Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Gum Drop Pillow

Just a quick post to show you the new Gum Drop Pillow I made for the shop. The fabric is Little Kukla from Robert Kaufman. It comes in a bright color way too.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

And the Winner is....

The winner of the Flea Market Fancy fabric bucket is...

JENNY!!!



Blogger pearlswirl said...
I looove this little basket and would sit it next to my sewing machine (because I now have a dedicated desk where my machine can stay out all the time! happy days!) I would store some thread and pins, and extra needles and bobbins and various things like that in it. 
So Jennifer said to me the other day she didn't like to comment first because the first commenter never wins. Well Jenny just proved that the first commenter DOES win sometimes! Congrats Jenny! Send me your address and I'll get it in the mail this week.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Lone Star Quilt

Since today is National Quilting Day I thought it would be the perfect time to unveil my completed Lone Star Quilt, AKA the hardest quilt I've ever made. And that's saying something!! I've made some pretty time consuming quilts, but this baby was ALL bias sides and Y seams. There was some serious stretching going on!
But it's beautiful and I love it! The fabric is Flea Market Fancy and the solid is Kona Charcoal.

I decided to quilt this on my home machine, but machine quilting is not like riding a bike! It's been quite awhile since I last quilted at home, and my lines are waaaay crooked!

I printed a design from the internet and used chalk to rub the design onto the solid squares. This method worked brilliantly! I will be doing that again. For the corner triangles I enlarged the square design and just used half of it. The center star is quilted with a swirling starburst design.

The quilt is hanging high on the ceiling in the store, so you can't really see all it's imperfections up there. And from a distance it really pops with all the bright colors against the gray.

Remember, today is the last day to enter the give-away for a fabric bucket made out of these same fabrics! Go here to comment for a chance to win! The winner will be announced tomorrow.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Rainbow Fabric Buckets

Did you see my give-away yesterday? Be sure to leave a comment on yesterday's post for a chance to win this awesome fabric bucket!

And if you want to make your own, be sure to take advantage of the coupon code from Nova of A Cuppa and a Catchup. The coupon code is BLOG5 will be good from March 10-16, 2013 only! So get your pattern now!

I wanted to show off the rainbow fabric buckets more! 
 I knew I wanted six buckets and I wanted the lining to be the six primary and secondary colors.
Next challenge was finding fabrics for the outside of the buckets. I went with the Moda line Apple Jacks because it had a good selection of colors.
Purple is the only color not in the line...


...but this yellow sheet music piece coordinates perfectly! The brown is pretending to be purple.

 The little tags were made with ABC twill tape, also from Moda.
Random tower of buckets, just because it was fun.
I love that this pattern does all the work for you. All you have to do is cut and sew. But if you do need a bucket in another size there is a formula to use to figure out the size of your fabric pieces.
Remember, the coupon code is only good until March 16, 2013, and to enter the give-away for a bucket you need to leave a comment on yesterday's post, found here. Good luck!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

5 Year Blog-a-thon and Give-away


Hey everybody! As of last month I have been blogging FIVE YEARS, and this is my 500th post!!! Granted, I had to cram in a bunch of posts this week to make it be my 500th post... but that's irrelevant. I began this blogging adventure after attending the Craft and Hobby Association Trade Show. I think my first post was actually in the AIR PORT on my way back to Germany!

At the time I started my blog I worked with some AWESOME women at the Arts and Crafts Center who also started blogs! They have moved on to new locations, but we keep up with each other through our blogs (and of course email and facebook and all that stuff.)


A whole bunch of us at Corinnea's farewell dinner. No comments on all the weird faces. It's the best pic I had of all of us together!

If you have come here from one of my friend's blogs, welcome! If you haven't, then please check out the other girls too. We're all doing giveaways today! Corinnea and Jessica blog together at Created Blissfully; Jennifer at Parrish Platz, Adrienne at The Green World, and Jenny at Pearl Swirl Journals. We never could talk Mary into blogging...

I've been doing a lot of crafting to make samples for the store and recently I became obsessed with making a rainbow set of nesting baskets. I could have used a free tutorial from the web, but I knew that Nova from A Cuppa and a Catchup had released a pattern and it had all the math already done. It is a great pattern!! You really should buy it here.

Want to see what I made?

Sneak Peek!

Those are staying in the store, but in honor of five years of blogging, this is what YOU can win!


6" fabric bowl made with Flea Market Fancy and Kona Charcoal.

HOW TO WIN:

Just leave a comment on this post for a chance to win.
Tell me what you would put in this cute little bucket!
The drawing will be open from March 10-16, 2013 and then a name will be selected on March 17th.

Want to make your own nesting bowls? I'm telling you, you really should check out Nova's pattern. I liked it so much I asked her if she would be willing to give my readers a discount to buy it. She said yes! So if you order between now and March 16th you will get $2.00 off your purchase! And be sure to check out her Flickr group for more inspiration.

To get the pattern with a discount go HERE and use discount code BLOG5.

Now hop on over to one of my other blogging friends for more chances to win awesome stuff! (Please keep in mind that we are all in different time zones and posts may not go "live" at the same time.)

Corinnea and Jessica: Created Blissfully
Jennifer: Parrish Platz
Adrienne: The Green World
Jenny: Pearl Swirl Journals

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Pirates can be charming!

We started selling Riley Blake fabric at work, and I was taken with the Ahoy Matey line! Normally I'm not into skulls and stuff, but the map fabric is what really got me. This line is so cute!!

