Summer at Grandma's House

Quilts and Sewing Projects in Action

2012-02-21T10:19:00.003-05:00

Life has been so full lately between trying to finish my PhD, get a job and figure out where we're going to move. I haven't been posting or commenting much, but I'm still reading, just a bit more quietly. My husband is also in the midst of a career change where he'll be going back to school this summer. In an effort to save money, we've been enjoying cooking new recipes and that's been eating up (pardon the pun!) most of my free time and brain-space.

BUT! Some of my projects have been getting some great use lately, which makes me really happy! My good friend, Whitney, had a baby around Thanksgiving and it gave me a great excuse to make some small projects. I made a quilt and some burp cloths, all of which are getting regular use which means I have to post some gratuitous adorable baby shots.

(Pictures are all from Whitney)

And here's one of the burp cloths I made using MAde by Rae's great tutorial

I get to take care of her sweet Maddy twice a week at my office, which also makes me ridiculously happy. Here's me with her and her having a great time with one of my co-workers.

Evolution of a Quilt

2011-09-27T09:47:00.000-04:00

As I keep saying at the beginning of my posts, I really can't believe how busy life has gotten. This is the last year of my graduate program, so I'm working hard on my dissertation and applying for jobs since the academic market takes a whole year to go through the process.

But in more fun and exciting news, I'm still part of the Once Round the Country Round Robin and the quilts are evolving in really cool ways. This round, I got Zonnah's quilt. She made an incredible starting block and the additions have been really impressive. I debated about adding a calm mostly solid border, but decided that with only one more round to go, it would put Robin in a tough spot to finish it. Instead, I made a whole bunch of flying geese and echoed the inner borders. I used the speedy method on Quilter's Cache to make 4 flying geese at a time and it really was speedy. I think I made them all in just a couple hours. (www.quilterscache.com/H/Howtomakegeese.html)

Here's where it's journey:

And because all the quilts are so great, here's a recap of their evolutions so far...

My Quilt:

Anne's Quilt:

Robin's Quilt (I've got this one for the final round now):

Adrienne's Quilt (aka Organized Chaos):

Elephant on Parade

2011-08-11T09:07:00.002-04:00

A while ago Kati (From the Blue Chair) posted some adorable elephant softies and I immediately bought the Heather Bailey pattern on etsy.

I have to say that the sewing was a bit fussy, but I'm in love with the finished product and it's the perfect little extra to go with the baby quilts I've been working on. I will definitely make some more. The only modification I made was to use ric-rac instead of fabric for the tail.

I mean seriously, how cute is this little guy?

As for size, he's a little bit smaller than a soda can...

or a little bit bigger than a Koosh, however you wanna think about it.

Draw String Maternity Skirts

2011-07-17T17:31:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine, Whitney (who is a seriously talented knitter), is expecting this fall. In an effort to save money and have cute, professionally appropriate maternity clothes, we made some skirts this weekend and I have to say they turned out pretty darn cute. In total, we spent $20 on material for 3 skirts! She tells me they're super comfortable, too! The key seems to be the uneven waist (we cut room for the growing belly) and elastic in the drawstring so it has some give when she sits down.

Since we're planning to make some more, I thought I'd write out our tutorial here so we have it for later and maybe it'll help someone else (if the instructions don't make sense, let me know). First, we bought 1 yard of fabric which was enough for us since Whitney is fairly petite pre-pregnancy and not particularly tall. The orange skirt above was typical cotton 44" wide fabric and the other black and white one we made with a linen type fabric from Joann that was a little bit wider, so the skirt turned out longer. We also bought another yard of a muslin-type white fabric for lining. If you want to make a bigger, fuller or longer skirt, you will probably need 2 yards of each fabric.

To figure out how big to make the skirt, we measured Whitney right below her belly figuring this was the widest part we were going to go around. She measured 38" so we used these measurements to create a 38" waist at the top and a little more fullness towards the bottom (keeping in mind 1/2" seam allowances):

Then we cut out a matching piece of the lining fabric using the outer skirt piece as a pattern since the lining fabric may be shorter or longer.

After cutting, we sewed the sides of the lining and outer skirt pieces with 1/2" seams and then zig-zag to reduce the chance of fraying.

Next we put the lining and outer skirt together right sides together (one inside of the other) and folded it in half so the seams were touching. This is when we created space for the belly. We measured the height difference between the bottom of her belly in the front and where she wanted her skirt to sit in the back (about 3.5-4"), then cut that much fabric out of the FRONT half of the skirt only.

