Spring Break Fun!

Oh spring break. A time to relax, get over a cold and be productive! 


I finished quilting my scrappy quilt and am so excited with the end result! A big kudos to my husband for letting me take over the kitchen table with the quilt and sewing machine for the past week! One day I will have my dream sewing room where I won't have to take over the kitchen table anymore! For now I work with what I got! 

I am currently in the process of sewing the binding on. It is an endless process. All I have to say is thank goodness for TV and a comfy couch! 

After I finished quilting my scrappy quilt I needed a break from it. I completed a quilt top for a baby quilt. I still am deciding what I want the backing to look like This is the first of a ton of baby quilts this year. Too many friends are having babies, however it means lots of fun projects for me! :-)

On a side note, I spent some time exploring lots of new music recently and with that came watching some music videos. Here is one of my new favorite! Thank you to The Black Keys for keeping me entertained!

Labor Day Weekend

I have finished quilting! Now all I need to do is add the binding onto this quilt. Guess what I'll be doing for the next week or so? 

I also finally finished a batik project that was sitting on my sewing table for weeks. It's a baby counting book that is for sale at my Etsy shop. 

I have a couple other projects I would like to get started on: a knit sweater, a couple fabric landscapes, and the quilt I started a while back, but just got put on the back burner. We'll see how soon I can get started on those...

What a Busy Weekend!

This weekend was full of craftiness! It started with dying a custom shirt for an Etsy order.

Saturday I made origami snowflakes for the wedding. Thank you to my awesome friends for helping me out with wedding things this weekend! You all rock! 

Today I told myself was quilting day. It was finally time to sit down and sew this quilt together. I decided to free motion meandering loops all over the quilt. I started in high spirits, but gradually got frustrated. My thread kept breaking and my top stitches were too loose. I was getting close to throwing my machine out the window. Amazingly mom called in the middle of all of this, so I was telling her what was going on. I suddenly realized that I very stupidly did not drop the feed dogs on my machine! 

Feed dogs: (n), A set of feed dogs typically resembles two or three short, thin metal bars, crosscut with diagonal teeth, which move back and forth in slots in a sewing machine's needle plate. Their purpose is to pull ("feed") the fabric through the machine, in discrete steps, in-between stitches.

When free motion quilting you do not want the fabric to be fed through the machine. You want to have control of it and feed it through manually. 


One of my problems was solved. Now what about the breaking thread? I was sewing with Coats & Clark Star cotton machine quilting thread. I switched to Guterman polyester sew-all thread. Ta-da! No breakage. I'm thinking the free motion movement was too stressful on the cotton thread and caused it to break. The polyester thread seems to be more sturdy. I've read about plenty of people free motion quilting with cotton thread, but I just don't think my machine likes it. 


This week's project: finish quilting. 

Busy this Weekend!

I have had a very productive weekend! One new t-shirt and two sets of baby blocks are now up on my Etsy Shop.

I also have been working hard on this twin-sized quilt. It's still got a ways to go before I can start assembling the entire quilt, but here's a preview!  

On an exciting note, a friend of mine brought be back this awesome fabric from Qatar! Now to decide what to make with it. Suggestions? 

Fun Things

Saw this today at JoAnn Fabrics. Awesome!!!

Here are a few quilt blocks that I have started for the quilt I'm working on. 

And here's a new onesie!

Sew Busy

I take after my mother and can never sit still. I have to always be doing something! Well there certainly hasn't been a shortage of things to do this summer. Multiple quilts have been sewn, and my love for batik has been found. As I'm entering the final weeks of summer vacation things definitely haven't slowed down. 


I am putting my scrappy quilt on hold as I have had other projects pop up that need prioity. I have had several people request these super cute owls.

I also have this custom order quilt to make. I cut all the center squares using the fabrics I was given. I need to make a fabric store run to start buying solid color fabrics to add into the quilt. I am modeling the quilt off of Elizabeth Hartman's design that can be found here.

In addition to all of that, I bought some onesies that I am going to batik and sell on my Etsy shop. Batiked onseies are just tooo cute and I can't resist! I started one of them today. Should have it finished tomorrow. 

Skirts, thread and quilting, oh my!