UPDATE: Whoops. The fabric is called Pirate Matey.


I wanted a quilt that would show off the line and have kind of a nautical feel. Then I remembered I pinned this Moda Bake Shop recipe ages ago: Charming Stars. Riley Blake lines have 21 to 24 fabrics instead of 42 like Moda. So I bought a 10" stacker and cut it into 5" squares to get enough fabric for the 12 blocks. 
The quilt isn't really as crooked as it looks. It's hanging on a wall at work and was a little tricky to photograph because of the other things around it. Having it hanging in the store has sold a lot of fabric!

I like the simplicity of this quilt because it doesn't over power the fabric, but it is more than just squares. 
I quilted it on the long arm using a pantograph. The swirls remind me of water, and there are little elements that look like fish tails. One part reminds me of the head of the hammerhead shark. I really like how it turned out!

Monday, March 4, 2013

Catching up

So this year is proving to be as mind-bogglingly busy as last year. I think my schedule is trying to kill me. Seriously. It seems like I barely enjoy the holiday or event I'm in the middle of because we've already begun to schedule the next one!

We started a regular meeting with the teenagers in our neighborhood every Thursday night. It's going really well and we're building bridges with the teens in the area. We still have a bit of a language barrier, but the kids know we care about them and they are welcome here. 

We're preparing to build a building for the church.. We have a plot of land next to the community center where we are currently meeting. The plan is to start with the fellowship hall and then keep building as we can. Very exciting!

At work we are so incredibly busy it's hard to get everything done in a week. I'm teaching several classes a month, and the ideas are overflowing so much I can't see how I can teach it all in one year! Our classes have gotten VERY popular lately and people are getting frustrated because they are all full! For those of you who used to live here, remember when we had to cancel everything because no one signed up? Apparently this year is the year of craft classes! 

Haven started her first job. She's working at a bowling center through a program with the Child and Youth Services. She gets work experience and a stipend at the end of her term. It's been really good! She's enjoying it. She's ready to be unemployed again, but it's been a good experience!

Ethan is growing like crazy! I am surprised when I look at him sometimes. I think he's growing every day! I feel like I'm buying new pants about once per month! 

I've been doing a lot of quilting lately. I'm way behind on posting because it's hard to get pictures of everything. I'm usually ready to take pictures at night when the light is gone. I will try to get caught up on the craft blogging, but I figured the family would probably like me to start with the pics of the kids! 

So to wrap up, some random self-portraits from Haven that she conveniently left on my camera. 



Sunday, March 3, 2013

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day FLEW by. We barely had time to think about it and then it was over. I took strawberry cupcakes in to Ethan's class...
...and he took Goldfish as his valentine to share.
The fishbowl says "I'm glad we're in the same school." and is a free download from here.

Ethan has a great teacher this year! She used to teach a multi-age class, so she's used to having kids at different learning levels. She has been good about helping Ethan get better at the things he struggles with, and giving him more challenging work in the areas he is good at.
A chocolate apple for the teacher!

Rob and I kept it low-key for Valentine's Day. He gave me a very nice gift bag of yummy treats and I gave him this little handmade date night jar.
I got the ideas for the date night jar here. To get the number of days for the card I went here.

At work we got the Kissing Booth line of fabric from Moda.
It's a super sweet fabric line. I made two small projects with it for the store.

A baby sized quilt using this hour glass quilt block tutorial...


and a Twister Heart using Lil' Twister Ruler
I'll talk more about Twister quilts when I get them all photographed.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Read Across America Day

Oh my goodness, life has been busy ya'll! I can't believe it's already March! Yesterday was Read Across Amercia Day, and I think today is Dr. Suess' birthday. The school always celebrates Read Across America day by letting the kids wear their pajamas and bring sleeping bags and pillows and lay around and read all day. The PTA also organizes cupcakes for all of the classrooms.

Last year, having discovered Pinterest, I made Dr. Suess inspired treats for the class. The kids and teacher liked it so much I did it again this year. I don't think I ever blogged it last year because I couldn't find a post.

So here are the treats:

The Treat Table
 Goldfish in a pot inspired by The Cat in the Hat
 Green deviled eggs inspired by Green Eggs and Ham
 The cupcake on the right was made by one of the other parents and is Green Eggs and Ham. I was impressed by the little marbled marshmallow they used for the ham! Very clever!
 And my cupcakes were inspired by Thing 1 and 2 from The Cat in the Hat.
And lastly, my favorite, cake pop Truffula Trees from The Lorax.
 
Ideas came from the following sources: tea pot, deviled eggs, cupcakes, truffula trees

The best part of Read Across America Day was seeing my boy READ. 
Reading has been a long, hard journey in our house. Ethan doesn't enjoy reading for pleasure and fights against it. He is ok with me reading to him, but he doesn't want to read for himself. We started with the Tag reading system because we hoped that the electronic factor would get him excited. It did for the most part. Then I found the I Can Read series and that really helped. Ethan also had a great teacher last year, and a lady at the after school center who really helped him advance in his reading.

Then he discovered Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Ya'll, these books changed this boy's life! He went from barely reading 25 minutes a day to meet the homework requirement to sitting and reading for 2 hours at a time because he enjoyed it! The other day he asked me to buy the whole Wimpy Kid series in hard back. He actually said to me, "not those flimsy ones, the hard back ones." So if you are thinking of what to send him for his birthday.....