Once we cut the belly piece out, we sewed the lining to the outer skirt at the waist using a 1/4" seam. Then we flipped the skirt right side out and top stitched at the top of the skirt:

Then we put in two button holes (only through the outer skirt fabric!) for the draw string

Then we did a line of stitching to complete the draw string casing

And finished by hemming the bottom.

To make the draw string, we cut two pieces of fabric 2" wide and about 25" long. We folded each piece in half (the long way) right sides together and sewed along two of the open edges. We turned them right side out and pressed flat. Then sewed a 6-8" piece of elastic between the two drawstrings:

Thread the draw string through the skirt and you're done!

From start to finish, the first one took about 2 hours and the second one only an hour and a half. Not bad for a $6 skirt! :)

Double Rainbow

2011-06-26T11:30:00.003-04:00

So that little block grew and grew this week...

And then came the complementary one using the strips in the opposite order

The tops are about 34.5" square which is a size I really like for baby quilts/play mats.

This is all that's left of the jelly roll... about 5 strips and some small scraps.

So now I just need to order some fabric for the backing and binding. What do you guys think of this fabric for the back? (Pictures from Hawthorne Threads)

And these for the binding? I would use the red on the one with the red in the middle and the blue for the other. I think it could be a nice way to pull it all together. Do you have any other ideas??

The start of something new...

2011-06-20T12:39:00.002-04:00

There have been a few babies born recently who I meant to make a quilt for, but couldn't get around to it since I've been so busy. This weekend I pulled out the Nest jelly roll that I was lucky enough to win last year. It was begging to become a bright rainbow baby quilt...

Hopefully there will be more to share next weekend!

Organized Chaos

2011-06-19T14:10:00.003-04:00

For this round of Once Round the Country (a round robin quilting bee), I got to work on Adrienne's Organized Chaos. For her quilt, we're using some wonderfully bold modern prints. When I got the quilt from Anne, it looked like this:

After much indecision, I decided to do Amish diamonds around the outside contrasting the blue and pink/purple fabrics and echo the square design from the original block in the corners. In order to make the math easy, I just made a paper piecing pattern and did the diamonds that way rather than figuring out how big the pieces needed to be for a 5 1/3" block. :)

So this sketch...

Turned into this (note how big it is, that's a 5 foot wide rug)...

With my trash can evidence of paper piecing...

I hope she likes it!

Sewing for Anne

2011-04-23T18:36:00.004-04:00

Things in my non-sewing life (teaching, research, traveling, etc) have been keeping me really busy lately, but I'm still hopeful that this summer will be a time when I can sew more. In the meantime, I worked on something for the "Once Round the Country" Round Robin that a few of us are doing.

Anne (who blogs at Flim & Thread) sent an awesome starter block with three "portholes" and since the fabric she sent had a water vibe, I decided to sew up some flying geese in a wave pattern on either side. I struggled with what to do at first since it didn't like like it was ready for a border yet and I didn't quit know how to add to it without taking away from what was there, but I'm really happy with what I came up with in the end. I hope Anne does too!

Sewing Again!

2011-02-06T09:45:00.004-05:00

I can't believe that my last post was November 20th! Holy cow, life has been busy! I made it through the holidays, then got really busy with work. We also got our wedding photos back and have spent a lot of time sifting through them. You can check out a slideshow of our photographer's favorites here:

http://jrauphotography.myshowit.com/krisandjon

It hasn't been completely without sewing though. I managed to make more PJ's for my best friend (she's 6'1" feet and LOVES having pants that actually reach the floor). I used a Simplicity pattern and added 5" to make them long enough for her. These are the hilarious photos she sent me so I could share in her excitement :)
Some wonderful women from the Snip.Sew.Send. quilting bee also got me excited to do another collaborative project. 5 of us are going to do a round robin style bee where we each make a starter block that gets sent to someone else to make a border, then goes to the next person for the next border, etc. I have a bunch of fabric sitting around waiting for projects and completely trust this group, so I'm excited for this to get going.

Here's my starter block and the rest of the fabric. I'm sending out what I have left (which is most) of my Hope Valley fat quarter set and yardage of Kona Snow. My starter block is 8.5" unfinished.

