A pillow and a blankie

So, I did get something done in the sewing room this week. I finished up a Taggie Blanket for a co-worker. She wanted a Cleveland Brown's Taggie Blanket. This one is different from my normal mixtures of textures. I still used satin for the backing, minky for the front but instead of a corduroy, I used a printed cotton fabric.

 I flipped the corner up to cover the name I embroidered onto the blanket

Look at this cute football ribbon I found. It just finishes off the blanket perfectly. Plus, it's another finish for my 1QFAL. Though I don't think my WIP's list is getting any closer to being shorten. I keep adding to it in my head all the time. Then just last week I remembered I forgot three projects to put on the list. Agh! Hopefully next quarter I can work on not adding anything and crossing more off the list. (Yup, I'm laughing too)

The pillow I finished is a birthday gift for a friend of ours' daughter who is also a classmate of my daughter's. Hopefully we get to make it to the birthday party because my oldest crazything is feeling not so crazy right now. It's a nasty bug going around in her classroom right now.

 Another burrito pillowcase. This one I did a little different then from my other burrito pillowcases. I only made the minky edge an inch and a half wide finished. So I started with a three inch wide strip. It was a big pain to turn!! I almost didn't get it turned. But it was also problematic to sew. All that Frozen fabric, rolled up into three inches of minky. It was one tight burrito! I would do the five inch finish one hundred times over then have to do one more inch and a half finish.

Well that's my finishes for the week. I hope to have lots to show during the week, next week. Everyone stay warm and safe. Still well below freezing temps here. I believe we are under a wind chill advisory right now.

Thanks for reading!
Hollie
Just a Mom who Sews

Mountain of trimmings

I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, I missed an assignment in my Irish chain quilt-a-long. I can make a million excuses, but I won't. I just didn't get my butt up stairs as much as I wanted. I like sleep more then I wanted to have a finished assignment. So this is what I had as of Wednesday night. A HUGE mountain of trimmings.

 Mt. Irish Trimmings

 Aerial view

See, it could shallow up my rotary cutter and come back for my small ruler. Agh! Hide the sewing machine before it decides to eat that too. Lol, it's been a long week and but I still have my sense of humor.

This stack of squares are all trimmed, they just need to be sewn together into a block of four pieces. Maybe over the weekend I can get them done, but I think I will do this week's assignment first and then finish last weeks. So hopefully, fingers crossed I can get both assignments done by next Thursday.

Thanks for reading!
Hollie
Just a Mom who Sews

Irish Chain Quilt-A-Long week Two assignment

This week's assignment was to take the triangles and sandwich a rectangle in between them.

 It sounded easy enough. So off I went gathering my 300+ triangles and a 100+ rectangles and off to my sewing retreat Friday evening I went. My thought was I will have these popped out that night and be able to start on the next project in the morning. Ha, ha, ha! Ignorance is bliss right?? 160 once through the machine takes awhile; let alone twice! This goes back to my last post Bitten off more then I can chew? So I did get the one triangle on and threads clipped apart on Friday.

That looks like a productive pile for a couple of hours of sewing. It almost hides a cone of thread.

 

Saturday morning I ironed the seams and started on the 160 back through the machine to add the other triangle.

This pile would have buried the cone of thread.

 

Clip, iron, count out blocks to make sure I have my 160, yup all there with a few leftover triangles.

How, did I get that many leftover triangles, you ask? I read the directions wrong! Head hanging in shame :( For some reason I kept reading 360 triangles instead of 320. I needed 160 rectangles. I say it was from staying up too late and procrastination. On a good note, I won the first prize in the quilt-a-long!! Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!! Now to go scope out Green Fairy Quilts with my gift certificate. I'm sure something will call my name! I just hope it's not too many somethings! One of my faithful readers suggested I use the triangles to make a pillow(s) to go with my quilt. I think that's a great idea! Thanks, Beth!

Thanks for reading!
Hollie
Just a Mom who Sews

Valentine Love and Weekend sewing

Yes, yes I know it's not Valentine's Day anymore But I have a good excuse for not posting my Valentine stuff until now. I was at a Sewing retreat most of the weekend. See, a good reason. ;)
I made my two crazy things each a pillowcase for Valentine's day. Which I had done early last week. Plus, that gets two things off of my 1QFAL. Ya!!

I used a different minky fabric for the edge to keep them separate but the same. The oldest one randomly picked the navy blue one and the youngest got a bright pink one.

