I Made an Apron!

 I had been seeing those cross strap aprons all over the internet in the past year. You know, the ones that are long-ish and criss cross in the back, but have no apron strings? I have seen many that I love, but being able to sew, I wasn't about to buy one. So I googled patterns. I found LOTS of patterns.

The one I ended up choosing was a free tutorial from Susan of aboxoftwine.com. She is also on Instagram as @aboxoftwine. She mostly does crochet and such, and her version of this apron has a cute crocheted pocket. I decided to take this tutorial and make my own version of it.

I found a gorgeous canvas from Rifle Paper Co. on Fabricworm. Linen was Susan's choice, but I wanted something colorful, and a print as well. This is not a very heavy canvas. I pre-washed it, since I know canvas is prone to shrinking. I had decided to line mine, whereas Susan did not line hers. I used and Art Gallery print called Lyricist's Diary from the Raise the Volume collection. I chose Art Gallery because it's so light weight, plus I love the print. I added the two pockets to the front.

Here's a shot of the back. I am so happy with this and once I train myself to wear it all the time in the kitchen, my clothes will thank me. I cook and bake a lot, so I needed this. Also, it's a nod to my Great Aunt Charlotte, who I am named for. She almost always wore an apron. Every day. Check out the tutorial if you are interested in making one.

Thanks for stopping by.

One of Those Days

I am having one of those days.  You know, you want to sew, you have the time to sew, but you sit at the machine and don't feel like sewing at all.  I cleaned the kitchen, did the laundry...still nothing.  So here I am, writing a blog post instead.  It won't make me feel like sewing either, but I do have a few things to show you, so at least there is that.  Here we go...

 I finished J's quilt and got it all washed and crinkly.  I love the way this quilt turned out.  I bought a fat quarter bundle from Fabricworm and then went back and bought another 1/2 yard of the airplane fabric.  My husband helped me figure out the arrangement.  I kind of had an idea, but he helped me to see how it would work.  He's good like that.

 All the fabrics you see on the front are from the bundle.  The only fabrics I purchased were the green for the back and the binding, which came from a recent addition to my stash.

 I used almost every single scrap of that fabric on the back.  I wanted nothing left over in the end.

 Here is a good shot of the quilting shown on the back of the quilt.  This again was my hubby's idea.  The cool thing about it is that it makes the airplanes look like they are flying loop-de-loops.

                            You can kind of see what I mean right here.

And here is the grey print border.  All in all I am pretty happy with this.  Hope J likes it too.

The other thing I want to show you is my tidied up fabric stash.  I stumbled on Jeni Baker's tutorial for fabric folding here and went at it.  I wish I had taken a before picture to show you the mess it was.

 I started folding late yesterday afternoon and quickly buried my sewing machine here.

 I got back on it this morning and finished folding everything that was on the shelves willy nilly and even some other pieces that were lying around.

 These are the bins where I keep lots of older fabrics and odd sized or shaped larger scraps.  I can't quite figure out a better way to organize these.  They are pretty much sorted by color.  This was my first sorting system I ever had.

 These are my scrap bins full of smaller scraps, sorted by color.  Even into my second year with the Sunday Morning Quilts Bee I have scarcely put a dent in them.  I keep thinking I will use more of them, but they never seem to go down in quantity.

And here is my newly tidied shelf full of folded fabrics.  The top shelf is fat quarters, quarter yards and half yards.  The next shelf is full yards and a few one yard plus cuts. On the left side of the shelf is 2 or more yards, which were either a great sale or bought for backing potential. What you don't see is that all those stacks on both shelves are two deep.  Eek! That's a lot of fabric!
Hope you have a great week.  See you soon.

At Last...Christmas Crafting Reveal

I can finally show you all the Christmas crafting and sewing I did.  This will be a picture heavy post and long I'm afraid.  Hang in there.

Remember these little wooden houses?  I made them from scrap wood we had in a crate in our shed from many projects.  I loved painting them and I have them in my kitchen.  I decided I wanted more.

 But I was out of scraps of wood.  So I had my hubby buy me a 2 x 4 and I cut it into the pieces I needed.  Like this:

 And I glued the triangles on the top with wood glue and let it dry overnight.

 Then I painted them to look Christmas-y and put them under my tree.  I gave some to my daughter to paint for her house.

I love these little houses.  If you want to make your own, you need to prime them and let that dry for 24 hours.  Then, it's like a blank canvas.  Most of these are 6-8 inches tall.

Now, for the sewing...

 I know I showed some of these things before, but a brief recap here if I may.  These are the TV cushions I made for the two older grandsons.

                                  I found enough castle peeps in my stash to do this.

                       The quilt I made for my son-in-law for the back of his office door.

                         The quilt for V...Still needs quilting, but soon it will be done.

 My Cherry Christmas quilt.  I used a charm pack of Cherry Christmas to make this.  It's small, but I will quilt it up and use it for decoration next year.

 These were the biggest job for me.  I cut them all out and sewed them when I had time.  It only takes me 90 minutes or so to make one now, not including the cutting and fusing.  They are phone wristlets from a pattern by Trillium designs.

 I made 6 of these babies and now, with the ones I made last summer, I have made nine!!

                                                All different, and all done!!

 I love this fabric and so I made a pillow for my sister out of it.  She loves it, as I knew she would.

                          Another print in the collection makes a fine back to the pillow.

 Here is another small quilt made from charm packs.  This one is Countdown to Christmas.  I had two of these from last year that I never used and some yardage of the green and cream stripe for the sashing.  This will also be quilted and used for next year's decor.

 Lastly, this is the quilt top for J.  I just finished it today.  Sorry for the trees shadows.  It was getting late when I took these.  After the sailing quilt and map for V, I wanted something similar, yet different for J.  Airplanes!  I found this awesome bundle of fat quarters at Fabricworm I think.  I'm sorry I don't know that was where I got them.

 And they had planes and another cool map that fit so well.  I fussed around to figure out how to best use each fabric and I even bought another half yard of the airplanes to feature it better.

I will take better pictures once it's quilted, I promise.  This is one awesome quilt, even if I didn't get it done in time for Christmas.  Thanks for sticking with me to the end.
See you soon.