Blocks of a Feather fun

2010-11-20T21:21:00.006-05:00

I'm nearing the end with my Block of a Feather quilting be. Last round, one member asked us to make a "mini-me" for the back of her quilt and we all had so much fun with it, we decided to make mini-me's for everyone's quilts. Here are the 5 I made for the 4 other members and myself.

The ones with the skirt are particularly funny to me, since I made a skirt a while ago with that fabric, so I actually wear that outfit in real life. :)

The last round (November/December) is the month everyone's making blocks for me. As you might remember, I sent out Kaffe Fassett prints and some solids. Everyone makes two blocks and I asked that one be a star.

Ruthiequilts already made this one:

and I made this one this weekend. I'm having fun working through my own instructions/inspiration along with everyone else. Here's my star block (Florida star from Quilter's Cache):

Last Bits of Fall

2010-11-14T10:04:00.004-05:00

Winter is coming (just ask my family and friends in the midwest), so I'm trying hard to savor what's left of fall.

I'm being featured!

2010-11-05T08:55:00.001-04:00

Check it out!
http://www.genxquilters.com/

Sewing again!

2010-11-03T14:44:00.006-04:00

Last weekend, I got back to sewing. I did a couple of blocks for the ever-talented Lucinda (LucyEllen06 on flickr). She requested spikes and circles and I posted my first block a while ago.

Here's the second block. I made it before the wedding, but I just wasn't that happy with it... I think it's growing on me, but I wanted to do another one that I felt really good about.

For the final block, I did my first "6 minute circle". It took more than 6 minutes, but worked really well and I could definitely see getting much faster if I did a few more.

November/December is my turn for Blocks of a Feather and here is the selection of fabrics I'm sending out. The colors are so me and I'm really excited to see what these ridiculously talented ladies come up with.

And just for fun, here's a photo from when Jon and I were hanging out in Minnesota.

DIY wedding fun

2010-10-22T16:14:00.013-04:00

For the wedding, I did a handful of DIY projects myself. I tried to keep it simple since everything had to be made in Rochester and then taken with me to Minnesota.We made our own favor tags, placecards (color coded for their meal choice) and menus.

After a disaster with the programs (the words literally flaked off the first kind of paper we bought), a few friends came over and bailed us out a few days before I left. Wine was had and everything was good:

My favorite DIY was making mustaches-on-a-stick. They were super cheap (~$4 for all the supplies to make 15-20) and a great way to get our wedding party and family in our fun. We brought them with us to the photos and everyone was really surprised and had a great sense of humor about it. I found the templates online but didn't use those instructions. I put them together using one layer of stiff felt, hot glue and really thin wooden sticks.

I mentioned I made art kits and that worked out so well. The kids were thrilled and it was great that they had something to do during our cocktail hour and dinner.

so. much. fun.

2010-10-22T15:11:00.008-04:00

We did it! We're married! AND the day--scratch that, the whole trip to Minnesota-- was fantastic! The weather was breathtaking for a October Minnesota day: high 60's and sunny. The only rain we had was late Sunday afternoon when all I wanted to do was take a nap anyway. :)

I'm going to do a few posts about some of my favorite parts about last weekend, starting with some snapshots from the wedding day. The professional photos will take about a month and I really can't wait since we had such a good time with the photographer.

Instead of clinking glasses to get us to kiss, we asked guests to sing us song with the word "love" in it. Everyone got really into it!

My family takes the Chicken Dance very seriously :)

One final note: Jon and I have been utterly humbled by the generosity of our families and friends since we got engaged. We are also a couple who would like to share our good fortune. As part of our wedding registry, we set up a donation page for one of our favorite non-profits, Admission Possible. Admission Possible is an organization that helps low-income high school student gain access to college. We both worked at Admission Possible with AmeriCorps and are proud of the organization and the students they support. Admission Possible is also quickly expanding from serving only students in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul to 10 cities in the next five years.

If you'd like to join us in sharing the joy of our wedding with Admission Possible and the students they serve, please click this link to make an online donation and it will automatically be designated in honor of our wedding. Every donation makes a difference and they currently have a challenge grant that will double donations from new donors.

To find out more about Admission Possible, please visit their website at admissionpossible.org.

Lollypop Wallflowers

2010-10-03T13:59:00.006-04:00

Another finish! This time something cheery to keep me smiling through the winter.

A while back, Sparrow requested simple flowers for a quilting bee I was in so I made this block.