I used the burrito method to make the pillowcases with enclosed seams. Search pillowcase burrito method and tons of tutorials will pop up. Choose your favorite and follow along. I think I want a pillowcase with the minky edging so I can rub it will my fingers as I fall asleep. ;) Hmmm, maybe I can find some sewing themed fabric next time I am at a fabric store.
They are happy with them. Plus, the main fabric is Frozen, so I could do no wrong their. They already have plans to go see the short Frozen movie that will be playing before the Cinderella movie. I don't think they understand its only going to be several minutes long, not the whole movie.

I digress, back to Valentine sewing. At my stitchers club it was this cute project, a Valentine appliqué hot pad.

 

Appliqué is something many people in my group, including ME, wanted to learn more about. This cute project was a perfect was to learn a few basics of appliqué and have a finished project at the end of the evening.

Then on Friday evening after supper, I headed of to sewing retreat. This retreat is Sleep in Your Own Bed Retreat. I worked on my Irish Chain Quilt-a-long assignment. I'll post about that later. Saturday I headed back in the morning for a full day of sewing. Yippee!! Thank goodness my husband and I had celebrated Valentine's Day last weekend when we went to a comedy show and supper, without the crazy things! I finished my weekly assignment and started on finishing two t-shirt quilt tops. I finished the one and the other one is 90% done. I was glad I had planned to stay for the day. At one point there was white out conditions and 40 mph winds. Plus dropping temperatures to the single digits. Brrrr!! Hope your weekend was filled with Love and Sewing!!

Thanks for reading!
Hollie
Just a Mom who Sews

Bitten off more then I can chew???

Holy Moly Batman! That is one huge stack of cut fabric!

See that purple stack? It's a 2 1/2 inch strip. They stand 2 1/2 inches tall when stacked up. Aye, Aye!

 

I've been ironing and cutting for the past two days. Minus, working and making supper and tending to kids and sleep. Not so much on that last one. This will teach me to procrastinate! Ha, Ha, okay, I think I can stop laughing long enough to finish this post and link up to the Irish Quilt-A-Long over at Happy Quilting by Melissa Cory. Good thing she lives in a different, later time zone then me. HA!

Okay, Good Night everyone!

Hollie,
Just a Mom who Sews

Tooth Fairy pillow

Yes, a first is happing at our house. My oldest crazything has a loose tooth. Actually she has two and they have been loose for awhile. So I thought that I would "help" the tooth fairy out and make a tooth holder so she wouldn't have to go searching for a tooth in a bed full of stuffed animals, baby dolls, pillows and blankets. Plus a kid somewhere in all that craziness.

I include a hanging ribbon so she can hang it off of the end of her bed. I surprised her with it late last week. We are still waiting to use it. Oh, well at least I don't have to rush around to make it.

Here is the pattern I made up. I drew a tooth like shape. Took the better half and cut the template out by folding the paper in half and cutting around the better half of a tooth to get an even looking tooth shape.

Then I cut two pieces of fleece following the template. I then cut another piece of fleece following just the bottom 3/4ths of the template. I cheated and just glued down the folded over top edge of the 3/4ths piece. Then I sewed almost all the way around, turned and stuffed. Quick and easy.

Thanks for reading!
Hollie-Just a Mom who Sews

Irish Chain Twist Quilt-a-long with Happy Quilting

Okay, Okay, I know I should not be doing a quilt-a-long with my HUGE 1st quarter to do list, BUT I have wanted to do an Irish chain quilt for a long, long time. Then, Melissa over at Happy Quilting is an awesome teacher. I did her last quilt-a-long, Star Bright, Star Light and you can see my finish here.

SO with out further ado, here is my fabric pull for the quilt-a-long. I have the backing picked out too, but the fabric store didn't have enough of it, so I have to wait till they get more in. Then silly me, forgot to even see who even made it. That's what happens when you take two crazythings to the fabric store. At least we were entertainment for a husband being dragged along to the fabric store by his wife.

Teal (Flower Petals Aqua) is my background, purple (Eyelet Magenta) the X squares, the oranges (Tessellation Sherbert, Orange Woven, Orange Tonal) for the chain of squares and the yellows (Etchings Plaid Yellow, Pin dot Yellow/White) for pedal applique blocks. Yikes! That block is going to be a new skill for me. I just hope that I can keep up.

I encourage anyone and everyone to come over and join the party!

Thanks for reading!
Hollie-Just a Mom who Sews