Stitching in the Barn

 Tech pouch for a TI-Nspire CX II calculator. Project from this episode of Missouri Star Live by MSQC. Fabric from Connecting Threads. It's a little too snug but it'll do for now. Great project!    

  Finished stitching in July 2020. A Dimensions kit. Still needs finished, most likely as a wall quilt. Started when my husband was in the hospital for an extended stay. Finished 2 years later.

Here's my completed Dresden Wreath for my MIL. My daughter got sick so she didn't get to embellish it but it still came out nicely with the different fabric textures. The solid bright red hearts are satin, the one on the lower left has texture, and the rest are cottons. I realized while finalizing this project that I don't know how to make bows and bought the wrong ribbon to make one. I ended up doing a magic bow like in the directions in this Craftster post from 2007 . (I had totally forgotten about this board and I used to be on it all the time back in the day. I can't even remember my user name but I hope I can find my old posts to see wheat I was up to back then. It looks like Craftster just went into archive only mode on Dec. 19th. and moved active participants to a new site.) The bow I made is kind of derpy looking and isn't sized right for this wreath but I'm sure my MIL will put on a nice one, she's great at making bows. I included a pai...

My daughter arranged the layout of the wreath and I sewed them together. We got 2 fronts and 1 back. I don't know if I'll make more fan blades now to finish the second one. Now she's going to take the front for my MIL and decorate it before we put them together and stuff them. I don't know when she'll get to it but hopefully I'll have a couple more posts before mailing this to my MIL.

Last Night my husband helped me make some block boards like in this video by Fat Quarter Shop .  This one was actually 2 scraps of batting. After reading the comments I decided to leave off the bindings and use some tape I bought that was sticky back fabric. It was too thin so we just mitered the corners and wrapped the excess batting around to the back and they work well. We also hot glued all sides down taut first. I just used them today to move my Dresden wreath after my daughter arranged the hearts. She arranged three and they stacked easily as advertised. I just picked up two hearts at a time to piece them and then placed them back and they always stayed in order. Now I just need to make bigger ones. I got 4 from a foam core board that I cut evenly down the center each way. They finished at 11 x 14 inches.

I saw this wreath on the Charm About You blog while I was scanning Quilter Blogs over the holidays and watched the video at the bottom of her instruction page   and saw a lovely new years wreath in it. In the new years wreath the similar fabrics were paired and I thought they looked like hearts.  I asked my daughter if my MIL would like the wreath in Valentines day fabrics and she thought it was a great idea. We are blessed to have a crafting thrift store nearby. She went and picked up several different fabrics at $3 a yard. It's funny because I donated some Valentines day fabrics to them in the past year because I never thought I'd use Valentines day fabric. She brought home some lovely fabrics, I already had a Dresden plate ruler and I cut an 8 inch strip from each fabric and made a total of 36 hearts over the past 2 days. We only need 20 hearts for the whole wreath. My daughter is going to arrange them into a wreath and add some gems and decorate one side ...

I made this quick and easy fabric wallet in an evening to match my Zip Zip bag . It uses very little fabric and I had plenty left over. It was late when I finished, so in the morning I had to unstitch some. I had a little problem with the folding but it wasn't a big deal and I won't have the same problem again. This is the outside when it's laid flat. There's a small Velcro closed coin pouch there where the colors contrast. This is the inside. There's 2 card slots on the right and a Velcro pouch for money on the left. I still need to add a sew in snap but it stayed nice and closed in my purse and pocket when I went out the next day. These would make great wrapping for gift card holders and money. I'm planning to make more of these. You can find the pattern free on Craftsy and the instructions here at Sew Can She's Blog. I'm managing to get at least one small project done a week. This is amazing to me! God has come into my life a...

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.

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...

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 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.

I shouldn't have started this project on a day I wasn't feeling the best but I thought it would help spur me on to get something done. I started with the X-men symbol block because it was the simplest. I thought I knew what colors went where without looking at my notes and sewed on the wrong color. There were only supposed to be the medium blue and yellow up to this point, not the dark blue. I jumped the gun on the last color. I reprinted my block out & started over because I just didn't want to rip out what I had done and it wasn't much anyway. Then I set it aside until I felt better.

I do more than just stitching in my barn. Last weekend I made soap. I never thought about making soap before last year. I never felt like I could live like "Little House on the Prairie", being raised a city girl, but I've got chickens, make my own bread (by machine) and make my own soap. The reasons I do these things is because of my health. Living with homemade products lets me see exactly what goes into it and I make sure there' are as few chemicals in it as I can afford. I use organic flour for my bread because the chemicals they use now on commercial bread are way beyond any that our bodies can handle long term. I've had great results so far cutting out a lot of everyday stuff for natural equivalents that work and cost less, even organic. Making my own soap is one of my favorite ways.

I'm making some dice bags for me & my son. You can find the links for the patterns and paper piecing on this post . I really started on this project a while ago up to this point. Then the woven hearts took me on a detour.  I had no problem picking fabrics for this project and they all came fro my stash! I had the red and black and white for Deadpool. 

I bought my son a game for Christmas: As you can see, it comes with a lot of dice and you get more in the booster packs.  We've been having a lot of fun playing it and we're thinking of taking it to the next level. There's a group that plays near us every Wednesday that we might go to. If we're going to take this on the road, and because I love geeky sewing, I gotta make us some dice bags!

They are finally done!

I'm still working on my potholders.  I used an old friend from high school to help me baste them. Aqua Net is cheap and the fumes are not as toxic as basting spray. I basted them in the bathroom so it wouldn't get on the carpet. I ONLY use it on small projects. It's not the stickiest stuff.

Here's the start of my potholders. My husband helped to pick out this assortment of fabrics. The lighting is awful and this was originally two pictures but you get the idea. The furthest one on the right is one he dyed for me ages ago. He said it looked muddy and not as nice as the others so it's going to be the solid side of the potholders. 

So after a couple of failed attempts at rotary cutting hexagons,