I liked it so much, I really wanted to make more. Well, I finally did and made them into wall hangings by putting them over painter's cavases (tutorial here). I found all the fabric in my scrap bin and a lot of it was little bits and pieces left over from quilting bees.

The flowers are machine appliqued using fusible web and the stems are embroidered with a simple back-stitch.

Now, where to hang them?

Paintbox Help

2010-10-03T13:50:00.004-04:00

I wrote this post last weekend and completely forgot to upload the photos and post it! Don't you hate when that happens? Anyway...

A friend of mine, Whitney, is an amazingly talented knitter and I've helped her over the last couple years learn to use her sewing machine. She recently started up a quilting bee for other newbie sewer/quilters appropriately named The NewBee. For her month, she wanted to do a Paintbox Quilt using Oh, Fransson's pattern.

Since her stash is full of yarn and not very much fabric, I invited her over to raid my stash for prints that match the Kona roll-up she bought. It was an explosion of color!

I have to show you this photo she took of the stack at her house. Isn't it pretty?

originally uploaded by zigeunerweisen

I also agreed to do a couple sets since I can't resist the clean lines of square in square blocks. :)

An Afternoon at the Orchard

2010-10-03T09:51:00.004-04:00

A bunch of friends went to another friend's family's commercial apple farm yesterday. It's right along Lake Ontario and my friend's dad is so welcoming. He takes the time to show us around and teach us about the apples.

The weather was beautiful and it was a perfect opportunity to take photos. I'm probably posting too many, but I really like these ones and hope you do too!

Traveling Art Kits

2010-10-02T11:11:00.005-04:00

Last week, I worked on a bunch of projects but so many have been in progress that I haven't had photos to share. Here are the first finishes: 5 Traveling Art Shows for the kids coming to the wedding. I'm super excited to have these for them since wedding reception dinners can be a long event for kids.

A big thank you to Angela for swapping some kid fabric. She helped me be able to make these without buying any new supplies (besides the art stuff)!

I changed the placement and number of pockets and used Velcro instead of ties in order to make it a little easier for kids to open and close and for them to lie flat when closed.

Each one has a pack of 8 crayons, a pad of paper, 5 markers and some stickers.
The pattern can be found here: Mr. Monkeysuit's Traveling Art Show

Edit: If you want to make the pockets as shown here, here are the measurements from left to right: 4.5" - 4.75" - 1" - 1" - 1" - 1" - 1" - whatever was left.

Sewing with Glee

2010-09-25T08:48:00.000-04:00

Happiness is spending an afternoon having my own Glee marathon and sewing without a pattern.

For Blocks of a Feather, the ever talented Lucinda (aka LucyEllen06) asked for blocks with spikes and/or circles. Here is the first block I came up with and my wheels are still turning for the second block. The spikes are free-pieced and I machine appliqued the circles. It's 12.5" square.

She also asked that we make free-pieced mini versions of our selves for the back of the quilt. This was such a great idea and I had a ton of fun rummaging through my scraps for something I would want to wear. The hair is embroidered with 2 strands or yellow and 2 strands of brown since neither seemed to be an appropriate color. It's a little block, only 6"x7".

Pretty in Pink

2010-09-17T10:10:00.001-04:00

Last weekend, I was so inspired by my new sewing space, that a pieced and quilted a quilt all on Saturday. I waited to post since I wanted to give the mail a chance to get it to its owner.

When moving my fabric, I rediscovered a charm pack (Sultry by Moda) that Spiced Coffee sent me as a surprise a while ago and thought it would make the perfect little girly baby quilt. Emma is my cousin's second baby and their first child is a boy so I figured she would have lots of more boyish hand-me-downs, so something over-the-top girly would be just fine. :)

I love having her name on the quilt. When I was thinking about this quilt, I was most excited about the colors and putting her name on it. I just found a font I liked, printed her name on paper and traced it onto the fusible web.

I'm extra proud of this project because I didn't go out to get any of the supplies. I had the fabric, fusible web, batting and thread all on hand. I debated at one point about going out to get backing fabric but decided I was just going to "make it work" (I heart Tim Gunn) and I think it came together well.

As for the quilting, I used pink thread, doing loops in the middle and hearts in the border. At first I was nervous about the lopsided-ness of the hearts, but in the end decided that it's kind of endearing. She's going to be wrapped in love and I liked the idea of the hearts enough to overlook my short-comings.

