Fall for Solids!
It is no secret that I am crazy about using solids in my quilts. The majority of my stash is comprised of a rainbow of solids and a great big shelf of shot cottons and cross weave fabrics!
If your shelves are anything like mine, then you’ll definitely want to participate in the Fall for Solids contest co-hosted by Brenda of Pink Castle Fabrics and Elizabeth of Don’t Call Me Betsy. You can find all of the great details over at the Pink Castle Blog and at Threadbias.
What’s great about this contest (outside of the fact that you can use up some of those great colors you’ve got and the fact that there are great prizes up for grabs) is that the projects are small and totally manageable! A pillow or a mini quilt. Easy peasy! I’m a guest judge for the contest and cannot wait to see the creations that come from this contest.
Check back on Monday, when I’ll be answering some questions from Brenda and Elizabeth about my own use of solids.
In the meantime, we’re going to have a fabulous quilty weekend here in Kansas City. The KCMQG is hosting Denyse Schmidt for a lecture and two workshops. It’s been on our wish list since our organizational meeting nearly three years ago. I’m taking the Friday workshop and will be sure to share photos later next week!
Preschool Presents
Preschool starts up again this week. I can almost hear the choir of angels singing in the background! My kids are excited. I am excited. We’re all ready for a change back to a routine.
Before that happens, I wanted to share the gifts I made for their previous preschool teachers at the end of May. Ruffled wristlets! I have one of these wristlets myself and it is incredibly handy! In fact, a couple of the teachers said they were meaning to ask me about where I found mine because they always saw it on my wrist when I’d drop the kids off at school.
I used this fantastic tutorial by my friend Alex of Teaginny Designs. It’s a fast and easy project and, best of all, it’s instantly useful! The kids helped a bit with the fabric selection and then we had another draft to decide the recipient of each key fob. They love getting to make ‘big’ decisions like that! (Just like they did with the Christmas gifts for their teachers!)
This is a project I will definitely be making again. I have plans to buy a ruffler attachment for my machine and I think it would make these whip up even more quickly. If you haven’t made one yet…. what are you waiting for?
A Badminton Birthday Dress
First, thank you so much for the fun comments of congratulations. We are so very excited to be adding another person to our household! Since December is always chock full of activities as it is, we’re adding a baby’s arrival at the end of the month. Why not, right?!
This summer has been a low key one. Our kids’ preschool operates on the same calendar as the local school district, so my summer has consisted of much less sewing and much more playtime and pool time. On the day that we set up my Market booth, I dropped my kids off for their last day of preschool for the year. The week following Market was a rude awakening! No rest for the weary… there were games to play and bikes to ride and naps to skip!
School starts at the end of the month, so I will be back in my sewing room much more frequently. In the meantime, I’ll share a few things I did make this summer. In keeping with my promise to myself to balance business sewing with family sewing, I have several things I made just for fun. And I loved every minute of it!
I’ve started a bit of a tradition of sewing some clothing for my kids for their birthdays. I start at their second birthday, when the crazy fast growth seems to slow down a bit. My daughter gets birthday dresses and my son gets some fun new PJs. You can see the previous dresses here and here and the pjs in this post.
This year, Eleanor wanted a Rapunzel themed 4th birthday party. She will tell you that Rapunzel is her name she won’t hear it otherwise! I wanted to make her dress a nod to the purple dress in the movie without being a literal interpretation. The Badminton Dress from Oliver + S was perfect! Just enough sweet details to make it ‘frilly’ enough for her but not overly ruffled and heavy. And it was so quick to sew! I started it after Market and it was ready for her birthday party at the end of the next week. I used two Michael Miller Cotton Couture Solids (in Mauve and Venus). If you’ve not felt them with your own two hands, you are missing out!
There is a great thread on the Oliver + S forum about kids ‘growing up’ with Oliver + S clothing and I am so glad to have these images and outfits for my kids. As Eleanor has gotten older, I’ve given her more input into what her dresses look like and this year Graham will get to pick out some fun new PJ fabric with me. They really have such special meaning in our family.
Christmas (Stockings) in July
Today I am writing about a project I completed in December… but somehow never shared! These are stockings I made for our family. And I LOVED making them.
My entire goal in creating my Sleigh Bells Stockings pattern was to craft a set of stockings for my own family. I had gazed at our store bought stockings one time too many, I guess. They just didn’t express each person’s personality. And, as our family grew, it was tough to find more stockings to add to match. So, matching went out the window.
I pulled a giant stack of fabric and tried not to make things too matchy-matchy, but some fabrics are used in multiple stockings, which does tie them together.
I started these in mid-December and finished them just in time for Christmas Eve. It came down to the wire! I used the pattern for my husband’s stocking:
And for my daughter’s:
For my stocking, I used the tips in the pattern for using a favorite block at a certain size. It adds more variety and was an easy easy one to make.
My son’s gets the prize for most time consuming. The piecing instructions aren’t part of the pattern, but the rest of the stocking is. Those are 1″ finished pieces. (!!) Naturally, this one was the last to roll off the assembly line and I was ready to just be finished already. But I am crazy about how it turned out.
Picking the lining fabric is, oddly enough, one of my favorite things.
The kids’ reactions were fun on Christmas morning.
And the stockings held the perfect amount of special treats.
As a test to see who is still reading, I will share this little tidbit. I’m going to have to make another stocking before Christmas this year. Wink, wink. Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge. Naturally, this means another baby quilt will be in the works this fall. As if I needed an excuse to go fabric shopping….!
