and I had to make our dogs sweaters. We used Simplicity 3939. I bought it on sale for under $2 a few years back. It's for smaller dogs.