Completed the navy wrap skirt! It is available for purchase at my Etsy shop here.

On a different note, I need to always remind myself that when I start a big quilting project that I need to have enough thread on hand! There is nothing worse than starting to sew a quilt block and then run out of thread half way through. Ugh. Luckily I live 5 minutes from JoAnn Fabrics and boy it's convenient! I swung by there after yoga all sweaty and gross just to pick up thread. I know I spend too much time in there because I was at the cutting counter a few weeks ago and the woman cutting my fabric asked "Weren't you just in here the other day?" Yes. Yes I was. 

In the middle of all my batiking fun and starting my scrap quilt, a friend of mine wants me to make her a custom made twin-sized quilt for her daughter. All the scraps are from leftovers from custom diapers she had made for her. I am really excited because this is my first custom made quilt for someone! Usually I'm making quilts for people as gifts, never have I been asked to make a quilt for someone. Thanks Julie for making my day and giving me a quilting challenge!  What an eclectic bunch of fabric and what a fun quilt it's going to be! 

Scrap Quilting has Begun!

In between batiking and starting to plan my curriculum for the upcoming school year, I am starting to work on the quilt top with all the scraps that I cut out a while back. The quilt pattern is a bit more complicated than expected, not because of difficulty, but because of lack of space. I don't have the ability to lay out all the pieces ahead of time so I can see how it's going to look. What I'm doing instead is cleaning our bed off, laying out three rows at a time, taking pictures of the rows and stacking the fabric back up and setting it aside. I reference the picture when I need to start adding new fabric to the rows. But why not lay the whole quilt out a head of time, take a picture of the whole thing and then just set the fabric aside? I could just reference that picture instead, right? Yes, I thought of that, but I can't lay all the fabric flat! From the pictures below, you can see that the quilt top doesn't lay flat on our bed. Instead I'm just doing it a little bit at a time. Hey, it's worked thus far! 

I clean off our bed and lay the rows out. 

These are the rows I laid out before stacking the fabric back up and setting it aside. 

 Here is the start to the quilt top. 

I'm really excited about this quilt because, so far, I haven't had to buy any fabric for it! You can use your imagination to picture what the end result will be because I'm not going to post anymore pictures until the quilt top is done! Happy sewing! 

Cutting Fabric!

 I looked at all my fabric a few weeks ago and came to the conclusion that it is time to make a scrappy quilt. I found a great pattern from American Patchwork and Quilting that was perfect for what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, I'm always drawn to patterns that are throw size or wall hanging size. Luckily the pattern is pretty straight forward and was easy to adjust to make a queen size quilt. 


I spent all morning cutting fabric (except for the half hour when my fiancé needed me to help him work on his car). It wasn't until my stomach started rumbling that I realized it was time to take a break. I looked at the clock and saw that it was already lunchtime! When cutting fabric I find it very easy to get into a flow and lose all track of time. 


There are 58 different fabrics in that pile and I still have more to cut...

Summer quilting

There are many joys of being a music teacher, but what's one of the best? Summer vacation. It's the perfect time of year to sit down and crank out projects that just couldn't get done during the school year. My list is long, but so far, I have two   projects knocked off my list. I made two quilts as gifts and today I put the labels on them. This is a good feeling because it's like signing your work and I know that the quilts are officially finished.

One quilt was a baby quilt for a good friend of mine and the other was a wedding gift. I'm an avid follower of the OhFransson blog and both patterns are Elizabeth Hartman creations. I just love her quilt designs! The pink quilt pattern came right from her blog here. I modified both the backing and size, so it was crib size. The teal quilt came out of The Practical Guide to Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman. Both of these quilts had very easy directions and made it incredibly easy to make. 


The teal quilt was a great challenge for me because of all the piecing and lining up all the squares. I am a perfectionist so if one set of squares didn't line up, I was quick to pull out the seam ripper and try again. It got easier as I got farther along with it. It was great practice and I feel much more confident now about lining up seams. 

The baby quilt was just another quilt that gave me a chance to continue my free motion skills (which are still mediocre at best). Any quilt that I can free motion is great practice to hone in on my skills. I have several projects in the making at the moment, posts about them will be up at some point.