It's pretty small, only about 32" square, but that seems fitting since Emma is still a small baby. She decided to make her entrance a month early in August so she's still only about 5-6 lb. I also really like this size for a baby quilt since the other ones I've made have gotten a lot of use as play mats and on-the-go blankets for the car seat.

I hope Mom, Dad & Emma like this one and I can't wait to meet little Emma at the wedding!

Let there be light!

2010-09-11T16:49:00.000-04:00

After two years of living in our apartment, Jon and I realized that we've been doing it all wrong.

Remember these pictures of my sewing space?

Well, this is what that room looked like earlier today

No sewing machine!

That's because it has a new home in the other bedroom with a skylight.

We finally had an ah-ha moment when we realized that the bed could be in the small room without all of our clothes (we have the dresser you can see in the photos and a big shelving unit on the opposite wall). Notice that the closet in the new bedroom is still non-clothes storage.

This leaves the bright, big room available for day-time uses. Jon gets more office space, I get more open space and we're both happier doing things in the room that's not next to the living room. It honestly feels like we just made our apartment magically bigger.

And since I'm on a living space theme, let's not forget to include our two new acquisitions. Both came from Jon's grandmom's house and both make me smile endlessly for completely different reasons.

Anybody notice the baby quilt on the ironing board in the photos? I was so inspired by the new space, I actually started and finished a whole quilt before 3pm today. I'll share pictures once I get the binding on. :)

Wedding crafting

2010-09-10T19:22:00.001-04:00

I can't believe it, but our wedding is about a month away! Since I haven't really talked about it at all on blog, I figured I would share with you a bunch of the more aesthetic parts of the planning.

We found a venue (the reception place is across the street from this lake),

originally uploaded by Chalk Talk Jaywalk Photography

orginally uploaded by mspweddings

picked autumn colors for the flowers,

originally uploaded by branching out events

found a dress that flattered the three bridesmaids (in "blueberry"),

From the Dessy Group website

figured out what the groomsmen will wear (blue shirts that match the bridesmaids' dresses with black ties and no jackets)

figured out what the groom will wear (the same blue shirt with an ivory tie to match my dress and a vest)

sent the invites (I really can't recommend Stelie Designs enough. She was amazing to work with and I love love the final product.)

and now, I'm getting into the "arts and crafts" portion of my to-do list:
programs, placecards, guestbook cards, etc.

If I have enough time and motivation, there may even be traveling art kits for the kids who are attending, but we'll just have to see how it goes.

Just a bit late

2010-09-09T18:30:00.002-04:00

Even though it's September, I just wrapped up my block for Block of a Feather for July/August (it's a make two blocks every two months kind of quilting bee).

Spiced Coffee (check out her photo stream for some seriously inspiring stuff!) sent Joel Dewberry prints and coordinating solids. She wanted one block to feature a large motif and we had free range for the other block.

For the second block, I used the Margaret's Choice pattern from Quilter's Cache and made a concerted effort to keep my seams even and my points matching. I mostly did it and actually produced a 12.5" block, so I'm pleased.

I also wanted to send along an extra block since I was a little delinquent. I was really inspired by some of the quilts in my new Kaffe Fassett book, Simple Shapes, that feature brick-like designs and wanted to try it out myself. I started piecing without much of a plan and I'm really happy with how it came together.

Done and done!

2010-08-31T20:58:00.001-04:00

I apologize in advance for the number of exclamation marks in the post, I'm entirely too excited!

After 2+ months of reading, 4 days of writing, I finished and PASSED(!!) my comps/quals exam! This means I've earned my Masters and I'm officially a PhD candidate. All that's left in my grad school career is my dissertation and that'll definitely take at least another 2 years.

In honor of the occasion, my parents sent me the most wonderful gift that they purchased on a recent trip to North Carolina: Kaffe Fassett books, fabric and some of the Gee's Bend solids.

They ran into someone who recommended that they visit the Quilt Shop in Boone, NC and I guess they have an amazing selection of Kaffe Fassett. My mom had never seen his fabric before but thought it would be right up my alley (which of course it is!). Can you believe how great the fabric she picked is??!

And to top it off, after I finished my exam, I found out that I got reassigned to a new office this year and it has a window! I've been without a window for the last 3 years in grad school and I'm hoping the natural light will really help through the drab Western New York winters.

I've been sewing a few Bee blocks, so watch out over the next couple days for a post about that and some wedding stuff (it's less than 6 weeks away!).